Long Way Back to the River Kwai: Memories Of World War II [Hardcover]

Loet Velmans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2003

Loet Velmans was 17 when the Germans invaded his native Holland in 1940. Almost immediately, he and his family decided to escape to London, which they did on board the Dutch Coast Guard cutter, Seaman's Hope. Deciding theyt would be safer in the Far East, the family sailed to the Dutch East Indies-now Indonesia-where Loet joined the Dutch army. In March 1942, the Japanese invaded the archipelago, conquered it in a week, and made prisoners of the local Dutch soldiers. For the next three and a half years Loet and his fellow POW's were sent to slave labor camps to build a railroad through the dense jungle on the Burmese-Thailand border, to invade and conquer India. Some 200,000 POW's and slave laborers died in building this Railroad of Death. Loet, though suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable maltreatment, never gave up hope...and survived. Fifty-seven years later he returned to revisit the place where he should have died and where he had buried his closest friend. From that emotional visit came this stunning memoir.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Velmans' compact, exceedingly readable autobiography focuses on his World War II experiences. A Dutch Jew in his late teens when the war broke out, he escaped with his family in a small boat to England. The Velmans then traveled to the Dutch East Indies, where Loet was drafted just in time for the Japanese invasion. His subsequent POW experiences ran him through the entire range of what the Japanese could deal out, from the comparatively survivable conditions of Changi prison in Singapore to voyages on stifling prisoner ships to the slow mass murder that was the labor camps on the Thailand-Burma railway. He is an extraordinarily vivid and sensitive writer, whose sharp memory and acute eye for detail help him render the varying characteristics of the different nationalities represented among the POWs. (His own group of Dutch and Dutch Eurasians hasn't been covered well in English.) To this day, he feels more than slightly ambivalent about Japan and its continuing refusal to come to terms with its behavior in the war. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Exceeding readable . . .

(Booklist )

Well-remembered and impeccably written . . . [A] most wonderful book. (Simon Winchester )

This candid, understated book is a useful contribution to our understanding of an essential truth. (Washington Post Book World ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1 edition (November 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559707062
• ISBN-13: 978-1559707060
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #914,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #81 in Books > History > Asia > Thailand

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One man's gut-wrenching and nearly fatal three and a half year tenure as a slave laborer for the Japanese army, July 5, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Long Way Back to the River Kwai: Memories Of World War II (Hardcover)

The inspiration for the classic book and film "Bridge Over The River Kwai", Long Way Back To The River Kwai: Memories Of World War II is the painfully honest true story of one man's gut-wrenching and nearly fatal three and a half year tenure as a slave laborer for the Japanese army during World War II. A prisoner of war. An insert of black-and-white photographs illustrate this testimony, which presents the unvarnished truth about inhumane, brutal, and ultimately deadly torments the POWs suffered during the course of the war. Long Way Back To The River Kwai also tells of the war's end, the author's rescue and slow recovery from near-death, and his gradual readjustment. The final section tells of the author's business dealings in modern-day Japan, his reflections and friendships, and his observance of the Japanese "cultural amnesia" concerning the war and the atrocities it committed during that era. Highly recommended reading and an impressive contribution to the growing library of World War II combatant memoirs.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A different view of the Pacific war., April 5, 2004

By 

Christopher J. Hodson (Hampstead, NH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Long Way Back to the River Kwai: Memories Of World War II (Hardcover)

The author gives a stirring and very readable story as told from the eyes of a Dutch soldier captured by the Japanese during the invasion of Java in 1942. Velman gives a very interesting story of his backgound as a Jew in prewar Holland and his families escape from the Nazis only to fall into the hands of the Japanes later.

Most of his time as a POW was spent helping to build the Thai-Burma railroad. During this period, hundreds of thousands of Aliied prisoners and native slave labors died due to disease, famine, loss of spirit, and, of course, the direct mistreatment of them by the Japanese. All this for a railraod that was barely used and is now overgrown and torn up.

It is a compelling book and the author is still trying to come to terms with the Japanse to this day.

I also highly recommend Ernest Gordon's "Beneath the Valley of the Kwai". This book was written much earlier but tells the story from the British point of view. It is now available under the title "To End All Wars".

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting personal account, July 4, 2006

By 

ARD (Miami) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Long Way Back to the River Kwai: Memories of World War II (Paperback)

My grandfather was a POW in Burma and came back with stories that make you shudder and I bought this book to see if there was more I could learn. Although there is preamble on how Velmans escaped from the Netherlands and then moved to Indonesia and his life after the war, the account of treatment by the Japanese and working on the Burma railroad is quite insightful. There is not much on what happened to the Japanese after the war (war crimes) and Velmans does not really give you his opinion of the treatment he received. However, as a personal account, it is an interesting book.