When Manila fell to the Japanese in January, 1942, the Van Sickles were among the enemy aliens taken by the victors to the campus of Manila's University of Santo Tomas, where they were to remain unwilling "guests" for more than three years. This is a fascinating, detailed and insightful account of life in a civilian concentration camp as gripping and readable as any tale of adventure.

To bring with them. It was six months before the Japanese gave them even a meagre food allowance - 25 cents a day for adults. In Santo Tomas, Emily Van Sickle says, the prisoners "learned many things, some funny, some tragic, that are no part of a normal college curriculum." This is a fascinating, detailed and insightful account of life in a civilian concentration camp where each day saw a battle for survival. The prisoners - 5,000 at the outset - thrown on their own.