2025-2026 calendar
Fall 2025
- September 16, 6:00 P.M. (Gaier Room, Clark County Public Library, Main Branch) - "From War Trauma to Dialogue: The Influence of a WWII POW Diary" with Melinda Barnhardt
The POW diary of Dutch prisoner of the Japanese Willem “Wim” Lindeijer, Sr., is a vivid first-hand account of what it was like to be a medic during the 1942 Dutch defense of Java; what it was like to minister to the sick and dying in the lowest hold of a “hellship” during a month’s long voyage to Japan; and what it was like to survive three years in an iron mining camp in northeast Honshu. It is unique among war memoirs for having been written in the form of daily letters to his wife and children that he was never able to mail; letters focusing less on the brutality of the prison experience than on the life patterns he relied on to come to terms with his trauma and retain his humanity. Join us to learn how the coping strategies that “Lindy” practiced daily led to his diary’s surprising transgenerational and transnational influence in the twenty-first century.