The Flamboya Tree: Memories of a Mother's Wartime Courage
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“The Flamboya Tree is a fascinating story that will leave the reader informed about a missing piece of the World War II experience, and in awe of one family’s survival.”—Elizabeth M. Norman, author of We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese “It is a well-known fact that war, any war, is senseless and degrading. When innocent people are brought into that war because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, it becomes incomprehensible. Java, 1942, was such a place and time, and we were those innocent people.”Fifty years after the end of World War II, Clara Olink Kelly sat down to write a memoir that is both a fierce and enduring testament to a mother’s courage and a poignant record of an often overlooked chapter of the war.As the fighting in the Pacific spread, four-year-old Clara Olink and her family found their tranquil, pampered lives on the beautiful island of Java torn apart by the invasion of Japanese troops. Clara’s father was taken away, forced to work on the Burma railroad. For Clara, her mother, and her two brothers, the younger one only six weeks old, an insistent knock on the door ended all hope of escaping internment in a concentration camp. For nearly four years, they endured starvation, filth-ridden living conditions, sickness, and the danger of violence from their prison guards. Clara credits her mother with their survival: Even in the most perilous of situations, Clara’s mother never compromised her beliefs, never admitted defeat, and never lost her courage. Her resilience sustained her three children through their frightening years in the camp.Told through the eyes of a young Clara, who was eight at the end of her family’s ordeal, The Flamboya Tree portrays her mother’s tenacity, the power of hope and humor, and the buoyancy of a child’s spirit. A painting of a flamboya tree—a treasured possession of the family’s former life—miraculously survived the surprise searches by the often brutal Japanese soldiers and every last-minute flight. Just as her mother carried this painting through the years of imprisonment and the life that followed, so Clara carries her mother’s unvanquished spirit through all of her experiences and into the reader’s heart. KLIATT This memoir of life in a Japanese prison camp during WW II is a loving tribute to Clara Kelly's mother, Clara Olink. Living a privileged life on the island of Java, the Olink family enjoyed the beauty and ease of their surroundings. Change came with the fall of Indonesia to the Japanese. All foreign nationals, including the Dutch, were interned under horrific conditions in prison camps. In 1942, the Olink family was separated as Kelly's father was sent to a labor camp where he worked on the Burma railroad that led to the bridge on the river Kwai. Kelly, her mother, and her brothers Willem and Gijs (a tiny infant) were sent to the notorious Kamp Tjideng for women and children with over 10,000 prisoners. In one of the suitcases Kelly's mother packed a favorite picture of a flamboya tree with the few belongings they were permitted to carry. This painting of a beautiful tropical scene would grace the wall of every hovel, shack, and lean-to the family occupied during their four years of imprisonment. Through the hardships of physical abuse, extreme hunger, and all the other human indignities, Clara Olink held her family together. She displayed courage and strength in the face of illness, forced labor in open sewers, and demeaning outbursts from the captors. For Kelly, the example of her mother's stiff upper lip, sense of discipline, and attention to routine and standards of behavior kept young Clara and her brothers from realizing the full extent of their physical danger over those four years. Clara scrounged food, bartered for medicine and household items, and devised small treats for her children in ways they did not understand or fully appreciate. Later, in reflecting on her mother's life,which included a painful divorce after the war and an early death from cancer, Kelly knew she had to convey to a new generation the fortitude of women like her mother, the noncombatants who faced the enemy with nothing but dignity and a hope for survival. Kelly still treasures the picture of the flamboya tree, which hangs on the wall in her home for children and grandchildren to admire. KLIATT Codes: JSA Recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2002, Random House, 211p. illus., Gerrity
