Reviews for Letters to Harvelyn: From Japanese POW Camps - a Father's Letters to His Young Daughter During World War II

The average rating for Letters to Harvelyn: From Japanese POW Camps - a Father's Letters to His Young Daughter During World War II based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-11-20 00:00:00 Judith Morrison 3 1/2-4 star read. This book is a compilation of letters written by Major Kenneth Baird to his wife May and daughter Harvelyn, while he was imprisoned as a POW in Hong Kong after the fall of Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941. Baird had also served in WWI, fighting at Vimy Ridge. Although he was an officer and as such, was immune to some of the atrocities meted out by the captors to the enlisted men, this book paints a picture of starvation, cruelty. illness, degradation, and the routine of their daily lives. It is in the day to day records of what their lives were like in the camps that we understand some of what they all went through. I found this a very interesting read. (Personal note> My Father was a POW at Hong Kong and suffered greatly from his time there).

Review # 2 was written on 2015-12-06 00:00:00 Zj Mamatas This is a very important, tragic book, the journal of a Canadian soldier taken prisoner by the Japanese after the battle of Hong Kong in 1941. Written in a prisoner of war camp, concealed from brutal guards for forty-four months, Major Baird chronicles the awful conditions that Canadian, British and Indian soldiers endured. He writes in the form of letters to his wife, Dolly, and daughter, Harvelyn, of four years of starvation, malnutrition, disease and death in the camps. He is buoyed only by thoughts of returning to them. Life in the camps is almost too awful for him to write about, yet write he does. Almost every entry deals with the hunger they men face, the daily scant meals of rice and not much else. Baird catalogues the terrible fare they must eat, the daily hope that the Red Cross food packets will soon arrive, or letters from home, or news that the war will end soon. Such hopes are nearly always dashed. In ones and twos, the prisoners around him daily die of diphtheria, cholera, meningitis, wasted away. This is a story of the most terrible endurance, of daily facing a dismal future with little more than faith that their misery must end. Baird honestly describes his gloom, his hatred of his captors, his anger at the incompetence of the British Generals and their snooty officers. At times the book reads like the testament of a man who does not expect to survive. But through it all is the simple desire of a man who just wants to get home to his family, eat a good meal, and never, ever fight in any wars again.