Interviews and narratives of the daily trials, difficulties, sacrifices, and small joys of four women who survived the Japanese internment camps in the Phillipines are accompanied by rare photographs.
The four accounts different perspectives and experiences in concentration camps in the Philippines.
Details often made me wince. For instance, faced with premeditated starvation, prisoners became obsessed with copying recipes—for which they had no ingredients.
Two of the authors were children when imprisoned. Some of their experiences were typical of children in most places, like climbing trees and attending classes. Others were not what we would want our children to experience, like seeing another child tortured. Walking through a field of body parts. Playing a game of one-upmanship called, “I saw. . . “ to find who could tell the worst thing. When bombs fell, one would ask her father, “Is it time to be scared yet, Daddy?”
I studied a photo of Sasha and a drawing of Karen, both children at the time of their imprisonment. Their images haunted me with their dark circles under eyes, sunken cheeks, sober expressions, and lost innocence and childhood.
Yet, both wrote also what they’d gained, things of great value like self-reliance, friendship, and liberation.