The author of this book was born in Holland in 1925. She left for Indonesia with her family as a three-year-old, and enjoyed a idyllic childhood in Java. All that soon changed for in the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbour, Dutch nationals were rounded up by the Japanese soldiers and put in internment camps. In these camps, the author witnessed starvation, forced labour, torture and death. On the family's return to Holland after the war, she found a nation that was recovering from German occupation and ignorant of the horror of the war in the Far East. The author decided to write about her experiences in the Indonesian P.O.W camps to document for her own children and for posterity the savage nature of war.