Under The Java Moon - Heather B. Moore
Even as a child I was obsessed with learning more about all areas of WW2. Literature about Europe was pretty easy to come by, but non-soldier memoirs about the Pacific front were a lot harder to find. I remember watching the movie Empire of the Sun with my family and wondering how on earth there was this whole other part of the war that had eluded me until then… And it made me even more determined to learn more. Fast forward 30 something years, and a lot more reading, and I get a chance to review this beautiful book by Heather B. Moore, called Under the Java Moon. Moore recounts the true story of Rita Vischer and her family, a Dutch family who lived on Java, an Indonesian island, when WW2 broke out. Java was a Dutch colony at that time, and many Dutch families lived there (as well as all through-out the Indonesian islands). When the Japanese invaded the island in 1942 they rounded up all of the Dutch people and locked them up in camps, separating the men from the women, and often young boys from their mothers too.
Rita was only a young child at the time and her story is heartbreaking, one of many trials and tribulations, but also one of love and hope. The story is told from different points of view, mainly from Rita’s and her mother’s, but also from Rita’s father’s, as well as snippets of testimonies from other people who survived those 3 years of Japanese concentration camps.
While there may not have been the same element of genocide that the Nazis pursued in their death camps, the Japanese concentration camps were rife with disease, starvation, and brutality, as can be seen through Rita’s and Mary’s stories. They were all very lucky to survive, and it’s quite understandable that once they were safe, they all decided to never speak of those years again. I’m very glad that Rita decided to tell her story because it is important that we know what happened.
(As a side note, I was happy to find out that the commander of the Tjideng prison camp did not escape justice for the brutal way he treated the prisoners).
I think that the author did a wonderful job of recreating Rita’s family’s story. It is beautifully written and I could not put it down.
Many thanks to the author and Shadow Mountain for the advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.