Some of the photos were taken by Lady Mountbatten in September,1945, when she was visiting the concentration camps, and interviewing the then ex-p.o.w.'s after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Yesterday I told something of my motherland, today about the country, where I lived from the age of 10 months till I was almost 12 years old.We lived in the Dutch East Indies, as it was then called, which is now Indonesia. We lived on the Isle of Java. The first eight years were happy ones for my parents, my sisters and me. Then came the war. My father, who was a chief engineer on board of a Dutch merchant ship, had to leave us in January 1942. We were not to see him for four years.As we had no army or important war fleet, we surrendered almost immediately.On March, 8th, 1942 the Japs marched in our streets, singing strange war songs.It was good we didn't realise what they had in store for us. Soon we noticed that things were changing. We couldn't go to school any more.My mum was 35 years old, I was eight, my sisters were four and two. In Malang, where we lived, all Dutch people had to registrate with the purpose to be interned in concentration camps. We left Malang to avoid registrations and went to the mountains and a few months later to Surabaya, where after a while we could no longer escape imprisonment. In the meantime we had lost most of our possessions, but my mum never complained. The remaining things were some books and clothes. I destroyed all my books when the final call came. I was nine. We had to go to Semarang, where we stayed from February 1943 till September 1945. All that time my mum, who was suffering from beriberi and only weighed 35kilos, had kept us alive. We left the camp and went to Surabaya, waiting for news of my father. Now a new danger arose. The Indonesians wanted to intern us again. Java was no longer save for Dutch people, so with the help of the British we escaped to Singapore in October 1945. We had nothing left, but were happy to be alive. My mum made dresses of the army towels we got. In December we went on board of a Dutch ship "De Nieuw Amsterdam" We were free!! At last! My father had also survived the war, but was severely traumatized. He had been at sea all through the war. We saw him in January 1946 in Rotterdam, where we all stayed with loving relatives, who took care of us.
My mum at the age of 29, I was 2 years old. Indonesia.
My mum at the age of 33 with her youngest child, born in 1939.
ABC is created by Denise Nesbitt.For more interesting ABC posts click on the logo in the sidebar. This week we are looking for words beginning with "J".
