Song of Survival

Helen Colijn’s account of her wartime experiences provides a window into an overlooked dimension of World War the imprisonment of women and children in Southeast Asia by the Japanese. Colijn relates how the prisoners of war responded to their dire circumstances during three and a half years of captivity. Conditions were terrible; food was scarce and medicine unavailable. More than a third of the women in Helen’s camp died of disease or starvation. Yet they had courage, faith, resiliency, ingenuity, and camaraderie.Though the prisoners had no musical instruments, they had their voices, and from memory they scored classical works for symphony and piano. The music that helped sustain them in their captivity is a lasting and precious gift of these women to a world that has witnessed far too much war.