Four years Till Tomorrow

Four Years Till Tomorrow

Published by van der Heide (1999)

 Four Years Till Tomorrow refers to the misguided belief of nearly all Japanese camp internees that the war would end miraculously “tomorrow” when the Americans came to rescue us.  Since we were utterly cut off from the outside world we had no idea that the war would end without our liberation and that our effective internment would last for months after the Pacific War.

This is a collection of twenty-six eye witness accounts of the Internment experience collected by Sherri G. Tromp, (editor and contributor) from camp survivors living mainly on the west coast of North America. Sherri herself endured the war in Mid Java.

The collection contains a number of noteworthy contributions among whom Elly Soeters Campioni, Emelia Visser, who explains the administrative work that was demanded by the Japanese Imperial army,  and the van Nooten  brothers ( Marius van Dijk van Nooten and Bart van Nooten, struck me in particular, but that is a purely personal observation.  A noteworthy feature of this collection is the breadth of accounts, from various camps on Java , and other islands and from slave labourers in Japan. A table of contents is included in this post.

Table of Contents (click on the link below)

Four Years Till Tomorrow

Reviews:

..the recollections – some faded, others painfully detailed – of young adults and children, who  some how survived Japanese prison camps in the former Dutch East Indies and have now  grown old themselves. They are the last generation to remember those awful events. Those who make the effort to immerse themselves in these stories will gain a deeper understanding  of what human beings are capable of, in terms of cruelty and heroism. ( Wiliam Boei, reporter, Vancouver Sun)

“Simply told and extraordinary gripping stories” (Ernst Hillen, author of  “the Way of a Boy” and “Small Mercies : a Boy after War”