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The Way of a Boy: A Memoir of Java
Chronicles the years Ernest Hillen spent as a little boy in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp on Java. He and his family lived in Java on a tea plantation before the war and they were interned by the Japanese and transported to a series of camps.
Paperback, 200 pages
Published
1994
by Penguin Books
(first published 1993)
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Community Reviews
(showing 1-30 of 157)
This remains, years later, one of the best books I have read. Also with the best quote, Memories, are all we own.
I simply did not find this book interesting. It sounds like good fodder for a memoir: an innocent family locked up in an internment camp because of a faraway war. But it was dull, dull, dull. I don't know how much of it was the author's writing and how much of it was just the situation. Because, when you think about it, life in an internment camp probably would be mostly squalid and boring rather than exciting and scary. I also wish more historical context had been provided to the story. I don't
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I had a special interest in reading this 200 page memoir as one of my patients where I worked was herself, a prisoner of war during the 1940's. She was held captive in some of the same camps mentioned in this memoir.
Ernest Hillen has written a moving and sobering tale of his experiences as a prisoner of war in a Japanese war camp. Hillen and his family endured their fate with clamness and without hysteria.
The memoir is filled with courage, stamina, friendship, love and even some humour as he tel ...more
Ernest Hillen has written a moving and sobering tale of his experiences as a prisoner of war in a Japanese war camp. Hillen and his family endured their fate with clamness and without hysteria.
The memoir is filled with courage, stamina, friendship, love and even some humour as he tel ...more
Pretty good childhood account of family incarceration in Java by the Japanese soldiers of WW II. Tells about good and evil and various personalities and some philosophy. Not bad at all. Somewhat like "Empire of the Sun."
It took me a bit to get into this memoir of a young Dutch boy growing up in a work-camp in Java during World War II. But once I did, I loved the simple description of his memories. I am often irritated by memoirs of childhood that seem to exaggerate or analyze childhood experiences so that the voice of the child and the voice of the adult author are all mixed up. But this book does a great job of taking the reader into a world where toy soldiers and scavenged bits of food were precious commoditi
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Very informative. After years of hearing stories from my Mother-in-law who lived through the Japanese war camps it was informative to read another's account.
This memoir of a young boy caught up by the events of World War II, and ending up in a Japanese prison camp was moving and full of imagery.
I couldn't put this book down. It is one of the best books I have ever read and I read it in less than a day.
Quite simply, this is one of the better memoirs that I've had the pleasure of reading. Hillen speaks from the perspective of his childhood self with no lack of complexity and sophistication. It reads beautifully throughout, and sheds some important light on my travels to Indonesia.
Enjoyable. I read it while in Bandung and was pleased to be able be seeing some some of the places he was writing about while reading the book.
I liked this book
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| My favourite quote from the book | 1 | 2 | Jul 12, 2013 06:12AM |
