There does not exist a great deal of documentation about the action of the Japanese armed forces during WWII. One may well ask "why so little?" Is it not important to document events for future generations? Or is it because many survivors lived in shock for years after and did not want to be reminded of the terrible events and humiliation that they had to endure for three and a half years? Some only survived for a short while as their bodies were totally eaten up, through malnutrition. But there were also many children forced to live under similar conditions.
Fortunately there are still many survivors left, many of those were children born before the war started. Most of them did not comprehend what was happenig and were totally bewildered by the events that shook up their families. They could do nothing about the suffering and loneliness of their mothers. Hundreds of families were abrubtly torn apart and plunged into an insecure unknown future.
These are the survivors who are now in their sixties(plus) and are, hopefully, beginning to write those memories down, memories that are engraved in their minds, some memories are lost for ever, blocked out. They had to go to school first after the war, most of them too late and had to fit into classes as best they could. Then, after their schooling, they were busy building their careers. In my opinion there is another reason for the lack of documentation. The events that caused the Japanese armies to surrender.
When the bombs on Nagasaki and Heroshima were dropped, thousands of civilians were killed. The Japanese army was not overrun like the German army was, thus giving it's military time and opportunity to destroy most if not all incriminating evidence of the attrocities it was guilty of. My family, together with thousands of European civilians, were suffering badly. We were walking decease-ridden corpses. Most common deceases were Berri Berri, Dysentery, lice and hunger. Thousands were tortured and massacred. And what none of us knew at that time was, that the Japanese military was under Emperor's orders to exterminate all European prisoners, just like the German army was under orders to exterminate the Jews. My family would not have survived as a consequence and I would not be here today to write about that horrible period of my life. The war had to end, let there be no doubt about that. For that I thank the Americans for the action they took.
I am one of those survivors. After having been in the work force for 40 years I am now retired, so there is now enough time for me to write things down. Events I witnessed as a child, that should be written down. Those events left me with images that will never fade and images I rather not think about any more.
The standard daily food ration was a cup of boiled rice, leveled with a bamboo stick! It was compulsory for everyone to catch ten flies a day. All prisoners had to be able to count to ten in the Japanese language, possibly for this reason, to make sure they caught ten. I will not go into details, where we were always able to catch them. Tapioca was used to give you a feeling of a full stomach. We called it "snot" and it had no nutritious value whatsoever.
Those were common events every day, bad enough as these were, there was worse. The commandant of the camp, wanted everyone to assemble on the camp yard for roll call at least twice a day. We had to bow respectfully when he saw fit to appear. This often involved long hours of standing in the heat. On one of those occasions my mother and I were standing behind a row of elderly men. I cannot remember how many of them, but it was very unusual for men to be in a camp full of women and children. Maybe it had something to do with their age. When the commandant appeared, they forgot, refused or were unable to bow. The commandant was furious and barked a litany of confusing orders upon which one of the guards drew his sword and started to swing it on these unfortunate old men. That resulted in loud screaming and bloodletting, so intense, that I remember hiding my face behind my mother’s skirt, now and then peeking to see if the carnage had stopped. Most women turned their backs out of horror as the men were sliced down to the ground. Nobody was allowed to help, besides, help would have been futile for most of these men, as their suffering was intense and for some fatal. After the parade the women had to clean up and look after the wounded.
When a child sees his mother cry a lot, he understands and hurts through it as well, although as boys we mostly tried to keep a brave face. Women were very courageous though, so was my mother. She managed to get herself employed in the camp kitchen. Security over there was, for obvious reasons, very strict. All they cooked was rice in big pots on open fires (in the heat). I often went there, where she worked, to beg for some "kra"(black burnt rice from the inside of a pan). This, kind of, satisfied my cry for food, but did not do much good for my digestive system. The long walk back to the barrack, where my mother and I were bunked, was often marked with a trail as I dirtied my pants. I am still ashamed of that. My mother also managed to get an iron (manufactured from all sorts of bits and pieces), even though it was absolutely forbidden to use electricity. The other women in our barrack were allowed to use it as well, whilst one of us (children) had to warn them when the Jap was coming. We were very alert as children and took our duties very serious, but we had the advantage of not directly being suspected by the Japanese guards.
I have always been fortunate not to have witnessed my mother being tortured, but some of us have. And through them, I learnt to hate these loudmouthed brutal Japanese soldiers. After all we shared everything, sorrow, misery, death, pity, hunger, dirt, longing to see our fathers, fear, sickness, cruelty, dismal crowded accommodation full of cockroaches, and isolation from the rest of the world.
We had no toys to play with. We managed to make marbles out of clay and our mothers helped making them nice and round. Someone managed to make a ball from banana leaves and string. We played with that a lot, but sometimes that ball ended very close to the "gedek". That meant that one of us had to retrieve it. Nobody was allowed to come within ten meters of the high bamboo fence and if we did we were often scared away by the guards on the outside. When they spotted us too close, they poked their guns at us through the bamboo and always shouted angrily at us. Nothing serious ever happened and we mostly joked about such occasions. There were other occasions, that caused everybody in the camp to go for cover, even the Japanese guards. Several times the camp was attacked with mortar shells. During those attacks, which were of course always unannounced, we were trained to go for cover under the bunks in the barrack. Whilst these attacks occurred we prayed a lot and were shaking from fear. Only the Japanese knew who attacked the camp, but the women were always hoping, that Dutch or English soldiers were trying to free us. Unfortunately some people always got killed or wounded. The scene always tragic afterwards on the yard in front, with bodies lamely lying on the ground, red in blood.
Prisoners like us were, on several occasions marched to other camps. Reasons for this has never been clear to anybody, but it may have been all in aid to get rid of "numbers". This happened quite frequently, because before we left one camp, many women wrote their names on the wall above the bunks they occupied. On arrival at the next camp everybody was looking for names of those written by previous occupants. This was a way of finding out who was still alive.
Shortly before the war ended, we were playing "tikkertje"(a game of chase for children to touch any one you could, so that he or she had to continue the chase). The mothers were boiling water in big pots close to the barrack on open fires where we were playing. Boiling water was always necessary for health reasons. I was caught and pushed accidentally a little too hard and fell on the ground against one of those pots. The pot tipped over and poured it's hot water over my back on the ground. That hurt so much, that my screams must have carried barracks away. Women from all directions came to help and gave my mother advice. I heard someone say "put butter on it". That was very useful knowing, that there was no butter, but then, I caused a lot of panic. My back was sore for many days after and full of blisters.
It was during these, for me, very painful days that the Japanese disappeared suddenly and the rumour went around, that the war was over. For Japanese soldiers, defeat was worse then loosing face, so some of them committed suicide. Most of them just disappeared in shame without letting us know what had happened, but they left the gates open!
The events that followed were so poignant and frightening, that a long time after I could feel the terror and panic of those moments. We were loaded into busses and trucks. Indonesian freedom fighters were dousing the vehicles with petrol and the smell was terrible. The women realized what was about to happen and started to panic and scream. My back was still very painfull and I did not want to move as any move hurt. I could see them trying to get out of the bus we were in, but they were pushed back in. Out of nowhere a jeep with soldiers appeared and ordered the Indonesians away. My mother told me later, that they were Japanese soldiers, who did not want to be blamed for any more European casualties. Was this "The Eye of the Needle"?
I will never forget the very joyous moments when food droppings were made over our area. Huge bundles appearing from the sky, then shortly after bursting their cargo open as they plunged to the ground. As soon as that happened we ran as fast as we could to help ourselves, to as much as we could carry. Powder milk, cheddar cheese, butter and canned vegetables, the war was indeed over! Ever since, cheddar cheese from Australia has always been my favorite. We were free, but not out of danger. My brother somehow managed to join my mother and I. He should write down his story! We heard,that he went through more agony as well.
Instrument of Surrender by the JapaneseIn the mean time my father was still not with us and we feared for the worst. We were looking for a roof over our heads in Yogyakarta when some Indonesians started to shout at us "shoot them all dead". My mother warned my brother not to do anything stupid, but just keep on walking. Eventually we were reunited with my father, which of course was a very joyous occasion, even though the scars of the past were very apparent, he was suffering from dysentery and we were all very skinny. We survived.
Reunited after three and a half years our family was, together with other survivors, transported back to Holland in a troop transport Ship "ms Sloterdijk", via the Suez Canal. We were all deloused before boarding. Everybody was asked to strip naked on the wharf and throw the clothes in front of us.That was a very embarassing excercise for all of us, but we were told a necessary one. The clothes were all burnt after. We were all sprayed with stuff by English soldiers and given new clothes from Attacka(spelling?). These clothes looked all identical, so we looked like a bunch of prisoners again, but we all knew better of course.
We arrived at Rotterdam in August 1946 and were greeted by a band playing marching music to welcome us in Holland. For me it meant arriving in a strange country, with a totally different climate. Years later, after my wife and I migrated to Australia, we visited Indonesia twice, with our children Michael and Yvonne. We also visited other Asian countries, such as Malaysia and Thailand, but I will never go to Japan!
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