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 our understanding of an essential truth."—Washington Post