Images

Our friends who had accompanied us from South Africa to the Indies in 1940, now recuperating at Ismailia (Egypt) and waiting for availability of shipping south.

First post war picture of Emmy Kerkhoven, recuperating in Ismailia. Egypt , on transit to South Africa. She and  her fellow travelers returned there in February on board the S.S. Felix Roussel, a French merchant ship that had sailed for the allies during the war.

Waiting in Egypt

Edu, waiting in Egypt at Ismailia for repatriation- still in his army uniform

Waiting in Egypt

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After the war we returned to South Africa as Refugees. Here is a picture of my family on the beach at Durban. In this first postwar family photograph- note my father’s hollow face.

Durban Christmas 1945

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Cumberland

Towards the end of September 1945, one and a half months after the war had ended, the first Allied military personnel set foot on Java. The arrival of HMS Cumberland and HMNS Tromp in Tandjong Priok, the port of Batavia, was hardly the way we had anticipated being liberated by our victorious Allies. The tiny force was barely sufficient to take over Tjideng Camp guard duty from the Japanese army who for one and a half months had continued to guard the gate, but now from the threat of Indonesian rebels.

Guards

Elsewhere on Java, Japanese soldiers continued their new task of “protecting us” from former fellow citizens, an utterly bewildering turn of events. Seldom in history has a political weathervane swung so swiftly from one extreme to another. The Korean and Japanese chaps who had spent three and a half years trying to keep us locked up in the camp as enemy aliens, immediately after the armistice was signed, changed their role, and kept us locked up under Allied orders “for our safety”.

The tsunami of Japanese invasion was now replaced by the typhoon winds of political change. Within three and a half years life on Java had morphed from colonial oppression through military tyranny to descend into anarchy.

Photo of Guards taken last week of August, 1945

Photos from NIOD ( Netherlands Institute of War Documentation)

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Trivelli House

This is a typical house on the main street of Tjideng camp.

These images give an impression of our living conditions. Trivelli was the name of the street. Today it is called Jalan Tanah Abang 2.

This is the sort of house we occupied in Tjideng along with another 110 occupants. This was a better type of home, located along the mainstreet through the camp. The picture was taken by Mr Ripassa, a Eurasian photographer who had remained at liberty throughout the war, and after September 2, when the cease fire was signed, visited Tjideng

Trivelli House 2

This house is probably number 93. Note the potties and makeshift sun shade, probably plundered after the war from the camp wall.

Photos from NIOD ( Netherlands Institute of War Documentation)

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The Author, age 7 (barefoot) and friend

This is an image of yours truly at age 7 standing with bare feet by the solitary water supply for our house. Our house stood very close to the gate, and we two kids were probably the first interned children the photographer encountered.

For the occasion my young friend placed my birthday present on his head.

The rest of the Indian outfit was too grotesquely hot to be worn when straddling the equator.  I am positive that this exact same outfit was passed on from one birthday boy to the next in rapid succession. We arrived in the Tjideng camp with next to nothing. The mother of the previous owner of the Indian outfit had been in Tjideng from the very start and so still had quite a lot of possessions.

Photo from NIOD ( Netherlands Institute of War Documentation)

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Gedek Destruction

When food became more plentiful after the war we needed firewood and the bamboo wall was an attractive source of this commodity. The plundering operation was soon stopped by the Japanese camp Commandant because the bamboo wall had now become our defense against rioting Indonesians.

Photo from NIOD ( Netherlands Institute of War Documentation)

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Room of Women in Tjideng Camp

In the Tjideng camp, houses that had been designed to accommodate a normal family now held well in excess of 100 women and children. There are claims that some houses accommodated (a euphemism under the circumstances) as many as 150.  Aside from the complete collapse of hygiene with the resulting onslaught of dysentery and a host of other diseases, there was a complete lack of privacy.

Mothers and Children in Tjideng Camp

These people were thus assaulted both physically and mentally, and many never recovered after the war when once more they were fed. We were lucky that we missed the monsoon season, when flooding of the low lying and poorly drained coastal land where Tjideng was situated, added another dimension of misery and suffering.

Photos from NIOD ( Netherlands Institute of War Documentation)

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Shortly after we arrived in Tjideng the supply of coffins dried up for reasons unknown. Henceforth a coffin making factory was established in Tjideng camp right accross the road from our house. Its productivity, alas, was inadequate in terms of volume as the death rate increased and also in terms of quality fell short of requirements as the bloated conditions of the corpses taxed the rudimentary materials used by the coffin makers.

Photo from NIOD ( Netherlands Institute of War Documentation)

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Tjideng Camp Gate, 1945

This picture appears on the front cover of the book, Tjideng Reunion. It shows the Tjideng camp gate shortly after the war was declared over ( August 23, 1945) when the first curious visitors from Batavia came to see what lay behind the mysterious Bamboo wall from where so many dead emerged. The author and his mother may well be among the crowd of curious internees looking out onto the much changed outside world.

Photo from NIOD ( Netherlands Institute of War Documentation)

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