My family in the Dutch Indies, before the war.

My greatgrandfather moved to the Dutch Indies at the beginning of the 20th century, he married my grandmother while she was still in the Netherlands.
They married "with the glove", a marriage when the couple are far away from each other.

While the First World War was still going on my greatgrandmother risked German submarines to make the long journey from Holland to the Dutch Indies via America.
She arrived at Ellis Island, her paperwork is also posted in this set.
According to the paperwork she sailed on the S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam in 1918, was 25 at the time, could read and write, used to live in Arnhem and was on her way to Semarang.

She had a accident on the ship, or in an elevator at an hotel in America, we are not sure.
But her skull was damaged and a part of her skull got stuck in her head, but she survived.
A possible family member died on his trip to the Dutch Indies in 1888, so a tricky journey that took several weeks.

My great grandparents were somehow involved with a garage, I am not sure if they ran it or if other family members ran it.
There were several other family members living there at the time.

They had 2 children, my grandmother Hedwig and my granduncle Dirk.
My grandmother was born in Semarang on the 17th of August 1919.
Unfortunately my great grandmother died when both kids were still young.
Their father married a local Indonesian woman, according to my aunt this woman was not very nice.
My grandmother and her brother were not very happy.

My grandmother eventually married a Dutch soldier and when the war began she was pregnant, although she supposedly didn't know about it.

Then the war began, my grandfather and uncle Dirk were soldiers and both captured by the Japanese.
The family was harassed and the European side was soon arrested and send to concentration camps.
According to some my grandmother was in hiding with Indonesian (looking) friends but because her stepmother was Indonesian she perhaps found family members she could hide with.
Her stepmother would not allow her back into the house.
Because my grandmother was very European, she could not go outside and her darker friends had to go outside to find food and money.
We are not sure what exactly happened, I've heard mostly stories and family gossip.
But the girls were found by soldiers and some say they were all raped.
I even heard say that my grandmother was not pregnant when this happened and became pregnant because of this rape.

After this ordeal they were taken to a prisoner camp or went their themselves because of what happened.
The other Dutch family members were already imprisoned there, the Indonesian side of the family were generally left alone although life did become a lot harder to them.
My great grandfather was send to camp Kesilir, my step-great grandmother saw him a few times and tried to throw food over the fence but was send away.
He died there in 1943, probably of malnutrition.

My grandmother was send to Lampersari concentration camp, here she had her baby, my aunt Annemarie.
Life in the camp was terrible, my aunt as a toddler had a nightmare all her life of a woman beaten to death by the guards, also my gran was beaten a few times.
These years damaged the entire family for several generations.

My aunt has several horrible memories of this period, one she told me involved my grandmother.
My grandmother was working in the fields was was caught trying to smuggle insects she caught, into the camp.
She did this so that my aunt as a toddler could eat them.
But a Japanese soldier caught her and started beating up my poor weak malnourished grandmother in front of my then 2 year old aunt.
My aunt ran to help her mother and started biting the Japanese soldier in his legs.
Well she tried, but she couldn't even get trough the fabric of his trousers with her teeth.
The Japanese soldier was about to start hitting the child but decided not to and walked away.
Of course we don't know why, my aunt thinks he didn't beat her because she reminded him of his own child or because he respected the bravery of the little girl.

My uncle dirk was in the Dutch Navy and when war came he was aboard HNLMS De Ruyter.
He saw action during the battle of Bali Sea, the battle of Badung Strait and finally the Battle of the Java Sea where his ship was sank although for some of this he had been sick in a hospital or at home, which may have saved his life.
He was made POW by the Japanese and was forced to work on the infamous Burma Railway while the rest of my family was send to the concentration camps.
This experience broke him for ever.
He was a strong and proud man but he never got over it.
He hated everything Japanese for decades, he caused a big row when his son went to Japan on a journey.
He never talked about what he went trough up to a few years before he died.
he had nightmares till the very end.

When the war finally came to an end my grandmother, my aunt and my great uncle were close to death.
My grandmother was so sick that the Japs put her in the hospital barracks.
Nobody explained to my aunt, her mother was just taken away from her and the little girl kept screaming for her mother for days.

My grandmother (and thus me) owes her life to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I hate those bombs and think the bombing of civilian targets is always wrong.
I feel terrible for the people of those cities.
But it is a fact that if these bombs were not dropped my grandmother would have died and I never born.

We also owe our lives to the allied troops who liberated the camp.
Of course we owe a debt of gratitude to everyone ever who did their bit for the allied victory, from the homefront children collecting scraps for the war effort, to the women working in the factories to the soldiers at the front.
But a few people have a special place in our heart.

On the 15th of August 1945, just a few days after the atomic bombs fell, Cornelis Dirk Van Vliet, Danish vice consul on Semarang risked his life to drive straight into the Jap concentration camp to tell the Japs the war was over and that they should stop being scumbags.
From another prisoner's diary;

15th of August 1945

"A European drove into the camp in a small car. Later he turned out to be Danish. A Jap approached him and barked something at him.
The Dane answered something and was immediately slapped in the face. But the guy was not born yesterday and smacked the Jap back in his face.
It was a delightful scene.
He entered the office and left the flabbergasted Jap outside in the dust. We were incredibly curious what would happen next, but everything remained quiet.
After a while though, all Hantijo”s ( Japanese block heads) were called together and then the big announcement was made:
“Yesterday at 4 o’clock in Geneve the Japanese capitulation has been signed!” Incredible joy and thankfulness resonated through the entire camp.
In the afternoon, a great quantity of both yellow and red candy was handed out throughout the camp. People said it was a present from the Chinese. Very kind and very welcome!"

Not much later British troops liberated the camp, among them Ghurkha, Sikh and Muslim soldiers.
According to my aunt everyone was very impressed with these men, at first they were a little scary but soon much loved.
When I first learned about this I first thought a bit about owing so much to people from so many different backgrounds but it also made me learn a bit about them and tried to do a bit in return for them, for instance educate people about these troops and their part in the war but also try and support their charities, such as www.gwt.org.uk/ The Gurkha Welfare Trust.

My grandmother was still in the field hospital when Lady Mountbatten came to visit.
Because of her bad condition the British soldiers went to go and find her a chicken and gave it to her.
She would not let go of it, not even as she was evacuated.

My grandfather though was somewhere on the other side of the country when he was released because the war was as good as finished.
He heard where his family was being kept prisoner and decided he couldn't wait any longer.
My grandfather escaped from the POW camp, went to a Japanese airfield and hijacked a plane!!!
He got on board of a plane and forced the pilot to fly him to the other side of the country.
For a long time I assumed this was just a myth running in our family, but I talked to several family members and they all claim this story to be true.

Even though the war was over but my family was still inside the concentration camps.
This time they were protected by their former guards!
Fuelled by Japanese propaganda, nationalists, the (rightful) fear that the Dutch would want to be in charge of the Indies and the dream of independence many Indonesians had, there was a lot of hate towards the Dutch.
I understand their wishes to be independent and I can sort of understand that they felt anger towards the Dutch.
Not all the Indonesians felt this way though.
But I will never understand or forgive what was done to my family by the 'Ploppers' (nickname for the Indonesians who fought for independence).

My poor family had just survived years of absolute terror and hell in those camps.
They were malnourished, tortured and lost everything they ever had.
Not to mention that so many friends and family members died.
All they wanted was to go home and be united with their loved ones.
Colony or not, this is where most of them were born, it was their country, no matter who was in charge.
But they couldn't go home, they had to stay in the camps, surrounded by angry Ploppers who would attack the prisoners.
My family witnessed fellow ex-prisoners disappearing at night, being found the next day brutally murdered.
It amazes me that people can do this to people who just spend years in camps.
I just don't get it.

After a while my family was evacuated.
Again my aunt was separated from her mother, nobody explained to her what was happening.
My grandmother was put in a truck on a stretcher, still clutching to the chicken.
My aunt was thrown into another truck.

The convoy of trucks then left to the harbour, to leave the Dutch Indies.
But still the Ploppers felt they should attack these trucks filled with the former prisoners.
It makes me furious that grown men opened fire on the trucks carrying my poor, almost dying grandmother and her screaming little 2 year old child.
I will never understand that and feel enough anger to go and "pay a visit" to someone if I hear he was one of the people who was responsible for this.
The same goes for the Japs though..

During the convoy bullets flew all over the place, my family members survived but they saw another truck, filled with women and children, be shot to bits and catch fire.

They finally reached the harbour where they were put on a British Destroyer.
My grandmother and her daughter were still separated and the little girl was in absolute panic.
She was hungry, had almost no clothes, a little belly and no hair.
The screaming child was put on the ship and immediately a very young sailor took her hand and looked after her.
This was the first kind man my aunt had met in her entire life up to this point.
The boy washed her, fed her and made sure the girl was okay during the entire trip.
My aunt never forgot this young sailor and I would love to trace him down one day.
It was no coincidence that my aunt decades later married a sailor.

The ship took them away from danger and then my family left Indonesia in a plane with no door, probably a Dakota used for airdrops.

And please remember, even though the Dutch Indies was a colony it was also where my family lived and for my grandmother and her brother Dirk it was the only home they had ever known.

Back in the Netherlands they simply couldn't get used to normal life, nobody talked about what happened and the Dutch had their own war traumas to deal with.
My grandmother was very violent towards my aunt, hitting her for every little mistake she made.
My grandfather was very traumatized and emotionally very detached from his family.
Grandmother eventually adjusted a little bit and became a kind and very loved mother of her many other children, including my mother.
But she died very young.

My great-uncle Dirk left the Netherlands and went to Australia, he only came back once.
I was young when I met him and had no idea of what the family went through during he war but I loved Dirk right away.
Such a kind, gentle and funny man.

My grandfather remarried but the family suffered from the war for generations to come and to many it was the only subject that mattered even though people were not allowed to talk about it.
The war has had an effect on my family ever since.

I never knew my grandmother but somehow I miss her so much it hurts.

Taken in: Indonesia / Provinsi Jawa Tengah / Semarang (show map)

Taken on: April 13, 2007

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