The Defining Years of the Dutch East Indies: 1942-1949 by Jan Krancher
It takes a strong stomach to read this book, a riveting collection of 24 harrowing and poignant first-hand accounts from survivors of the Japanese occupation and the subsequent turmoil accompanying the country’s struggle for independence. When the Dutch declared war on Japan on December 7th, 1941 there were 222,000 Dutch or Dutch-Indonesians or “Indos” living in the Indies. Following the Japanese invasion of Java on March 1st, 1942, the conquerors began a process of Japanization of the entire archipelago, removing every remnant of Dutch rule.
As sons and daughters looking back over five decades on the most disruptive and frightening period of they lives, many of the book’s contributors were mere school children at the beginning of the 1940s. Now in the 70s and 80s, we are fortunate that their searing personal histories have been written down while they are still with us.
The haunting story “The Mouse deer and the Tiger,”Barend A. van Nooten tells of the escape of his fatherless family from the mountains of Java through an apocalyptic landscape of smoldering looted Dutch houses lining the road, their windows shattered, with dead dogs, broken statues, litter and belongings scattered about the lawns.
A number of other scenes in the book possess extraordinary cinematic potential: lumbering flights of Liberation bombers dropping food over cheering prisoners, women peering through bamboo fences at their husbands working the fields as white slave laborers, a Dutch mother in soiled and tattered dress walking barefoot up the driveway of the magnificent Bogor Palace to beg a Japanese commander for mercy.
Eventually at least 100,000 Dutch or Indos were locked up in Japanese internment camps in Surabaya, Bandung, Multilane, Cimahi, Ambarawaand elsewhere. There were special camps for boys, for women and children, for high-ranking Dutch officials, for enemy commandos and sappers “who caused the Japanese extra grief,” and some European prisoners were even sent to the Death Railways of mainland S. E. Asia.
One writer spent a total 3-1/2 years in 12 camps from Flores to Cambodia. In his story “They are not Human Beings,” he witnessed the savage execution of three Allied POW soldiers who tried to escape. To be made an example of, they were strapped to fence posts and bayoneted to death with the entire camp population was required to look on.
Considering what they had to endure, it’s perhaps understandable that there is no love lost between these ex-internees and their former captors. Describing the Japanese, the writers use such racial epithets as “Japs, imps, barbarians, yellow-skinned, slant-eyed, bow-legged, buck toothed, cunning, treacherous.”
The first several chapters serve as an overview of the imprisonment system throughout the Indies, setting the scene by describing the historical context in which the events took place, the types of camps that were established, how prisoners were divided by age, sex, military rank and civilian position, the function and behavior of Japanese guards and sentries, camp rules and regulations, daily routines, living conditions, arrangements for meals, sleeping and work teams.
A never-ending preoccupation in the prisoner’s minds was the lack of clothing and both the quality and quantity of food. Rations were irregular and sparse, often consisting of weak gruel or boiled weeds and prisoners frequently had to subsist on mice, rats, snakes, even insects. Upon liberation, their average weight was around 100 pounds. Beriberi, dysentery and malaria were widespread. One writer estimates he saw 150 men die of disease or malnutrition over several years.
Prisoners ingeniously made their own bread from rice, corn, tapioca and other ingredients; manufactured paper; made fire by striking flint; welded, dug wells, produced smokeless fuel for burners and heaters from sawdust. They held church services, ran hospitals, stagedsports contests and comedy entertainments to keep sane.
Internees constantly conjectured about how the war was progressing, when it was going to end and how their families were faring in other camps. Clandestine radios were hidden in trees, behind walls and under furniture; notes were passed secretly between the men and women’s camps.
Most of the narratives end with the announcement of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when suddenly the food improved and the beatings and harsh outside work details ceased. British, Australian and U.S. prisoners were sent home within weeks but for the Dutch and pro-Dutch POWs it very soon became apparent that inside the camps was safer for them than outside.
The declaration of independence by nationalist forces on August 17, 1945 marked the beginning of a new wave of terror. A number of writers blame Sukarno for whipping up the nation’s youth into a frenzy in a series of radio broadcasts. The book vividly records of the depredations and hardships faced during the so-called Bersiap period after the Japanese surrender – the dark side of the Indonesian revolution.
Marauding armed bands of Indonesian youths roamed the streets terrorizing and burning neighborhoods, murdering women and children. For the “crime” of giving well water to a Dutch reconnaissance patrol, the children of a Chinese family were nailed to doors, the girls and women raped and then impaled by sharpened bamboo spears, the men’s hands tied and thrown down a well.
After the war the survivors immigrated to Australia, the Netherlands, Britain, and the U.S.A.,continuing careers in the military or ending up as civil engineers, as aerospace and telecommunications employees, machine operators, homemakers or writers chronicling their remarkable and harrowing experiences. Jan A. Krancher, the book’s editor, personally experienced this difficult and dangerous period. Read his story on his website: www.krancher.org.
This unusual and moving compilation richly augments the existing canon of literature on ex-prisoner’s accounts of life in Japanese internment camps and the tumultuous and bloody events which followed their liberation. These are episodes in modern Indonesian history that are not found in textbooks no taught in schools.
The Defining Years of the Dutch East Indies, 1942-1949: Survivors Accounts of Japanese Invasion and Enslavement of Europeans and the Revolution That Created Free Indonesia by Jan Krancher, McFarland & Company 2003 (www.mcfarlandpub.com), ISBN 0786417072, paperback, 288 pages, chronology, glossary, appendix, index, dimensions 9.1 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches.
This title is USA-based McFarland & Company’s début publication in Indonesia and is available for Rp425,000 only at Ganesha bookstore in Ubud, Ganesha@Biku in Kerobokan or online at www.ganeshabooksbali.com.
