Under the Java Moon, page 1
Cover photo: Shutterstock Images
Book design © Shadow Mountain
Art direction: Richard Erickson
Design: Sheryl Dickert Smith
Image credits: page i, design element by mmalkani/Shutterstock; pages vi and vii, maps designed by Sheryl Dickert Smith; original camp map from Tjideng Reunion; all interior photos provided by the author.
© 2023 Heather B. Moore
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Shadow Mountain Publishing®, at permissions@shadowmountain.com. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of Shadow Mountain Publishing.
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This is a work of historical fiction. Although based on the real-life experiences of Marie Vischer Elliott, additional characters, interactions, and dialogue are fictitious and products of the author’s imagination.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moore, Heather B., author.
Title: Under the Java Moon: based on a true story / Heather B. Moore.
Description: Salt Lake City: Shadow Mountain, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “A World War II novel about a Dutch family who is separated during the war when the Japanese occupy the Dutch East Indies”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023006865 | ISBN 9781639931538 (hardback) | eISBN 9781649331960 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939–1945—Concentration camps—Indonesia—Java—Fiction. | World War, 1939–1945—Prisoners and prisons, Japanese—Fiction. | Prisoners of war—Indonesia—Java—Fiction. | Dutch—Indonesia—Java—Fiction. | Java (Indonesia)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical / 20th Century / World War II | LCGFT: Novels. | Historical fiction. | Biographical fiction. | War fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3613. O5589 U53 2023 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20230313
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023006865
Printed in the United States of America
Publishers Printing
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to Marie Vischer Elliott,
a woman of grace, strength, and faith.
With all my heart, thank you for letting me tell your story.
Contents
Introduction
Historical Timeline
Character Chart
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Part TWO
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Aftermath
Afterword
Chapter Notes
Selected Bibliography
Discussion Questions
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
In August 2021, I had the privilege of meeting Marie (Rita) Vischer Elliott for the first time when she traveled to my home state. My husband and I visited with her for a couple of hours, and she told us stories about her remarkable life in her lovely South African accent. Marie is now called Mary by family and friends, but for clarity, I’ll refer to her as Marie in this introduction and as Rita—a childhood nickname—in the main story. During our first meeting, Marie and I were both vetting each other. I wondered if I’d be able to do justice to a story that Marie had kept to herself for so many decades. She wondered if she was truly ready to share such private and difficult memories.
Marie told me that her family never spoke of the war after it ended. Her parents had wanted to fully move on. Years later, Marie ventured to ask her mother some questions, but her mother gave precious few answers. The topic was still considered a closed book to the past. Because of all that she’d endured, Marie never wanted to watch war movies or read about wars. She especially stayed away from stories about concentration or prison camps and their victims. Like her parents, she was keeping her past firmly behind her.
Yet, a change came over Marie in recent years, and she was surprised to realize that she wanted to share her past. She wrote up a brief summary of her experiences, and she began to tell her family and friends about what had happened to her. The lock she’d kept on her memories and fears was slowly turned, then opened.
Marie’s remarkable story begins when she was a child, living in Indonesia (then called the Netherlands East Indies or Dutch East Indies). Both her parents were originally from the Netherlands. Her father, George Vischer, who worked for the Royal Packet Navigation Company (KPM), was stationed on Java Island.
During World War II, after Japan invaded, conquered, and then occupied Indonesia, Marie’s family was divided up and sent to live in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. Marie, her mother, grandmother, and younger brother Georgie were sent to the Tjideng camp, which interned women and young children. Men and older boys were sent to their own camps. This began a period in Marie’s life that would shape her childhood, her future, and her beliefs.
Although I had read dozens of books about World War II over the years, I hadn’t ever read anything about the Dutch people’s experience in Indonesia. When I searched for books or films about the subject matter, I found only self-published memoirs. I bought everything I could find and began to read.
I was already excited to write a historical novel about Marie’s early life just from what she’d shared with me in our first meeting, but I knew nothing of the war’s impact on Indonesia and its people until I dove deeper into research. Story after story shared by former POWs revealed experiences long buried. At the end of this novel is a list of the memoirs and other historical sources that helped frame this book.
As a backdrop to Marie’s story, it’s important to understand why Indonesia became a strategic asset to the Axis power of Japan during the war. Due to oil embargos against the Axis powers, the oil fields that spanned the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) drew Japan to the islands, searching for mineral resources to fuel its war effort. To Japan, the Dutch colonies were a diamond in the Pacific.
In the early 1600s, the Dutch had joined other traders, such as the Spanish, Portuguese, British, Ottomans, etc., bent on securing trade routes and trade posts throughout southeastern Asia and the Americas. In 1602, in order to establish a dynasty over other traders, the Dutch founded the world’s first multinational trading empire called the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) or Dutch East India Company. This began two centuries of the VOC running trading posts. When the VOC declared bankruptcy in 1796, the Netherlands government took over, and Dutch colonization of the East Indies went into full effect. Over the next several decades, Dutch families moved to Java and Sumatra, seeking opportunities in private enterprise.
On the day that the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941, in the States, but December 8 in the NEI), the NEI was spurred into action, and they declared war on Japan. Every Dutchman age eighteen or older was conscripted into one of the royal military branches to undergo accelerated military training. Overall, the Dutch relied mostly on the western Allied powers for help. But the Allies were busy defending other Pacific Rim countries, such as the Philippines and Singapore, leaving the NEI vulnerable to attack.
Battles raged between Japan and the Dutch, on land and on sea, ending with the Battle of the Java Sea, in which the NEI and Allied fleet was soundly defeated. Three days later, Japanese forces landed on Java Island, and one week later, on March 8, 1942, the NEI governing body officially capitulated to Japan.
As a result, more than one hundred thousand Dutch men, women, and children were funneled into prison camps. An additional forty thousand Dutch men became prisoners of war, many of them shipped to work camps in Burma, Japan, and Thailand.
The Dutch-Indonesians, or Indos, were caught in the middle. Descended from Dutch and Indonesian marriages, due to decades of intermarriage from Dutch colonization, the Indos were given a choice: live in the prison camps or serve the new Japanese regime.
Earlier, the Netherlands had imposed its culture on that of the native Indonesians, and now, with the takeover of the NEI by Japan, everything related to Dutch culture was replaced by Japanese culture. Even Batavia, the capital of the NEI, was renamed to Jakarta. The Japanese language was taught in schools, the Japanese calendar implemented, and local time became Tokyo t ime.
Around 6,000 of the 18,110 islands of the Indonesia archipelago are inhabited. In 1941, the total population of the NEI was around sixty million. By the end of the war, thirty thousand European POWs, the majority of them Dutch, had died. In total, four million civilians, including Indonesians and Indo-Europeans, perished as a result of malnutrition and forced labor.
Under the Java Moon follows the story of Marie and her family, as they endured the hardships of living in a POW camp during World War II. At the end of February 1942, Marie’s father, George Vischer, fled for his life with a group of naval officers in order to join up with Australian Allied forces. On a fateful day in March 1942, Marie Vischer was ushered out of her home. Marie, her elderly grandmother, her mother, and her toddler brother were forced into a women’s prison camp run by the notoriously cruel Japanese commander Captain Kenichi Sonei.
This is Marie’s story.
Historical Timeline
May 15, 1940
The Netherlands surrenders to Germany
December 7, 1941
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
December 8, 1941
Netherlands East Indies government declares war on Japan
December 11, 1941
Japan occupies Malaya
December 25, 1941
Hong Kong surrenders to Japan
January 10, 1942
Japanese forces invade Netherlands East Indies
February 15, 1942
Fall of Singapore
February 27, 1942
Battle of the Java Sea, lost by Dutch and Allies
March 1, 1942
Japanese forces land on Java Island
March 5, 1942
Batavia (Jakarta) fully occupied by Japanese forces
March 8, 1942
Dutch forces decide to capitulate to Japan
Character Chart
Historical Characters
Vischer Family
George Vischer
Robert (Robbie) Vischer
Maria Johanna (Mary) Vischer
Maria Van Benten (oma, grandmother)
Marie (Rita) Vischer
Dientje (Tie) Jansen (aunt)
George (Georgie) Vischer
Jacques Gouverneur
Dr. Ada Starreveld
Eduard (Ed) Gouverneur
Kemala (name changed)
Olga Slingerland
Anja (name changed)
Corrie Van der Hurk
Bima (name changed)
Mrs. Venema
Dea (name changed)
Ina Venema
Tjideng Camp Guards
Captain Kenichi Sonei
Lieutenant Sakai
Kano
Noda
Officers of Auxiliary Minesweeper Endeh
Commander P. Rouwenhorst
Lieutenant Commander J. F. W. de Jong Van Beek en Donk
Lieutenant Commander First Class B. Hessing
Lieutenant Commander Second Class M. J. Arnoldus
Marine Steam Service (Msd) Officer Second Class, Lieutenant P. Hooft
First Lieutenant George Vischer
Second Officer Government Navy, Lieutenant D. H. Poelman
Second Officer Government Navy, Lieutenant Third Class H. Rutgers
Third Officer Government Navy, Lieutenant Third Class D. P. C. Feij
Third Engineer Government Navy, Lieutenant Third Class G. M. J. Van Wijnmalen
Recruit Quartermaster J. J. Ter Pelkwijk
Recruit Quartermaster H. T. Jaden
Crew of Auxiliary Minesweeper Endeh
Sailor First Class P. Castricum
Sailor First Class W. Bakker
Sailor First Class W. O. Mackintosh
Recruit Sailor A. W. Pesch
Sailor First Class W. A. T. Mulder
Recruit Sailor F. C. Loeffen
Sailor First Class A. M. Buys
Recruit Sailor H. J. Hijmans
Sailor First Class C. Chatelain
Sailor Third Class J. F. Franken
Sailor First Class J. Jens
Hospital Attendant’s Mate J. F. Van Beek
Fictional Characters
Vos Family
Willem
Claudia
Greta
Johan
Hetty
Elly
Petra
Hilda
Prologue
“The history of these Japanese camps threatens to be forgotten, because those who were there have kept silent about them and those who have broken the silence have done so too late, after their indignation and their hate had softened or faded, and they had already died the death that is called mildness.”
—Jeroen Brouwers, Tjideng Camp
September, 1945
Rita
Rita Vischer never thought she’d see her father again. Not because they’d received a notice at Tjideng camp that something had happened to him at the Glodok prison camp. But because of the other children in the camp who’d lost their fathers. The news of death came in every day, and there were so many of them. Who was Rita to not share in their fate?
The children’s grief over the news of losing their fathers, their brothers, their opas, was just another in a long list of losses. They’d lost their homes, their schooling, their bikes, their toys . . . but it was the unknown that hurt so much.
Three years. It had been over three years since Rita had seen Papa. She remembered his brown eyes but couldn’t picture his face. Every day she checked the list that the British Red Cross sent to prison camps throughout the island of Java.
His name had yet to be on it.
As eight-year-old Rita perched on the wilting fence in front of the house she’d been sharing with more than a hundred other women and children, she examined the faces of the men and boys walking into camp. She couldn’t look away from the joyous reunions that didn’t include her family. Her heart had lodged in her throat, and her eyes burned hot, but still, she watched. And still, she hoped that out of the limping, hobbling men with gaunt faces mapped with three years of war, she’d see her father’s familiar brown eyes.
He was not here. He wasn’t among the scarecrow-thin men and boys arriving at Tjideng. These men looked nothing like the men or boys Rita had known before the war. Before Japan invaded the Netherlands East Indies and took over Java Island. Before the Dutch surrendered.
Perhaps Papa would never return. Perhaps he’d been among those who’d died of malnutrition, disease, torture, or exposure to the relentless tropical sun.
Rita had witnessed all of these in the women’s camp.
To live or to die. That was the question she faced each day. Each hour. Rita had seen sheer willpower drive a woman to live another day, defying all odds against diseases like malaria, mumps, dysentery, measles, whooping cough, beriberi, and tropical sores, when another woman might simply collapse during roll call. The weight of the merciless sun and suffocating heat becoming the breaking point that sent a woman or girl to her knees. Never to rise again.
