Long Way Back to the River Kwai: Memories of World War II

By Loet Velmans

Loet Velmans was seventeen when the Germans invaded Holland. He and his family fled to London on the Dutch Coast Guard cutter Seaman’s Hope and then sailed to the Dutch East Indiesnow Indonesiawhere he joined the Dutch army. In March 1942, the Japanese invaded the archipelago and made prisoners of the Dutch soldiers. For the next three and a half years Velmans and his fellow POWs toiled in slave labor camps, building a railroad through the dense jungle on the Burmese-Thailand border so the Japanese could invade India. Some 200,000 POWs and slave laborers died building this Death Railway. Velmans, though suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable mistreatment, never gave up hope. Fifty-seven years later he returned to revisit the place where he should have died and where he had buried his closest friend. From that emotional visit sprung this stunning memoir.

Long Way Back to the River Kwai is a simply told but searing memoir of World War IIa testimonial to one man’s indomitable will to live that will take its place beside the Diary of Ann Frank, Bridge over the River Kwai, and Edith’s Story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Release date: Sep 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781628721652

Loet Velmans

After surviving many narrow escapes during World War II and winding up a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Asia, Loet Velmans made his way from his native Holland to America with his young family. Starting as a young executive in the New York based public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, he was sent to Paris to establish a presence for the firm in Europe and eventually the rest of the world; in doing so he had to grapple with having to do business with his former Japanese captors. He was eventually called back to New York to become his firm’s Chairman and CEO. Upon retiring, he turned to writing; his war memoir, Long Way Back to the River Kwai, was hailed as a valuable contribution to the history of the war in the Pacific. His wife, Edith Velmans, is the author of the acclaimed Edith’s Story. They live by a lake in Sheffield, Massachusetts.

Reviews for Long Way Back to the River Kwai

[chris_el-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The author tells his story of growing up in Holland. He jumped on a small boat with a few friends to leave Holland for England after the Germans invaded. He sent a message to his parents to let them know he was going and before they could take off they showed up and joined him. His family left England for Indonesia where eventually he was drafted into the Dutch military. His unit was captured by the Japanese (without a fight) and he was sent to work on the Burma railway project where tens of thousands of European prisoners were abused, killed, and worked to death with little food and care. The author tells about one time a guard walked up and slammed a hammer into the small of his back just because he could. Hundreds of thousands died building the Japanese railroad including many people around the author. He talked about burying his best friend when he died.

The author also talks about his life after the war. He said he spent years trying to understand the Japanese people after the war. He ended up working for a public relations company in New York and worked with several Japanese companies. Whenever he would bring up the war with anyone from Japan they would change the subject and avoid talking about it at all. He talked about going back to the site he worked on the Railway and finding the area. He and his wife stayed where one of the surviving brides on the railway is set up as a memorial. Oddly enough, it's mostly visited by the Japanese who are taught that the point of the railway was to help the people of Burma improve their economy (when actually it was to assist them move troops and material to attack India).

The author talks about making efforts to understand the Japanese and how they could do what they did to all those thousands of people. But I get the feeling he doesn't know the answer to his questions despite years of working with Japanese companies. Only couple weeks ago it was in the news that a 93 year old German man was arrested and charged based on his past as an SS guard during WWII. Most of the Japanese guards went back to Japan and nothing was ever done to bring them to justice. The author mentions there were about 50 trials based on Japanese war crimes from the railway. But there could have been many hundreds for their atrocities.

Japan refers to our atom bombs dropped on them as atrocities. Perhaps before they spend much energy pointing fingers they should clean their own house.