'In the Shadow of the Red Sun'

‘In the Shadow of the Red Sun’ - Life in a Japanese prison camp

by Gon Boissevain and Lennie van Empel

Prologue

A deluge of memories floods my mind, while reading Lennie’s diary. Memories of hunger, illness, fear, overcrowded spaces and above all the feeling of being buried alive; completely devoid of news from loved ones, totally dependent on rumours as a source of information about the war and developments in the world, and incapable of doing anything about it at all.
Lennie’s diary has become a historical document; a record of our daily lives in the camp. It describes our anxiety, our longing for our husbands and our sadness over the children who were growing up without their fathers. Later came the fear of being transported and our confusion over the Nippon orders, the terrible and constant hunger and our struggle simply to keep going.
Not every moment of camp life was tragic though. The diary also records better times, especially during our first year, when there was still enough food to go round. A time when we still had the privacy and luxury of a house, or at least a room to ourselves. There are also stories of birthdays, celebrated with much more intensity than before, everyone making an effort to contribute with home-made presents, crafted from bits of cloth or scraps of wool. Times when a ‘party dish’ was improvised with the last tin from our stock and mixed with a few rations of rice or flour and we would momentarily forget being the downtrodden and worn-out women of Lampersari.
As good fortune would have it, Lennie and I never had to face the horrors of transportation and stayed in Lampersari throughout the duration of the war. Had this not been the case, Lennie’s diary would have probably been lost and this book may never have been written.
More or less by chance, we ended up in a permanent camp, in which an increasing number of people from other camps were packed. As the numbers grew and the food supplies diminished, so the quality of life deteriorated and by the end of the war many of us had died of starvation.
Originally I had intended to write an account of my experiences in Lampersari Camp, using Lennie’s diary merely as a point of reference. However, the diary expresses the atmosphere of the camp and our feelings at the time with such clarity, that I decided to change my approach and I have simply worked my memories around the entries from Lennie’s diary, like adding beads to a necklace.
You have in your hands the chronicle of two women who survived a Japanese concentration camp during The Second World War. A detailed account of two people’s lives in a world of narrowing horizons. An outlook, which didn’t stretch much further than food and survival, a small group of friends and family members, and for the lucky few the occasional sign of life from their husbands and the most important radio messages. Our account is subjective and no doubt other women from the same camp will have had completely different memories of their time spent in Lampersari. In any case, it’s an honest account of the atmosphere in the camp and a faithful attempt to capture our feelings at the time.

Gon Boissevain

1981

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