The Diary of Prisoner 17326

Title Page, Copyright

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pp. i-iv

Contents

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pp. v-vi

Foreword

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pp. vii-xviii

World War II ended sixty-five years ago, and yet more and more works on the subject are appearing in bookstores all the time, many of them personal memoirs such as the present volume. One is tempted to ask what is to be gained by spilling more ink and killing...

Preface

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pp. xix-xxiv

My first wife, Loekie Smit, who died on Christmas 1999, always encouraged me during our last years of marriage to get my story off the ground. She herself grew up in Medan, Sumatra, only to be moved during the war to Camp Tjideng in Batavia, Java. Loekie...

Chapter 1: A Teenaged Prisoner of Japan, no. 17326

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pp. 1-3

Near noon on the last day of February 1942, a crowd of people waited on the platform of the railroad station at Gubeng in southern Surabaja, Java, for a train going to Malang, a mountain town to the south. With no wind blowing and the sun standing at...

Chapter 2: Discovering Java

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pp. 28-16

Both my parents were born and raised in Amsterdam. Grandpa Stutterheim was a diamond cutter, but lost his job at the end of World War I, when the diamond industry moved to Antwerp, Belgium. As a result, my Dad had to drop out of high school and...

Chapter 3: Malang

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pp. 17-21

In those days, a mail ship took four weeks to get to Europe. My brother and I experienced Holland as totally foreign and very cold. After eight months, when Dad became very worried about Hitler’s annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland, he decided...

Chapter 4: Merbaboe Park

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pp. 22-30

After our return from the trip to Europe, my parents established a comfortable new home for us at 27 Djalan Guntur in Malang, Java, opposite Merbaboe Park. This park and the pasar, the market, were next to a bridge over the river Oro Oro Dowo. It followed the same route downhill as the important road by that name leading...

Chapter 5: War

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pp. 31-35

Close to the sugar cane tracks lived the family Bruinvis, very good friends of our family. Wim Bruinvis taught gymnastics at the high school. He was tall and skinny and had a good sense of humor. Annie, his wife, and Mother were very close friends. She had two...

Chapter 6: Uncertain Times in Malang

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pp. 36-40

One day at the end of March Dad returned from Surabaja by train. He had lost his job, which was not surprising, since the Japanese were replacing Europeans with their own staff. As the train entered the Malang station, it slowed down and Dad noticed that the platform...

Chapter 7: Kesilir

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pp. 41-48

In October 1942, Mother told us that she had obtained a permit for the three of us to travel to Kesilir, where Dad was imprisoned. At last we were allowed to visit him....

Chapter 8: The Final Days of De Wijk

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pp. 49-55

Once several women approached Ikada about the increase of restrictions in our camp. They called the place ‘‘our concentration camp.’’ Ikada smiled and said, ‘‘You do not know what a concentration camp is!’’ He also stated that he received word from Batavia’s leaders about the internment of the Japanese civilians in...

Chapter 9: The Transport

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pp. 56-60

We were packed in like sardines. After helping the others I was the last one to come aboard, which gave me a good view of the passing surroundings. The trucks drove at a good clip, not slowing down going through the curves, so that our tightly packed group...

Chapter 10: Lampersari

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pp. 61-78

Lampersari was like Malang only in that it was a holding area for thousands of prisoners, most of us Caucasian, but including many Indos. Many other women and children had arrived in this camp before we did, and they had already faced the necessity of creating some kind of tolerable situation for themselves. There was...

Chapter 11: The Benteng

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pp. 79-88

The Benteng, the storage area and food depot, was the nucleus of Camp Lampersari. Located on a hill, it was some sort of military barracks or warehouse out of the previous century. The Benteng was almost square, with a large atrium in the center of the wooden structures. On the roadside was a huge entry door, opening...

Chapter 12: Camp Bangkong

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pp. 89-102

When we marched through the gate of Lampersari, the older boys first and the ten-year-olds in the rear, we had no idea what our destination was. A ten-year-old who looked far younger then his stated age was the very last one. Before he got into motion he discovered his teenage sister, who worked at that early hour at the fireplace...

Chapter 13: Horseplay

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pp. 103-106

Tjiandi, with Camp Bangkong just below it, was a suburb in the foothills, which came down like a crescent on the swamps where the oebie fields were located. The marshlands ended at the only road, where the old high school was located. From there the city...

Chapter 14: The Diary

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pp. 107-123

The guards at Bangkong exercised a great deal of sadistic control over our young lives. Besides the forty Hei-Hos in Japanese service, there were about eleven Japanese, although some of them in reality were Korean. These soldiers rotated through the various camps, especially...

Chapter 15: The Disease of Despair

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pp. 124-138

In the Indies there is a small and generally welcome nocturnal lizard, called a tokè, or gecko, a harmless tropical insectivore, six to ten inches long, with a beak reminiscent of a miniature crocodile. Its name describes its odd, croaking mating call, and if you hear this animal say toke` seven times, luck will drift your way. It...

Chapter 16: Bleak Prospects

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pp. 139-152

My own brother was very ill by now and in bed most of the time, seldom getting up except to get food. He did take daily showers, which I considered a must. In the evenings we talked a little, but most of the time we listened to the conversations of all the other kids, in order to try to stay informed about developments in...

Chapter 17: Death and Unexpected Freedom

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pp. 153-156

At the end of the first week of August, an air raid alarm went off while the evening was still young. The alarm was shocking enough, but we had had some insignificant air raid alarms before. This one, however, was real and electrifying. At first there was a deep...

Chapter 18: Hidden Dangers

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pp. 157-175

When we got up on the morning of August 24, we found the main gate open and no guards in sight. The atmosphere in the camp was eerie. Many of us walked to the gaping opening in that high fence, which now allowed us a view of the outside world. We were all...

Chapter 19: The British

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pp. 176-180

Finally, after many weeks, the British landed in significant numbers. Immediately it became clear that they were there to protect the camps and disarm the Japanese, but they disassociated themselves completely from taking sides between the Dutch and the Indonesians...

Chapter 20: Escape from Hell

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pp. 181-192

What was once a very peaceful country had erupted into a lawless land. The revolution made even routine activities dangerous for anybody suspected of not supporting the uprising. Many Indos, or Eurasians, were arrested and jailed or, worse, killed. This...

Chapter 21: A Family Again

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pp. 193-200

During the war the Europeans in Bandung had been imprisoned in Camp Tjihapit, located on the outskirts of the city. After their liberation the Europeans, for their protection, remained restricted to that camp, which was still encircled by barbed wire. The...

Chapter 22: Time to Fly

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pp. 201-211

After all this time in November and December without any sense of progress, suddenly the pace of our family’s life picked up with Dad’s call to Surabaja. We needed no time to reflect on the sudden change facing us, and as little to prepare for the...

Chapter 23: Surabaja Restored

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pp. 212-219

We spent the first seven months of 1946 in Hotel Brantas. Mother and Dad tried to restore a normal family life and daily routine for us, although we were still surrounded by the revolution. Dad went daily to work. At first a jeep picked him up, and later on a...

Chapter 24: To Holland on Oranje

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pp. 220-227

One day in August 1946, Dad called us boys and asked us to sit down. By then Anton was fifteen and I eighteen years old. Dad explained that in his opinion our education was extremely inadequate. He thought it would take years before the schools in Surabaja would be back to...

Epilogue

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pp. 228-232

History repeats itself. An excellent example is the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor without prior declaration of war. The Russo-Japanese war of February 10, 1904, also started with a sudden torpedo attack on the Russian navy at daybreak off Port Arthur, a Russian-occupied city...

Images

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pp. Image 1-Image 22

Glossary

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pp. 233-236

Further Reading

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pp. 237-238