I was born in Java, which was Dutch East Indies at the time. In 1942, the Japanese took me and 50,000 others and put us to work building the railway between Thailand and Burma. They called it 'the Railway of Death.' I was seventeen. I lasted 22 months. I survived because I was small and could fit into places where others couldn't — inside culverts, under railway cars. The Japanese engineers didn't bother with safety measures. If you fell, you were replaced. I watched men die from cholera, dysentery, malaria, tropical ulcers, and simple exhaustion. I saw men eaten by tigers at night. I worked w...