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)
- 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)
- 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)
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)
- 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.
- Punishment for trading through the camp wall
Punishment: washing the floor in the “gentlemen’s office” was the least obnoxious form of punishment. In this case for the crime of trying to conduct illegal trade through the camp wall.
A cartoon of Tjihapit life drawn by Adri Bontekoe
- Boudewijn van Oort and his Mother
This photograph of the author and his mother was taken in Tjihapit camp for women and children, 1943.
- Straat Soenda
Photo taken of the the first group of Dutch volunteers sailing on the KPM freighter, m.v. Straat Soenda, from Durban, South Africa to Batavia (today’s Jakarta), Indonesia. The ship took us from Durban to Java under 43 year-old Captain Josef Veldhuisen. During the war the ship and her crew distinguished themselves, and after the war the Captain was decorated with the K.v.V. (Kruis van Verdienste)
In the photo above, the author is in the arms of his nanny, and his mother is standing next to these two. His father took the photograph on May 26 1940. This family survived internment by the Japanese, along with that of the other couple. One of the volunteers is known to have died as a slave labourer in the notorious Junyo Maru torpedo incident. If he had survived that disaster he likely would have perished in the equally notorious Pakanbaroe (today’s Pakanbaru) death railway project on Sumatra. The fate of most of the others is unknown, though the ship itself survived the war as an allied supply vessel.
Straat Soenda
Straat Soenda photo taken in 1939.
The words Straat Soenda, KPM ( Koninklijke Pakket Maatschappij) and Junyo Maru, and Pakanbaroe, Death Railway are of significance from a historical perspective. In the book I included a map drawing attention to that railway line, which otherwise has all but been forgotten.
