Only 17 when the Nazis invaded his native Holland, Loet Velmans
and his family escaped to London in 1940. From there they
settled in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where Velmans
was drafted into the Dutch army just before the Japanese
captured the archipelago. For three and a half years he toiled
in slave-labor camps building the railway made famous by The
Bridge on the River Kwai, surviving malaria, dysentery,
malnutrition, and unspeakable abuses that killed some 200,000 of
his fellow laborers. Velmans returned to that place six decades
later—an emotional pilgrimage that inspired this concise and
frank account of his experiences and his later encounters with
the Japanese in his business career. "I was moved and fascinated
by this well-remembered and impeccably written memoir."—Simon
Winchester "What makes Long Way Back to the River Kwai stand out
in the endless stream of war reminiscences is an attempt to come
to terms with the Japanese.... This candid, understated book is
a useful contribution to ou