Posts tagged as:

children

Mothers and Children at Tjideng Camp

by Boudewyn van Oort

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

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)

{ 0 comments }

Toilet Tidy

by Boudewyn van Oort

Tjihapit Cloth
Tjihapit Cloth

This was a toilet tidy made in the Tjihapit women’s and children’s camp by my mother for my grandmother on the occasion of her seventieth birthday (18 October 1943) . We were forced to use the Japanese calendar as you may see from the embroidered date.

This type of article became essential for keeping one’s posessions in some order, as space within homes became too small to accommodate furniture (which in any case was likely to be needed by the communal kitchen (dapur) for fuel. This was made from an old shirt.  In the Museon, a museum dedicated to war-time artifacts many more such articles are on display.

{ 0 comments }