In 1974, my grandparents — Opa Menno and Oma Florence (aka Fokje) Giliam, immigrated to Canada to live with my family in our suburban, Toronto home. As a ten-year-old I quickly gravitated toward Oma’s motherly presence, greatly enjoying the warm cups of tea and freshly baked spice cake waiting for me after school.
On rare occasions “camp time” — the years they spent as WWII prisoners of the Japanese — was mentioned in our home, but never in great detail. Opa and Oma neither complained, nor harbored bitterness for the unimaginable sufferings they had endured. They simply left us their memoirs detailing the four long years of hardship and separation — Opa as a Japanese POW, and Oma interned with seven children on the island of Java.
Shadow of the Sun is their extraordinary story.