A NEW book tells how Kathleen Foster was robbed of her childhood.

It was one of the most infamous days in world history, December 8, 1941, the day that the Japanese bombers struck at Pearl Harbour.

Aged 11, her studies were interrupted by the arrival of Japanese troops in her school’s compound in China. The headmaster was thrown in jail, guards were put at the gates and the chapel was turned into a stable.

Now 80, she is preparing to grapple with the demons of her past after being featured in Stolen Childhoods: The Untold Story Of The Children Interned By The Japanese In The Second World War, by journalist Nicola Tyrer.

The book examines what happened to the British children who were rounded up when Japan entered the war and were to spend three years living on what was effectively the frontline of a war.

Mrs Foster was among those who were separated from parents and experienced hunger and illness in a brutal new world. She and her sister Beryl were interned for three years in two camps.

Mrs Foster admits that the traumas of her childhood are never too far away. In her 50s she eventually felt the need for counselling. “It was the most liberating thing I have ever done,” said Mrs Foster, of Liddiard Close, Wantage. “It helped me to evaluate what had happened to me.”

The daughter of a missionary, Mrs Foster was born in the inland Chinese province of Shensi in 1930.

Even before the Japanese invasion, her family had to face dangerous times when the Red Army was marching through the area.

At the age of seven she was sent to boarding school on the coast of Chefoo. Her father died in 1941 and three months later the arrival of the Japanese meant she faced a far bleaker existence. She and the other children were given armbands, showing their nationalities.

Later when the army took over the school building, the children were marched to the other side of the city, with a single semi-detached house built for one family transformed into a crowded girls’ school with 33 mattresses spread on the floor of the loft.

“The guards were professional soldiers and not unkind,” said Mrs Foster. “ My sister was in a camp not far away and we were allowed a visit occasionally.”

But after 10 months they were taken to the Weihsien, a camp which housed 1,500 internees from all over North China.

The children were all allocated work. “I used to work in the laundry scrubbing and hanging out washing. In winter, grey sheets froze on the line.”

Food shortages worsened as the war progressed. “We had to swallow a teaspoon of ground egg shells for calcium.”

While summers were unbearably hot, the winters were freezing.

The end came on August 17, 1945, when a plane circled the camp. “Unbelievably seven men came floating down on parachutes. The internees went mad and rushed the gates. The guards stood still. Barefoot on stony ground we went to meet our rescuers.”

But her ordeal was far from over.

When the two girls arrived in Liverpool, she and her sister struggled to recognise their mother. “One of the staff pointed her out. My sister said, ‘That’s not my mother. She would never wear a hat like that,’” said Mrs Foster.

She believes the separation had a major impact on her life. “For a long time I suffered from a lack of self esteem. The result of all this is that you are not at home in your own body. One of the things I said in one of my counselling sessions was that I felt very unimportant.”

She went on to work as an arts teacher, before coming to live in Oxfordshire 12 years ago when she retired. Now divorced, Mrs Foster regularly sees her two daughters and one of her sons, who all live near Wantage.

Nicola Tyrer’s book is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson (priced £20).