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50 years of silence
By Jan Ruff O'Hearne
The long idyllic summer of Jan Ruff-O'Herne's childhood in Dutch colonial
Indonesia ended in 1942 with the Japanese invasion of Java. She was interned
in Ambarawa Prison Camp, along with her mother and two younger sisters.
In February 1944, when Jan was 21, her life was torn apart. Along with
nine other young women, all of them virgins, she was plucked from the
camp and her family, and enslaved into prostitution by the Japanese Imperial
Army.
Tom Thomson, Sydney, Amsterdam, New York, 1994. Also audio book and videofilm.