Autobiography japanese internment camps

By Willem ten Wolde

I was researching books written in English about the Japanese prison or internment camps in the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, when I found Annelex Hofstra Layson’s autobiography Lost Childhood: My Life in a Japanese Prison Camp During World War II.

Autobiography japanese internment camps

I was intrigued because it was—so far—the only one that targeted a younger, middle school aged audience. I was surprised to read that Annelex had been in several of the same camps I had been in with my mother and baby brother (specifically Surabaya, Gedangan and Halmaheira).

Annelex is a bit younger than I, but she still remembers a lot.

The book starts with her peaceful life, in 1941 before the Pearl Harbor attack, in Surabaya where she lived with her father a navy pilot, mother, older brother, grandmother, and servants.

When the Japanese invaded, her father was sent away on a mission. Soon after, they were evicted from their home and sent to prison camps in Surabaya, Gedangan, Halmaheira, and Semarang.