At this
time war was raging in Europe, unleashing a series of events
that would change the history of the Dutch East Indies forever. As
America banned the export of oil to countries outside the Americas,
Japan was forced to look elsewhere for fuel as its own stock declined.
Authorities in the Dutch East Indies agreed to supply Japan with 40
percent of the oil production for the next six months, despite
Britain's attempt to block the arrangement. And so the trade went until
1941 when Japan's assets in the United States and Britain were frozen,
and Japan retaliated. Within two days, Japan's assets in the Dutch East
Indies were also frozen and the oil deals cancelled thereby cutting off
90 percent of Japan's oil supply. Japan was now being pressured to
decide whether or not to go to war to gain control of resources in the
South Pacific, namely Malaysia and the Dutch Indies. When, in Japan,
the War Minister took over the role of Prime Minister, there was little
doubt what the decision would be.
In February 1942, following the fall of Singapore, Japan began its
occupation of the Dutch East Indies. As is always the case in war,
there were many underlying political forces at work but suffice it to
say that the Japanese invasion was one of the most crucial times in
Indonesia's history. Dutch presence had never been welcomed there, but
now it was being challenged for the first time. My mother was born on
26th March of that same year and she did not come to know her father
until she was almost four years old. European men were captured and
interned in Japanese prison camps, women were made to present
voluntarily and were sorted into race categories. In September 1942,
they came for Opa - being Dutch he was the worst kind of European
according to the invaders. My grandmother escaped the same plight
merely because she was a half cast and when came the time to present to
the invaders, she made sure her skin was tinged brown enough to avoid
imprisonment as, after all, she now had a child and a crippled
mother-in-law to care for.
My grandmother, Oma, told me of horrific stories she witnessed but
she's always sure to say that there were good and bad Japanese. The
good helped her to survive even in small ways and she was very lucky.
The Kenpeitai, or Japanese Military Police, were always kind to her and
she was extremely lucky they never caught her in the acts she committed
to keep her family alive- many had died for less. She was extremely
friendly with the Chinese community, and made her living on the black
market by trading Dutch money for Japanese currency, selling Chinese
antiques to army officers, bartering, and giving knitting lessons to
the Chinese men. That is how she sustained her family until my
grandfather's return in August 1945, when Japan finally lost the war.
He was lucky to be alive. In his whole lifetime he never ever spoke of
what occurred in those years as a prisoner of war to the Japanese. He
never uttered a word about it... and that, to all of us, was the
measurement of his suffering. He returned home a skeleton barely able
to walk, my mother recalls clearly that she was so frightened at the
sight of him she hid under her bed. Of course, she didn't even know who
he was.
He had 3 months to fatten up before the civil war, just 3 months to be
with his wife and daughter, before volunteering to fight the
Indonesians in their battle for independence. Why did he go? Did he
feel the call of duty? Was he protecting the only life he knew? Perhaps
after all he had suffered he could not settle so easily in the art of
everyday life?
I will never know the answer. Ironically, and as an aside, once the war
was over, for a brief time Japan had to help the Dutch in the struggle
to maintain control of a colony now lost to them, the whole archipelago
now known as Indonesia. The Japanese, having lost the war, now had
obligations toward the Allies, and assisted in attempting to stifle the
revolutionaries they had previously turned a blind eye to. There is no
doubt that the Revolution was a mess of varying political currents and
factions that could not agree - but it was always clear here that the
Dutch were the enemy.
It was a bloody war that lasted five years. The Dutch were so nearly
victorious, but for the intervention of the Indonesian resistance and
the support of the United States. This time Opa had been gone over 2
and a half years, released from the army in June 1948. His second
child, Rudy, had been born in July 1946 whilst he was away. Oma had
once again provided and cared for her family in the midst of violence
and hatred. Opa was finally reunited with his beloved wife and two
children he could not claim to know.
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