MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 04408cam a2200517 a 4500
001 13334051
005 20180716132424.0
008 030709s2003 nyuab 000 0aeng
010 $a 2003058275
020 $a1559707062
020 $a9781559707060
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm52644495
035 $a(OCoLC)52644495
035 $a(NNC)13334051
040 $aDLC$beng$cDLC$dXY4$dBAKER$dNLGGC$dBTCTA$dYDXCP$dGEBAY$dOCLCQ$dOCLCO$dOCLCQ$dOCLCF$dOCLCO$dQQ3
043 $ae-ne---$aa-ja---$aa-th---
050 00 $aD811.V35$bA3 2003
060 4 $a000110515
082 00 $a940.54/7252/092$222
084 $a15.75$2bcl
100 1 $aVelmans, Loet.
245 10 $aLong way back to the River Kwai :$bmemories of World War II /$cLoet Velmans.
250 $a1st ed.
260 $aNew York :$bArcade Pub.,$c©2003.
300 $a230 pages :$billustrations, maps ;$c22 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$bnc$2rdacarrier
505 0 $aMaps -- Prologue -- Boyhood -- Escape -- Refuge -- Prison -- Death Camp -- Recovery -- Renascence -- Epilogue -- Acknowledgments.
520 $aA searing memoir of World War II, this is the story of one man's survival of the brutal slave-labor conditions that inspired the classic book and film Bridge over the River Kwai. Loet Velmans was seventeen in 1940 when the Germans invaded his native Holland. He and his family immediately made a daring escape to London, just barely managing to board the only refugee boat to leave from their local harbor. Once in London, however, they decided to relocate to the Far East, further from Hitler's reach. Only dimly aware of the aggressive Japanese Pacific campaign, they sailed to the Dutch East Indies -- now Indonesia -- where Loet joined the army. In March 1942 the Japanese invaded the archipelago and conquered it in a week. Along with all local Dutch soldiers, Loet was sent to Changi, a prison in Singapore built for 600, but now housing 10,000. Despite dire shortages and overcrowding, Loet discovered a resourcefulness he hardly knew he possessed, acclimating to the harsh conditions and forming bonds of cooperation with British, American, Dutch, and Australian POWs, all trying to endure the increasingly cruel and inhuman behavior of their Japanese captors. Over the next three and a half years Loet and his fellow POWs were shipped "up country" to a series of slave labor camps, where they were forced to build a railroad through the dense jungle on the Burmese-Thailand border. The Japanese planned to use the railroad to invade and conquer India. Completely ignoring the Geneva Convention regulations for the treatment of POWs, the guards forced Loet and his fellow captives to build this "Railroad of Death," as it came to be called, in an unreasonable eighteen months, stretching some three hundred miles through impossible jungle. More than 200,000 POWs and slave laborers died over the course of the backbreaking work. Loet, though suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable mistreatment, never gave up hope, and ultimately survived to tell his tale. Almost sixty years later he returned to Thailand, to revisit the place where he should have died, and to walk across the ground where he had personally buried his closest friend. Out of that emotional visit came this gripping account of survival under appalling conditions, a book that will take its place as a classic beside The Diary of Anne Frank, Bridge over the River Kwai, and Edith's Story.
600 10 $aVelmans, Loet.
610 10 $aNetherlands.$bKoninklijke Landmacht$vBiography.
610 20 $aBurma-Siam Railroad.
600 17 $aVelmans, Loet.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst00496578
610 27 $aBurma-Siam Railroad.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst00585142
610 17 $aNetherlands.$bKoninklijke Landmacht.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst00541784
611 27 $aWorld War (1939-1945)$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01180924
650 0 $aWorld War, 1939-1945$xPrisoners and prisons, Japanese.
650 0 $aPrisoners of war$zThailand$vBiography.
650 0 $aWorld War, 1939-1945$vPersonal narratives, Dutch.
650 7 $aPrisoners of war.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01077227
651 7 $aThailand.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01205310
648 7 $a1939-1945$2fast
655 7 $aBiography.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01423686
655 7 $aPersonal narratives$vDutch.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01424100
852 00 $boff,glx$hD811.V35$iA3 2003