Through a Harsh Dawn: A boy grows up in a Japanese camp

The book is the true story of Henk Leffelaar, a boy who, at thirteen, became an inmate in a series of Japanese prison camps after the Japanese overran Sumatra.

He stays with his mother for a short time then is shipped off to an all-men's camp.

The book shows his reactions to what was going on from the viewpoint of a thirteen-year-old, someone who was still growing up and who took things as sort of an adventure. There's a lot of detail of camp life, and some of it might prove rather upsetting to the reader, including eating rats, but that's the way things were at the time.

The Japanese in charge of the camps seemed to be pretty much average, not prone to incredible viciousness as was experienced at some of the camps. Still, all the people were held against their will, suffered disease and malnutrition, lost their homes and goods, and many died in the process.

It's not a pleasant book to read, but it's a good one and gives a somewhat different view of life in the prison camps.

Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page