For a rare, out-of-print, signed copy, contact the author.
Soft cover, 201 pp
ISBN 1895815002
Copyright © 1992
In the Shadow of the Sun is a personal story – based on the diary of the author’s mother, Jeannette Herman-Louwerse – about life in Japanese concentration camps for women and children in the Dutch East Indies during the Second World War. It deals with the anxieties, frustrations and hopes of a young Dutch mother and her two small children who, like thousands of others at that time, were caught in a terrifying situation that cost countless innocent people their lives. In many camps the women did not hear about the Japanese surrender until a week after the fact and many died, not knowing that the war was over.
The book covers the equally unsettling period after the Japanese capitulation when the cry ‘Merdeka’ for independence was heard throughout the islands.
East Indies Camp Archives, in Dutch and English