Personal Stories About Losing Family During World War 2

Contributed by

sonnyjim/Mike Nellis

People in story:

Elizabeth van Kampen

Location of story:

Indonesia and Japanese P.O.W Camp

Groundwork to story:

Civilian

Commodity ID:

A2859276

Contributed on:

22 July 2004

I lost my all-time friend

This is something about my state of war experiences while I was in the quondam Dutch Eastward Indies, where I grew upward.
I know that in that location is very footling in English about the Dutch who lived in the Far Eastward. Near of all because kingdom of the netherlands is not interested in that office of WW II.
Since I was a young teenager when WW II started in the Eastward, I tin can remember almost everything.
Then please if you or others accept any question, I am more and so willing to try to reply you.
How I lost my all-time friend
When you drive from Jakarta through Bandung and Yogyakarta to Surabaya over the island Java, yous volition pass from ane little village into the side by side one. And all forth that road you will see the Bougainvillea showing her beautiful flowers, yous will see those prissy rice-fields with the volcanoes in the background. Words are not plenty to describe this moving picture of beauty. Indonesia, the land where I grew up, the country I always find back in all my dreams, the land where I lost my best friend.
I feel very privileged to accept had the take a chance to abound upwards in those wonderful paradisiacal environment.
My father, was 22 years young when he went to Indonesia in 1920, he was an engineer working for the Dutch KPM/ Java-Cathay-Nippon Line. He studied furthermore in Indonesia and partly in The netherlands.
In 1925 he went for his study to Holland and there he met my mother. They married in June 1926, in April 1927 I was born and in 1928 the three of us went to Indonesia.
My father had plant a job on a coffee and rubber plantation on the island Sumatra, as the technical adviser.
Much later my father told me that he was very surprised about how quickly I had adapted myself to the life in Indonesia. I had come up from The netherlands as a piffling Dutch girl spoiled past her grandparents, into a totally dissimilar world.
Sumatra is one of the most beautiful islands of Indonesia. Or must I say was? Considering today thousands of trees are cut or burnt downwards.
The Sumatrans never worked in our houses so in those days the Dutch imported the Javanese to go their home-servants. It must take been alone and hard for them, Sumatra is unlike from Java.
In 1934 the whole earth fell into a large economic crisis. The firm in Holland my father worked for had to close down, all employers were discharged.
My mother, my younger sis and I went to The netherlands, my father went to Java to look for some other job. Luckily he found ane right away.
My mother stayed for 10 months in Holland which was very bad for my schoolhouse-life, since I had to switch over from one school to an other in such a short time. Kickoff in the boondocks where my mothers parents lived and then to the town where my fathers parents lived. And all the time I missed my father.
When at concluding nosotros were going back home, my grandparents stood there very sad waiting for the boat to leave, taking u.s. away from them.
My grandfather (fathers father) asked me if I wasn't sad to get out Holland and I answered: "No, I am going to my daddy" He said; " Oh that is very sweet of you, I will write this to your daddy".
On the ship to Indonesia I celebrated my 8th birthday and I was going home, this fourth dimension to the most wonderful island in Republic of indonesia, Coffee!
Of course I had to go to school once again, so I had to exit my parents and had to stay in a boardinghouse in Tasikmalaya. The plantation was besides far from school. This lasted merely 6 months but to me it seemed much longer!
Simply later on those long vi months we went to the most loveliest town ever, we went to Malang.
Going to a boardinghouse was no longer a trouble. I could come home every Saturday afternoon and back to Malang every Mon morning time at five a.m.
Our schools began at 7.thirty a.m. and concluded at 1 p.m. The schools in Indonesia were very good, we learnt much more virtually Asia than the children in Holland and at the same time we also learnt the same as the Dutch children. And so our Bones School took us 1 yr longer than in Holland.
My life betwixt Malang and the plantation was a real paradise on earth. In Malang I had my friends, my schoolmates and my pond-pool. I became a good swimmer.
On the plantation I learnt equus caballus-riding on my mountain horse. I went to the Kampung ( a minor Indonesian village in a town or on a plantation). I loved to heed to their Indonesian music, some played guitar and others sang. And I always received something sweet to eat. Indonesians are very generous and hospitable!
I used to walk for hours over the plantation with my male parent. We talked a lot, he was my best friend, the best friend I ever had. My father was born in Holland only he knew a lot well-nigh the Indonesians and their country. Oh yes, he loved Indonesia, but unlike me, Holland was his motherland. To me The netherlands was only the country from my parents and grandparents.
I had become a part of Republic of indonesia, to me information technology was my mother land. If there had not been that terrible World War, I know that I would still exist living in Republic of indonesia.
In 1940 Germany occupied Holland. My parents, all our parents, were extremely worried almost their motherland and specially their family. They were frustrated for they couldn't do anything to help them.
Then Nihon attacked Pearl Harbor. Our lives in Indonesia began to change slowly but surely. Together with our Dutch Army we saw British, American and Australian soldiers everywhere.
Our parents and teachers told us that the Dutch would fight till the concluding human, never would we give Indonesia to Nihon.
I was well-nigh xv years onetime when the Japanese soldiers walked into Malang.
My sis and I were at our boarding-school when we saw them walking in.
Nosotros had lost the state of war against Nippon.
We went to the plantation , the Japanese had closed all our schools and Dutch became a forbidden linguistic communication.
The Indonesian police came to put seals upon all the radios from the Dutch living in Indonesia.
We were completely cut off from the residue of the globe for 3? years long. All the Dutch soldiers and marines were put into camps. Later on many of them were transported to Burma and Sumatra to work on the infamous railways. Others were transported to Japan to work in the mines. Thousands men died of hunger of malaria. They all died in deep misery. Some of them were bombed by blow by the Americans or the British, most of the those poor men drowned.
My father had to bring his car to the nearby law-post. It was no longer his automobile, it belonged to the Japanese Army. My father did not receive any papers telling that he had delivered his car. Some Indonesians were laughing. The white master had to handover his car to the Japanese Regular army. My dad and I had to walk all the style back home, my father with tears in his eyes. He was very worried about what was going to happen to his wife and his daughters!
My father, like all Dutch, had to pay 150 guilders for his "new" Japanese identity bill of fare and fourscore guilders for my mothers card, in those days a fortune. This was of course pure theft.
My dad had to work for an extremely very small salary, only at least we were nevertheless free.
In Feb 1943 my father had to go out the plantation. He asked me to wait afterward my mother and my 2 younger sisters until the war was over and he could come back.
16th of Apr 1943, information technology was my sixteenth altogether and I was allowed to visit my begetter in his camp in Malang. Of grade I was non allowed to become within only we could speak in Malay under the surveillance of an Indonesian guard who kept a distance between my father and me of 2 meters. We were allowed to speak 10 minutes. I told my dad that everything was withal fine on the plantation.
It was the last time I saw my father. The Kempeitai (Japanese Gestapo) killed him March 25 in 1945. A final gentle smile on his face was his present for my 16th birthday .
Just 8 years earlier I had told my grandfather that I was going back to my daddy.
June 1943 my female parent, my 2 sisters and I, had to leave the plantation.
Rasmina our dear old melt started crying, Karto the head-superintendent who was from at present on in accuse of the plantation Sumber Sewu stood at attention and all the other Indonesians effectually u.s.a. did the same: " Hormat ( respect) to Mr. and Mrs.van Kampen" he said.
My mother started crying and I had tears in my eyes, she handed Karto the keys of our small but oh and so happy house. We left with four rucksacks. Nosotros had to leave everything behind us, likewise my mountain-horse, the two adorable picayune white dogs Molly and Dolly, our sweet cats, the birds, the rabbits and the fowls. We lost everything. This cosy pocket-sized house was no longer our dwelling. My poor mother couldn't stop crying.
We were brought into a army camp for women and children in Malang. This military camp was not really bad. November 1943: my mother received the bulletin that my father had been taken out of his army camp and was brought to the Kempeitai prison in Malang. He had been hiding weapons and munitions. My begetter had been appointed equally a Land-guard for several plantations through the Dutch E Indies Army. Since he was very technical I guess that he too helped with bravado up some bridges. My father was like all the others optimistic about the war against Nippon. America would win that war. Of course, but when ?
We never received whatever papers about a legal procedure or anything else telling us what happened to my father. Besides the Carmine Cantankerous couldn't requite u.s.a. whatsoever information.
February 1944 we ( mother, sisters and I ) were dumped into trucks and we drove through Malang to the station. All along the route were many very young Indonesians laughing and were calling united states of america names. Of class the white masters were at present nothing more but slaves to the Japanese Army. I bent my head , my eyes were full of tears.
I felt terribly sad that very day, because all this happened in Malang, the town I loved and so much, my school, my friends, the boondocks of my youth.
The train would take me farther away from my father. What a horrible world.
Nosotros were brought past train, in good vans, merely without food and without annihilation to drink 24 hours long in the sunday, to Ambarawa, Key Java. From at that place we were transported to Banyu Biru. Our concentration-campsite Banyu Biru camp 10 was an old prison house total of dirt and vermin.
The four of us had to become into a 1 person cell. We received extremely little food, we could hardly wash ourselves nor our clothes, there was non enough h2o for so many people.
I had to work outside the camp, as from now on I was a slave from the Japanese Army .
All day long I had to load and unload heavy large stones. I had to work on the land. I had to bring heavy cases on cavalry wagons to the station of Ambarawa about one hr walking from Banyu Biru and of course one hour dorsum. It was a very difficult task.
Most of the Indonesians we passed on the road felt lamentable for us, but of grade there was no contact, that was strictly forbidden.
Every ii weeks I had a malaria attack, I had tropical abscesses underneath my feet and in the finish I also suffered from oedema. My mother also had malaria and an other type of oedema, my younger sister had jaundice and the youngest 1 as well had malaria and she became completely apathetic. She lost a function of her memory, she tin can not call up my male parent or the places where we used to live earlier the war.
And daily I prayed in myself, asking God to protect my parents and my sisters.
Begging to stop this horrible war for the whole situation was so inhuman, we were all completely lost in a sadistic and very racial discriminating globe.
I have seen very dauntless women who gave me reason to stay optimistic. I take seen little boys been taken away from their mothers and been sent to a camp for men only. They stood in that location on a truck, 10 years old leaving their mothers while their fathers were somewhere else maybe in Burma or possibly expressionless. I have seen women losing their minds through all their grieves I have seen some girls and immature women been taken away as "Comfort women" to the Japanese brothels. I take seen how women have been beaten upwardly so badly that most all their bones were broken. I can however hear the screaming in my head, we all had to stand there to watch. I take seen 3 women been hanged 12 hours long under the called-for tropical sun, with their hands tied up on their backs. We had to watch all the time with tears in our eyes .I take seen it daily how little children died of hunger and mothers who stood there with no tears left in their eyes when their expressionless children were carried out of the camp.
Too my female parent, my sisters and I became sicker every day, especially the final half-dozen months.
We were the victims of hatred of racism and sadism and that is very difficult to understand when you are a teenager, nothing more than a schoolgirl.
We couldn't understand Japanese, so they screamed louder and louder, only sometimes we had a interpreter.
Every morning time we had to bow for the Emperor Hirohito, bow for the Japanese Army and we were so terrible tired, many of u.s.a. could hardly stand upwardly straight.
During the last six months about six to seven people a twenty-four hour period died in our camp. In our concentration-camp 5500 women and children were kept as prisoners, although the prison was congenital for 500 persons simply.
And each time there was less to eat, less identify to sleep, and we tried so difficult to get those lice out of our hair, tried to kill all those bugs. We tried to sleep equally much as we could. Simply every 2 weeks I was as well on night duty from 2 a.yard. till 4 .a.m., several women had to walk through a part of the camp, ii women together, it was quite common cold at night, our wearing apparel were worn out, and of course our shoes too. Most of us walked barefoot.
During one of those nights a woman, completely naked, was running through the army camp while she couldn't stop screaming, she had lost her mind. We had to wake up our Dutch camp-caput Mrs. Eigeleberg. Ii Japanese took the poor woman away out of the army camp and we never saw her again.
We were punished for each battle the Japanese Army lost against America.
And Nihon was losing very badly, we could feel that by their behaviour towards the states.
And slowly but surely nosotros all became indifferent, all we were interested in was food!
Food for our loved ones and for ourselves.
Our meals:
breakfast: a small plate with starch;
lunch: 1 pocket-sized cup of boiled rice, some small pieces of cabbage leaves and a teaspoon of sambal (hot spices);
supper: a modest plate of starch with some tiny cabbage cuttings, some sort of a soup.
We never had any meat and no fruit either.
This menu never changed, 1? year long.
And so of a sudden the War was over. A terrible bomb fell on Hiroshima and another one on Nagasaki. Our Japanese torturers quickly left our camp. Other Japanese soldiers came and we received more food.
Three weeks subsequently our adjacent war began. The immature Indonesians were stimulated 3? years long by the Japanese propaganda "Detest the Dutch". They planned to impale all the Dutch who were nevertheless waiting in their camps for meliorate days. They killed thousands of Eurasians in Java for these had been "free" during the war with Japan. Many Dutch leaving their camps take been killed by those young Indonesians. The Japanese Army can exist proud of their so thorough propaganda work.
Lord Mountbatten ordered the Japanese Regular army and their Kempeitai to protect the Dutch prinoners of war (POWs), because he could not so rapidly transport his ain troops to Republic of indonesia.
After the State of war, America divided us in "The Pacific War" and "The South Due east Asia War. So we came under the protection of Great Britain and Australia.
History has forgotten almost of those from outside The Pacific War for they did not fall under America. That is why and so very few have heard well-nigh the noncombatant Dutch war victims, lxxx.000 men, women and children from whom ten.500 died during WW 2 in Republic of indonesia. It were the Japanese soldiers from the infamous Kempeitai who came to rescue u.s.a. from the young Indonesians total of detest confronting the Dutch.
When the British soldiers came, they took us out of those dangerous camps to a protected town Semarang, from there we were transported past send to Sri Lanka.
I stood in that location on that ship that took me away from everything I loved, my male parent and from Indonesia that was no longer my country . The French say ; "Partir, c'est mourir un peu", and that is so right for leaving a place you really love is dying a little and that was exactly how I felt. I had to leave the most happiest part of my life backside me in Indonesia.
I was like a young uprooted tree.
In Kandi, Sri Lanka we received the bad news that my male parent had died in the Kempeitai prison house from Malang. I became completely indifferent for what happened around me, the shock of my father's expiry was too brutal. I had lost the best friend I ever had. Often I thought that it was all a mistake, and that my father was coming back dwelling to us.
It took me ten years to get myself out of this nightmare. I began to realize that this was non what my father had expected from me. I slowly found myself dorsum. Just talking about that muddy state of war or nigh my fathers death, I just couldn't.
Until in 1995 one of my friends, also from Republic of indonesia, ( but she was in Switzerland during the Second World War ) asked me to write something on paper about those terrible years. I did!
"You must get back to Indonesia and fast" she said.
And and then nosotros decided to go to Indonesia in 1996 where we arrived the13th of September, on my father'due south birthday, on the island Sumatra.
Republic of indonesia has healed my wounds. The most cute island Sumatra fascinated me completely!
I brutal in love with Sumatra just like my father had so many years ago. I hadn't felt so happy since ages. Information technology was an absolutely coming domicile, the Sumatrans are charming people.
When our aeroplane landed on Java's ground I had tears of pure joy in my eyes.
I had left the Dutch East Indies in 1946 and at present in 1996 I was back domicile in Indonesia.
My friend and I went of course to Malang the town we both knew so well. I have taken the courage to visit the prison house where my beloved father was killed, to pay him my last respect . My father has no grave, his body lays somewhere under the soil in Malang.
I have been told during this visit, that all the men were tortured once a week in that prison. I saw the place, the cell, where my father had to live. In the cell was just a bed of cement without a mattress and higher up his head a lamp, burning day and nighttime. At that place was as well one hole in the floor, which was used every bit a toilet. During the monsoon water from the toilets, including the vermin, was all over the place. Extremely unhygienic!
That someone you honey and then much has died in such horrible circumstances is almost too much to bear. And and so not even a grave where I could bring some flowers. Nothing !! But empty cypher !
My male parent lived nigh two years long in this prison he has about certainly fought for his life, he wanted to come up back to us. But he lost this fight, he died in pure misery.
I went to the plantation Sumber Sewu where I was received very warmly. The people of the plantation brought my father dorsum to life . It was an absolutely wonderful and a deep emotional experience.
My Indonesians, my mother country Republic of indonesia, gave me dorsum what I had missed and then much:
"Sunshine in my center". I take taken it with me back to Holland.
In the year 2000 I went with a group of other Dutch war victims to Japan. We have visited Nagasaki, we have seen what the A Bomb has done to the innocent people of Japan.
I have besides made friends in Nihon !
No, I cannot forget the cruelty from the Japanese Regular army that I accept experienced in Republic of indonesia during WW II.
Merely of form I volition never blame the Japanese people for what Japanese war criminals take done in Asia. I do understand very well that the Japanese people suffered too during WW 2.
This was a long story to tell y'all how I lost my all-time friend, my male parent!
Elizabeth van Kampen

My male parent who was my best friend.
[I am priviliged to take been given permission by Elizabeth van Kampen to tell her story here, she is now 77 years of age and living in the Netherlands]

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These messages were added to this story by site members betwixt June 2003 and Jan 2006. It is no longer possible to leave letters here. Find out more nigh the site contributors.

Bulletin one - Elizabeth's story

Posted on: 23 July 2004 by anak-bandung

This was a very moving story which reminded me very much of what my mother went through. She had to work hard in the camps, while her female parent looked later on me. Her sister slightly younger than Elizabeth (14) and never recovered totally from the hard labour she had to practice,as her trunk was not notwithstanding fully grown. She has always been plagued by terrible backaches.
Information technology was quite painful to read all this.
I too went back to Republic of indonesia, together with my mother, in 1979 and it did beginning the healing process for her also, at least the mental healing. She is Dutch, but still feels Indonesian at middle. I don't think she has ever felt at home in Holland.
Banyak terimma kassi for this story.
Rob, een anak Bandung

Message 2 - Elizabeth's story

Posted on: 24 July 2004 by reasonableElizabeth

How-do-you-do Anak Bandung,

Thank you for telling your female parent's story, I am grateful!
It is really a wonderful idea from the BBC to collect all these WW2 stories in their Athenaeum.
In that location is very picayune known nigh the crimes all over Asia commited by the Kempeitai. They don't exist anymore since the terminate of World War Two.
I have asked people in Japan about them and thet told me that every Japanese was just as scared every bit nosotros were for the Kempeitai. There was no limit to their cruelties. Just after the war they received the all-time places in Japan, in business concern but also in working for the government.
To me it has always been difficult to understand why those war criminals received all the respect from Nihon and America, while my begetter doesn't even has a grave.

Anak Bandung, thanks again!!

Elizabeth van Kampen
evkampen@home.nl

Message iii - Elizabeth's story

Posted on: 24 July 2004 by anak-bandung

Goeiemorgen Elizabeth
I was merely trying to respond to your email I received and started to find out on the website why you could non discover your story hands. Yous know it has been written by 'sonnyjim/Mike Nellis' and is to be found in his personal page. You can either
Blazon 'How I lost my best friend' in the Search WW2 slot, then click on,The Nellis Family unit' (his personal,page) and then option out your story from 'My WW2 Stoeries and Questions'
I have a question: why did it non appear in your personal folio?
If you rather represent in Dutch I will talk to you at your email address. Here we take to keep with English, understandably.
I wait at that place were quite a lot of Japanese who did not desire state of war and lived in fear, just like in Deutschland. Nevertheless, homo nature likes to generalise and nosotros practise not come across those people, but hate or condemn them 'en block'
The so-called respect these state of war criminals received is all to do with power, in what kind of course that might be.
My father also ended up in a sawah somewhere near Surabaya and was never found. Mum and I went back and saw his name in a big book at the cemetery in Jakarta and a monument in the shape of a broken propeller was his and many other of the missing'southward monument.
Feel free to visit my personal page any time. I have quite a correspondence going with Odyssee, another anak from Bandung
Tot de volgende keer
Rob @->--

Message 4 - Elizabeth'southward story

Posted on: 24 July 2004 past reasonableElizabeth

Hello Rob,

Thanks a lot for your very nice alphabetic character.

There must exist a fault made past Michael Nellis, considering it was me who wrote my own story of form.
He offered to place it for me in BBC World War Two.
And I am very sorry that his and not my e-mail adress it is now connected to the story I wrote "How I lost my best friend".
So the story is not about Elizabeth but is from Elizabeth.
As I said, I approximate that it is a error.
Friendly greetings from,

Bulletin 5 - Elizabeth'south story

Posted on: 24 July 2004 by anak-bandung

I am now confused. The email address at the bottom of the story is yours, right? I did take contact with you at that e-mail address, didn't I?
Rob

Message i - Website

Posted on: 18 Jan 2006 by happyElizabethMalang

Hullo to all,

If yous like you can read my website about my youth and my live as a state of war victim in the former Netherlands E Indies during WW2.

www,dutch-east-indies.com

I am still decorated working on the site, I am now writing about first 1½ twelvemonth that we were occupied by the Japanese.

Thank you for reading this observe.

Friendly greetings from Kingdom of the netherlands,

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth van Kampen

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Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/76/a2859276.shtml

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