Here we go again!

Can it really be 3 months since I posted here?  What has been happening during that time?  Christmas was the biggy with family coming over to enjoy the fruits of my cooking in my old kitchen for the last Christmas before a total refurbishment.  But that is another story!  Various family birthdays; a new addition to our family of a boy to continue our family dynasty (can you hear the chords of Dynasty?) and so life goes on.

I promised to continue my Dad’s manuscript, the one I began transposing here below.  In the posts below he describes how the Japanese came to invade Java, Indonesia and how he and my mother became involved in some years of separate internments.  Now is the time to continue showing you his manuscript in which he describes briefly his experiences in prison as a prisoner of war during WWII.  Although they had hard times I do believe they were a lot more lucky than so many.  At least they came through it with their tale to tell unlike many of their dear friends.

One of the ways my Dad, who was ever resourceful, tried to keep his sanity during the long hours of inactivity was to cast his mind back to his youth to describe instances he could remember.  This actually gives a wonderful insight to life in Aberdeen in the period of 1919 onwards.  Please remember these are my Dad’s words as he wrote them.  There won’t be many, if any, pictures but his graphic way with words allows the reader to use their imagination to create real pictures in their minds as they follow his words.  All his words were written down by hand using any scrap of paper and a pencil that became a very small stump!  He found ways to hide all this but mostly the memories were kept in his mind to be written/typed at a later date.  These will be the words you will be reading.

There may be some foreign  words from the Dutch language since Java was part of the Dutch East Indies and my mother was Dutch herself.  English became very much the ‘indoors’ language or for English friends whilst the majority of the time Dutch was the main language.  Of course, having lived in this part of the world for some time local words from the Malaysian language or Japanese would also infiltrate at times.  Wherever possible I will try to translate!

And so, my friends, expect to find many chapters over a prolonged period of time.  Also, please remember these words are not for copying or publishing in any other format anywhere without the express permission of the author of this blog.  As the sub heading of this blog explains, ‘Many of us have precious thoughts within us and very precious memories. Unless, we explain or write about them they will remain within us and not be shared with the wider world.’  It is for this reason I felt duty bound to share my Dad’s memories to give a better insight to events of the time.  Otherwise, all would have been in vain and lost to the next generation had these memories not been passed down.

I will alert readers to new posts as they are completed but the easiest way of keeping up is to click the follow button, if you haven’t already, and in this way you will be able to keep up to date.

All I have left to say, is please sit back, grab a coffee or something stronger, and drift off to another era.  Do feel free to leave a comment but most of all, I urge you to enjoy the experience!

Thank you!

New visitors!

It was, I think, on Friday, 26 March, in the second week of our return to 'Sunny Corner' that a further development occurred in our private affairs.  I had been going round to the office for a few hours each morning and it was during my absence, when Ena was alone in the house that the following happened.

Ena was washing the floor of the bedroom when she heard a car drive in.  Looking out she saw a Japanese woman and a European man coming towards the door.  A third man, also a European, remained in the car.

As they passed the bedroom window on their way to the door Ena addressed the woman, who, however, ignored her and by the time Ena got to the front room, the two visitors had already entered.

"Saya dari Generale Staf" ( I am from the Jap General Staff) announced the woman in Malay by way of introduction.  "Saya maoe pakai ini roemah". (I want to use this house)

Ena asked where we were supposed to go.  "Oh", was the reply, "You will be interned".  This unwelcome visitor then proceeded to inspect the house going through it as if it belonged to her.  While she was thus engaged the Dutchman (for such he proved to be) in a few remarks confirmed what his companion had already said and offered the information that the woman was Mrs Graven and introduced himself as Niekerk.

After her inspection, Mrs Graven returned to the front room and said to Ena, "I thought this house was bigger.   It is too small for me.  I have nine children."

She suddenly decided, apparently, to be friendly and drew Ena with her in to the rear sitting room closing the folding doors.  Niekerk returned to the car.  Mrs Graven had Ena sit down with her on the settee and started a long story as to how she and her husband and children had been interned by the Dutch.  She said that we were to be interned and advised our having suitcases packed against this, and advised Ena to conceal her rings etc in cakes of soap.  According to her, Ena and I would be interned together.  Although she herself would not now be taking our house, she warned that it would no doubt be occupied in due course by Jap officers.

She then left 'Sunny Corner' and it was not long before we learned that she went straight to the Sparkes' house and commandeered that.  The Sparkes family came to vacate almost immediately but fortunately were able to find accommodation in 'Cress Cottage' next door to their own house.  'Cress Cottage' had been occupied until recently by General Van Oyen, commander of the Air Force, but who had left for Australia shortly before the capitulation.  We did not envy the Sparkes family with the Gravens and their spawn as neighbours during the few weeks that followed.

Now, a word about this unsavoury trio who had thrust their way so unceremoniously into our lives.

Mrs Graven herself was Japanese and had lived, we learned, in Bandoeng for about 30 years.  She was the sister in law of Sakura, who had a long established and well known haberdashery on the Groote Postweg.  Her husband was a white Russian, a drunken sot, at one time reputedly an officer in the Russian Imperial Army.  The man Niekerk, who could only have been a traitor to his country, had at one time been employed in the Volkskreditbank (The People's Credit Bank) a sort of Loans Society but had retired, on money, I suspect, earned by espionage activities, and had built a complex of attractive bungalows some miles up the Lembanweg to the north of Bandoeng, occupying himself one of them with the exotic name of 'Nirvana'.  He also possessed a number of houses in the town itself.

It gave me great satisfaction to meet this individual again in Internment Camp #4, Tjimahi, early in 1944 and to find that he was mere skin and bone and hardly fit to move thanks to the starvation cure imposed on us all by his Nipponese friends.  I learned, too, that his traitorous activities were known to the Dutch authorities and I am satisfied that he will get  his due reward in due course, if he has not already got it.

These three individuals were just part of the scum which the Japanese stirring up had brought to the surface at this time.

At the first opportunity after this visit we informed our good friend, Lt Kagee, of what had transpired and he advised us if anything of the kind happened again to get on the 'phone immediately and let him know.  Before very long we were to be very grateful for this suggestion.

**** to be continued

The Dutch MPs

The Dutch MPs had been retained by the Japs in their functions for the time being and it was a clever move as it had relieved the Nips themselves of the responsibilities for keeping order in the town.  It speaks for itself that the European, and most probably also the native population appreciated the fact.  Ena and I were to become very friendly with the MP party which had been detailed to look after Dennenlust.  The NCO in charge was a certain Onder Lieutenant Kagee, a fine type of long service military man and we often wondered what became of him.  He was terribly broken up about the Dutch capitulation and told us that he simply could not take it in, that the Dutch Indian Army had ceased to exist.  It had been his whole life, poor chap.

The MPs used to patrol regularly and we never let them pass the house without calling them to come in and have a glass of beer, of which we still had a small stock.  It become the regular custom in the weeks that followed for them to drop in once or twice a day for a chat, a snack and a drink and we were only too glad to be able to do something for them as the rations they were receiving from the Japs were quite insufficient and they were always hungry.

Even in those early days the Japs gave evidence of the muddle headedness of their ways of doing things.  One day these MPs would be armed with revolvers and the next day another Jap would take way all fire arms from them, while on the third day still another Jap would insist on their being armed and issue revolvers and ammunition again.  We accepted this as being due to the general confusion to be expected at this particular time but it was proved indicative of the usual Japanese way of doing things and it will, I think, always remain a mystery to the Western mind how the Japs were able to  accomplish as much as they did.  In all our experience of them no reason or object could be traced in their methods and the proof, in my opinion, that their success was attributable to the mistakes and blunders of others and not to their own organising capabilities, it is to be found in the eventual, chaotic state of all territory which they occupied.  They showed themselves to be past masters in the art of ruining a country in an incredibly short space of time and the mess they made of Java in three and a half years baffles description.  One can only conclude that they realised from the beginning that they had no chance of achieving ultimate victory and therefore determined to do as much harm as they could in the shortest possible time.  It seems the only explanation.

***** to be continued

The Japanese propaganda machine at work

The Japs lost no time in setting their very efficient propaganda machine to work.  Above the Aloon-aloon,  the enlarged counterpart of our village green, rose a huge captive balloon on which was inscribed in Malay the equivalent of 'Long live great Asia'.  Posters appeared all over the town stating that the Dutch currency was not to be considered valid and bearing illustration of Jap bank notes which were coming into circulation, the so called 'banana' money with which the Japanese flooded all occupied territory.

The local newspaper quickly showed signs of Japanese supervision but surprisingly the local radio station was permitted to broadcast messages to and from 'displaced' persons seeking contact with relatives.  Rashly, the announcer persisted in closing down with the playing of the 'Wilhelmus', the Dutch national anthem.  He did it once too often and the Japs shot him.

Although business had come practically to a standstill we still went to the office each morning, just like a hen which keeps running on until it realised its head had been chopped off.  The banks had been closed immediately by the Japs and that in itself was sufficient to bring trade to a standstill.  Our office premises were more more like a boarding house as this time as the whole of the British male staff of the P&T (Anglo Dutch Plantations) had gratefully accepted our offer to take up temporary residence there until such time as they should succeed in finding more suitable accommodation.

The British women and children from the P&T Soebang had been evacuated from Tjilatjap at the end of February and it was actually more than three years later before anxious husbands and fathers learned that their ship had reached Australia safely.

During this week, all officers and men of the forces had been interned temporarily in schools and other buildings but daily contact was possible and as these camps were not by any means strongly guarded at first many adventurous souls made a habit of undertaking expeditions into the town under the cover of darkness returning before dawn laden with very welcome good things in the way of food and drinks.

One of the first things the Japs did was to put the clock back, literally, an hour and a half, thus affecting synchronisation with the Tokyo time.  Metaphorically, in due course they put it back 500 years.  This action caused quite a lot of confusion at first as for making appointments and so on, each of us had to find out from the other whether 'Java' time or 'Nippon' time was meant.  Many people refused to recognise Nippon time, not openly of course, but among themselves.

One of the first things I did this week was to replace the watches which the Jap shock troops had taken from us and I was fortunate in being still able to procure from a local Swiss watchmaker an even more up to date 'Mido' for myself and an 'Eterna' similar to the one Ena had lost.  We took good care not to wear them openly, however, as we went about town because it was already evident that the Jap soldiers were enthusiastic collectors of watches and cameras and we did not want to lose our watches a second time.  I myself did, not long afterwards, but more of this anon.

We did not use the Hillman as there was also great risk of losing that too, but went about on bicycles which I had bought about a month preciously when it seemed likely that in due course cars would be requisitioned by the Dutch authorities.  These bikes stood us in good stead now, and later.

**** to be continued

Sunny Corner.... goodbye for the first time

Bill Leslie in the meantime had run down to Sparkes and borrowed his car and the whole Leslie family, with their meager belongings, were packed into that. Ena and myself with the parrot, two canaries in cages, three dogs and two cats, some boxes of provisions and a couple of suitcases squeezed into the Hillman. Our faithful Amat followed on his bicycle. And so we said "Goodbye" to 'Sunny Corner' for the first time.

The Leslie's went to friends in the vicinity of the Lembangweg while Ena and I descended with our menagerie on Ena's mother who was living in a small annexe on Dagoweg. She had already given refuge to a planter and his wife and two children who had had to flee from their Estate owing to the activities of the native 'rampokkers' or robbers. These robber bands which had sprung into existence like mushrooms all over the island coincidental with the landing of the Japs, and probably the result of carefully prepared fifth column work. In such a small house it was consequently a pretty tight squeeze but we got settled in somehow.

There would be no point in recording the events of this week in detail but I shall endeavour to give a brief description of this first period of Japanese occupation.

In the course of our first evening at Dagoweg 31e, the Japanese C in C spoke on the radio. He spoke, of course, in Japanese and this was afterwards translated into Dutch. He started off by reminding us that the Dutch East Indian Army no longer existed and, of course, had a lot to say regarding the blessings which the coming of the Sons of Heaven would bring to Java and the usual tosh about "a sphere of co-prosperity in South East Asia." Then he started a tirade against the Dutch for their having sent all Japanese who had elected to stay on in Java after the outbreak of hostilities to Australia.

There had indeed been about a thousand of such Japs who had submitted to internment in Java but it had been immediately realised that these had remained with a definite purpose and that Nippon was depending upon them for their knowledge of the country's affairs in many spheres if and when invasion and occupation should take place. No matter how much we had kidded ourselves as to the outcome of a Japanese attack on the island, the Japs themselves had had no doubts as to the outcome and had made their Trojan horse arrangement accordingly.

The Dutch authorities had, however, acutely and very secretly, sent all these Jap male internees off to Australia in good time before hand to an internment camp there, so that the Nips when they arrived in Java found themselves in a fearful muddle owing to their key personnel not being present to advise them. The C in C was terribly peeved about it and declared that the Japanese would be fully in their right if they were to transport all the Dutch in Java to the icy waters of Siberia. But as the Japanese were upright and humane people, they could not stoop to avenging the Dutch action in such a way.

He did not, of course, add that the upright and humane Japanese had even better ideas than this in regard to making the Dutch in Java pay for upsetting his applecart but then probably murder, torture and mass slow starvation were not looked upon by him in this light.

I saw the first Jap mechanised column enter Bandoeng from the West. Tank after rumbling tank lumbered past our office each bearing the Japanese flag and with one or more of the tank drivers grinning toothily like jacks in the box from the turrets. Apart from small groups of Indonesians, here and there at street corners, who waved and cheered, little enthusiasm was shown by the native population at the sight of their 'liberators'. But there is no doubt that the display of force which the Japs were able to present in the air and on the land must have made a great impression on the simple native mind.

**** to be continued.