TJIDENG REUNION: A MEMOIR OF WW II ON JAVA
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This prewar map shows the surroundings of Bandoeng (Bandung). It is dated around 1937.
The Tjihapit district lay along the north eastern edge of town.
Included in the book, Tjideng Reunion, is this detailed map of the camp itself.
To clarify the position of the camp, comparison of the two images makes the location obvious because of the curious road layout.
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What follows is a short description of some of the statistical data I collected and refer to in my book, Tjideng Reunion.
Japan justified its major offensive of Dec 1941 in part on a desire to rid Asia of European influence. But an equally strong policy objective was achievement of economic hegemony, most importantly by securing control over the petroleum resources of Indonesia. In Java these two policy objectives clashed, because the economy of Indonesia had been managed by the European and Europeanized sector of the population.
The book Tjideng Reunion discusses how these policy clashes manifested itself with resultant misery for all inhabitants of Java The process of selective incarceration over time of Europeans is presented in the following graph.
This graph provides an overview of the Japanese internment history on Java. The source of the data presented is the Geillustreerde Atlas van de Japanse Kampen in Nederlands Indie 1942-1945,(J van Dulm, W.J. Krijgsveld, H.J. Legemaate, H.A.M. Liesker G Weijers, Asia Maior, 2000).
The decreasing numbers of interned military personnel over time evident from the above graph, reflected the Japanese High Command policy of using these manpower resources as slave labour elsewhere in the occupied territories and within Japan itself. The field labeled “net transport” is an aggregation of the data that has been assembled of military personnel (mainly) being shipped out of Java. The other fields attempt to aggregate the remaining interned population.
Internment was almost exclusively based on ethnic considerations, although in Bandoeng a number of civilians of mixed race were also imprisoned. The author is unaware of accurate records covering the entire war time period. What is presented in the Atlas is clearly an attempt at reconstruction from fragmentary information. For the Indonesian part of the population almost no data related to internment or slave labour is available at all.
The casualty rate associated with the internment process and the slave labour aspect is poorly defined. The Junyo Maru incident described in the book Tjideng Reunion is merely one such disaster.
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Sone, our Camp Commandant on trial for war crimes in Singapore. He was convicted and executed.
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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
This house is probably number 93. Note the potties and makeshift sun shade, probably plundered after the war from the camp wall.
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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.
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Communal Kitchen at Tjihapit
This drawing of the communal Tjihapit camp kitchen was made by Lieske Stroobach on 4 October 1944.
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In my book I say very little about the men’s camp, Tjimahi, where my father was interned. These two pictures however are referred to (but are not reproduced) in the book.
Some clever chemist in the men’s camp had worked out a process for producing a liquid yeast from urine. This discovery has been immortalized in these two pictures.
One is an image of the presumed chemist, also referrred to in the caption as “manneke pis”. That name would have been familiar to anyone living or growing up in the Netherlands or Belgium. In a corner of the Grand Place of Brussels there stands a bronze statue of a little boy (it is also a little statue- half a meter tall) peeing day and night, and that statue has the same name. It is a relic from World War 1 and was erected by a company of soldier who had befriended the boy- probably an orphan.
The other caption says something to the effect of : “Do your duty gentlemen, otherwise no bread tomorrow.” For about six months our women’s camp received a daily supply of this yeast for breadmaking from Tjimahi (about 10 km away). It was delivered on the back of an improvised truck made by replacing the rear end of an automobile with a flat bed, and contained in one or two 45 gallon drums.
The cartoons were drawn by M.G. Hartley between 1942 and 1945.
These images relate to Bandung and our time there. We were first interned in the city where we were living, Bandung, and only in May 1945, shortly before the end of the war, were moved to Batavia ( Jakarta) and the Tjideng Camp.
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Appel or Tenko: When we came under direct Japanese military supervision twice daily headcounts were conducted. This became a source of immense frustration and always was accompanied by confusion.
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As I got older during my internment period, I began to fear the day I would become ten years old, for that meant, becoming independent and leaving the care of my mother. I of course had no idea what such an experience would mean for me, and that may be just as well because the truth of what happened to these youngsters defies belief. Those who physically survived the experience never recovered from the psychological damage.
I was lucky and celebrated my tenth birthday after the war.
Mr. Hartley (Myn Kamp, niet door Hilter, Amsterdamsche Boek en Courant Maatschappij, 1947), who drew this cartoon of one such pathetic youngster who happened to be interned in Tjimahi, a Men’s camp where my father also was, gave the experience a bitter twist.
His caption reads: Many a mothers’ heart would have swelled with pride had she been able to see her dear son’s culinary achievements. It was not just that the raw materials had been obtained via devious means, but the provision of fuel would likely have involved even less elegant techniques: chairs, tables, windows, wooden shoes, all sacrificed for a meal.
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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.
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