Clara Olink Kelly’s book The Flamboya Tree is a biography which tells the story of the three years she, her brothers and her mother spent in a Japanese concentration camp during WW2. I bought this book myself at some time in the past because I enjoy reading biographies and I have quite a few written about this period, although nothing else set in Indonesia.
Clara’s parents are Dutch and they lived on the island of Java, which is now part of Indonesia but which was then the Dutch East Indies. When the Japanese invaded her father was taken away to labour on the railway in what was then Burma and Clara, her mother and her two brothers were interned, along with other women and children in a camp. Clara was four years old at the time.
Conditions in these camps and the sadistic actions of the soldiers who guarded the prisoners is well documented and Clara details some of this as part of the narrative. What she mostly records, however, is the struggle that the little family had to keep alive with ever decreasing rations, increasing sickness and the hostile regime of the camp. One telling moment occurs when Clara’s mother realises that there is the intention to take the women away from the camp and let the children look after themselves. Realising that they would not survive without her, as well as being very distressed, she makes the decision that she will kill her own children to prevent them having to face what will happen. The whole family does survive the war and the author gives us some updates on what then happened to them, although I would have liked more details about how the trauma and the family separation has affected them throughout their lives.
This story is well written and informative. The author conveys well the camp routine and the fears of the inmates. She also touches on the issues of colonialism and the antagonism of the indigenous people to the Dutch as well as the Japanese. There are pictures scattered throughout the book which helps to make it feel very real.
I am glad that I read this book and I shall add my copy to the small collection I have of biographies and memoirs of the war years.
