A Gate in the Wall: A World War II Pow’s Secret Diary and a Family’s Search for Reconciliation

This book shares the story of the Lindeijers, a Dutch colonial family in Indonesia, first during their time as captives of the Japanese during World War II and then during the postwar decades, as they struggled to come to terms with their wartime trauma. The protagonists speak, as much as possible, for themselves through their documents.

The father, in his prohibited POW diary, records harsh, brutal treatment but simultaneously reveals a level of complexity among his captors that is unusual in war memoirs. The mother’s farewell letter dictated before her death eschews hatred, focusing on a way for her family to move forward. And finally, in recorded testimony, the eldest son grapples with the trauma of his family’s imprisonment, but also the Dutch oppression of Indonesia, stimulating a remarkable response in Japan and Indonesia today. The family’s story traces a pathway from wartime hatred to postwar reconciliation--across generations and continents.

Melinda Barnhardt is an independent scholar, writer, and lecturer in the Netherlands and Japan and in colloquia for history and East Asian Studies at Wittenberg University in the U.S.