Under the Java Moon, page 36
While Johan is a fictional character, the story of him building a pair of stilts with two tin cans is based on true accounts. The children made holes at the bottom end of tin cans with a nail and a brick, then ran string through the holes, creating a long loop. The children would stand on the cans, open end down, and walk around the yard with a clattering sound (Tjideng Reunion, 378).
Siblings Ralph Ockerse and Evelijn Blaney, who spent the last sixteen months of their internment at Tjideng Camp, called it “by far the worst experience” of the camps they’d been in (Our Childhood, 123). At the beginning of the war years, Tjideng Camp housed 2,600 internees, but by August 1945, more than 10,300 women and children lived at the camp. The siblings distinctly remember roll calls held on Laan Trivelli, which ran through the camp, at 8:00 in the morning and 5:00 in the evening (123–24).
They also described “three occasions when Sonei ordered punishment roll calls that lasted for hours on end. Each roll call coincided with a full moon. . . . One after another, people would collapse as dehydration set in. No one was allowed to attend to those lying in place on the street. Doing so would invite severe punishment. Many among those assembled were barefoot, and when the tar-covered street had begun to soften, blisters developed on the soles of their feet” (Our Childhood, 128–29).
Chapter 22
Living conditions were very cramped throughout the internment camps. The refugees and newcomers were simply crowded into existing houses and structures. A family was lucky if they got a room to themselves. Barracks previously belonging to the KNIL (Royal Netherlands-Indies Army) were converted into units for the POWs, such as George Vischer at Glodok. Many internees had to sleep next to each other, side by side, and head to feet, in an approximately three-by-six-foot space (The Defining Years, 17).
In many of the internment camps throughout the NEI, camp members had to wear designated cloth or metal badges pinned to their shirts or shorts that showed what job they were assigned—such as garbage collecting duty or kitchen duty. Failure to wear a badge would result in punishment (The Defining Years, 20–21).
Throughout the islands’ internment camps, prisoners became creative when foraging for food. Siblings Ralph Ockerse and Evelijn Blaney recounted, “During stormy nights, luck had it when, on occasion, a coconut would drop inside the fence. One could clearly hear it come down as it rustled through the leaves and landed with a thud. On such occasions, many of the women residing in the rooms facing the fence would jump out of the bed and race outside to try to find and get it. Regrettably, this sometimes led to disputes or quarrels and gradually reflected a deterioration of human behavior” (Our Childhood, 115–16). Another tree that produced edible fruit was the ketapan, which “produces an edible nut embedded within its fleshy fruit. At times, a ketapan fruit would drop just inside the fence, which triggered a similar race to recover it” (116).
The experiences of George Vischer working at the prison kitchen in Glodok are patterned after Andrew A. Van Dyk’s explanation of how most camps worked. Daily routines for kitchen staff usually started around four in the morning. Large, 44-gallon drums were filled with water and installed above the fireplaces. Water was boiled to prepare tapioca, rice, vegetables, coffee, or tea—all dependent on those items being available (The Defining Years, 20–21).
The description of the men cooking eggs at Glodok is taken from Ockerse and Blaney’s experience: “To boil [eggs], we had to go through a lot of inconvenience. Through the outside front wall of the kitchen protruded a pipe coming down alongside the wall to just above the ground level from which excess steam vented from meals prepared in the kitchen. Sometimes, [we] would stand in very long lines to take our turn to boil our two eggs, held on a spoon in the stream trickling out” (Our Childhood, 115).
Details about the men from Glodok prison who were allowed out of camp to be on work crews are based on Van Dyk’s experiences: “Each of the inmates carried only a mess kit, consisting of empty tins which were used for soup or porridge and tea. Additionally, they had with them a self-made spoon, fork, and knife, and either a real water bottle or a length of bamboo cut so that one end remained closed. They marched along in shreds of clothing, wearing diverse headgear and footwear. Most of them had native clogs or walked barefooted. On their shoulders they carried shovels, picks, mattocks, and other pieces of equipment to perform work on the roads, in the fields, or in the hills” (The Defining Years, 22).
Mealtime for the work crews came from a Japanese truck that delivered “either soup or gruel into their mess kits. This was augmented by one or two pieces of boiled sweet potato, and finally a cup of tea was slopped into the inmate’s drinking cup” (The Defining Years, 23).
Throughout the internment camps in Indonesia, internees used every resource available to them. For the purposes of this book, I drew from Ockerse and Blaney’s account of their mother making sandals from pieces of wood, then fastening the wood to the foot with a strap made from the rubber tire of a bicycle (Our Childhood, 117–18).
Chapter 23
No news was good news was a frequent mantra at Tjideng Camp. Postcards were allowed to be sent between camps, although they weren’t always received or replied to. “The most common way of learning that a loved one in another camp had died was having a postcard come back to the sender with a curt message ‘dead’ written on it in pencil, and an upside down tjap (stamp) on it” (Tjideng Reunion, 357).
A house next to the medical clinic at Tjideng was reserved for a morgue. Each day, teen girls who’d been assigned to the task of pallbearers, would transport coffins to the delivery truck that had brought in food to the camp. In the early days of the camp, prisoners were allowed to travel to the cemetery with their loved ones for the interment, but Captain Sonei put a stop to that. Eventually the delivery of coffins stopped, and instead, a truckload of bamboo poles and tikars—mats used for bedding—were delivered to the camp. Five women at Tjideng volunteered to make the new coffins from the bamboo poles and tikar panels (Tjideng Reunion, 359–60).
Tropical sores became a plague throughout internment camps due to lack of medical supplies. Maria Zeeman, who spent the war years at Tjideng Camp, said, “I got a sore on my leg. It got worse and worse, and it was so painful and stank to high heaven. . . . and all anyone could do was try to keep it clean any way they could in that awful place. Oh, my goodness, I wished I could just lay there and never get up. . . . I was in such agony. . . . Many others died or lost their limbs. But my mother and Fransje never gave up. They saved my life” (Dutch Girl from Jakarta, 26–27).
Siblings Ralph Ockerse and Evelijn Blaney wrote about Commander Sonei’s pet monkeys, which were used to harass the internees at Tjideng Camp. “At the corner of Tjilamajaweg and Tjioejoengweg, opposite to the central kitchen on that field, was a large cage where several monkeys were kept. Those monkeys were the pride of Camp Commander Sonei. . . . On one occasion, for inexplicable reasons, Sonei sadistically released the monkeys that immediately proceeded to mount an attack and viciously bit any internee that happened to be in their path. Most of the victims bit by the monkeys did get seriously ill” (Our Childhood, 131–32).
Chapter 24
Marie Vischer told me about the many noises children would make in camp, perhaps as a distraction or for simple entertainment: “At one of the houses, I used to jump on the steel plate over the hole with the water meter. I loved the noise it made and also the jumping. Always thought someone would come out to stop the noise, but no one ever did! Also, we had a creaking gate somewhere which I used to swing on and loved the noise. Again, no one came out to stop me! I suppose they felt some child was happy in their misery!”
Moving and condensing space inside the camps, especially at Tjideng Camp, was a common occurrence. Those who lived closer to the main gate were happy to move into a house farther away, since the “de poort”—main gate—was where so many of Captain Sonei’s atrocities took place. “All morning long people were forced to gather their stuff and to find another spot in another overcrowded house, where you have to push people out of the way to get a small space. We’ve gone through this almost every week—I had to move twice and each time I lost things” (Tjideng Reunion, 352).
Meals began to deteriorate as the war progressed, and at Tjideng Camp, Rita remembered how the milk had been diluted, making it a transparent bluish tint (see also Our Childhood, 130).
Chapter 25
While at Tjideng Camp, Jeroen Brouwers said that he knew all about death before he learned to read. With so much death happening around him, he learned to attach no emotion to it, “no fear, no sorrow, no revulsion. A person who was dead was rolled into a rush mat and taken away on a handcart. Her possessions, especially if they included a crumb or grain of food, were fought over, and the place she vacated would be ‘tchopped’ even before the corpse was removed” (Sunken Red, 48).
The ruffian gang of boys in this chapter is based on an account from Ralph Ockerse and Evelijn Blaney, who wrote, “Throughout the camp, one could hear the daily yelling contests between mothers and their children, initiated in utter desperation by the frustrated mothers who had lost complete control over their older children. This had especially become alarming of a fairly sizable group of boys who had turned eleven years of age and become the oldest males at Tjideng by late 1944. These boys felt that they were now ‘in charge.’ They persistently challenged and arranged fights among the eleven-year-old boys to establish supremacy and crown the one with authority and dominance over all others” (Our Childhood, 133).
Ralph Ockerse steered clear of the group, even though he was challenged multiple times. In January 1945, the Japanese authority at Tjideng decided that the oldest boys would be transferred to an all-male camp. This included the boys who were aged eleven, which was considered twelve by the Japanese calendar. The Japanese rationale was “that at eleven, the boys posed a potential sexual threat to female internees” (Our Childhood, 134). Along with one hundred other eleven-year-old boys from Tjideng, Ralph Ockerse was transferred to a camp in Tjimahi.
Chapter 26
The medical center at Tjideng Camp was an improvised hospital, run by four or five doctors and a team of nurses. Medical supplies were very limited, or nonexistent, and there was only so much that could be done for the very ill. Captain Sonei ordered the hospital to be cleared out and dying patients to be transferred out of camp more than once, since he had to report deaths to headquarters in Tokyo and didn’t want a black mark on his name. Sick mothers were separated from their children and sick children were taken away from their mothers (Tjideng Reunion, 348).
At the internment camps throughout Indonesia, work crews were assigned to the internees. Each house was organized by the house leader. “Work parties were needed to clear the septic tank with a bucket and carry the contents to the ditch by the roadside and then to move the septic sludge along the ditch to where it disappeared under the gedek by the side of the main gate” (Tjideng Reunion, 355–356). Younger children were used mostly for this task. The older girls were assigned coffin duty as pallbearers since they were the strongest group. Other work parties fixed the gedek and kawat walls, another team swept streets, another worked washing linens for the hospital, and others were on kitchen duty (356).
Chapter 27
As the months in the internment camps dragged on, clothing became bedraggled. Internees who were transferred from other camps into Tjideng arrived with next to nothing. Arguments broke out over clotheslines as people accused each other of stealing pieces of clothing. “Any piece of cloth, no matter how ragged, had become a potential bartering item for food or a means of maintaining a minimal sense of decorum and modesty in our dress. Tea towels had to serve as clothing when other garments had worn out” (Tjideng Reunion, 357).
The woman shouting out Bible verses to internees is based on Boudewijn Van Oort’s account of a woman who had sewn a Bible into her coat and smuggled it into the camp. She would read verses out loud to any internees who’d listen and, like the woman here, she favored verses in the Book of Revelations (Tjideng Reunion, 356).
I also relied on Boudewijn for details about washing clothing and bodies in camp: “Washing took a considerable effort, for whatever supply of water was available had to be carefully recycled. The usual ritual was for my mother to pour water into a small tin bath, placed on what was left of the lawn, wash me first, and then use the same water to wash herself and, finally, our clothes” (361).
Chapter 28
For several years, Java had experienced a food shortage due to failed rice crops and the cessation of inter-island trade. “Aggravating this situation was the decision made by the Japanese authorities on May 3, 1945, to stockpile rice for the anticipated final showdown with Allied forces on Java” (Tjideng Reunion, 362). So when a shipment of brown beans arrived at Tjideng Camp, the kitchen staff worked to stretch out the supply. They “hollowed out the loaves of sticky, unpalatable bread, mixed the crumbs with brown beans and used this as filling for the bread shell” (363).
Later that month, a shipment of duck eggs arrived, and there would be enough for one egg to be split among three people. Some would trade the eggs for gula Djawa, “a brown sticky confection made from palm sugar. A number of children had developed acetone poisoning from lack of sugar, and a craving for sugar was a widespread phenomenon” (Tjideng Reunion, 364).
Boiling up during these months was the drive for Indonesian independence from the Netherlands, and a commission was established in Batavia to lay the groundwork (Tjideng Reunion, 366). These increased political and war tensions compounded Captain Sonei’s cruelty. One way in which he displayed particular cruelty at the time was by withholding and destroying food. The incident in this chapter occurred on a Tuesday in June 1945 exactly as described: Sonei hid in the back of a bread truck and noticed that the internees weren’t bowing to the Indonesian driver. He ordered the truck to leave the camp, had it return, and then sent it away again. He then decreed that no food would be had for three days and that all food currently in the camp should be destroyed. “He stomped up and down on the bread in the ditches to make sure it was indeed inedible and then, beside himself with rage, entered the kitchens, kicking over the drums so that the soup and porridge being prepared for ten thousand mouths oozed over the ground to turn into mud” (Tjideng Reunion, 367).
Fortunately, later that month, Sonei was promoted and appointed “by the Japanese military to assume the position of head of the office for all prisoner of war concentration camps on Java” (Our Childhood, 129). After Sonei left camp, a Lieutenant Sakai took charge, and the Japanese troops celebrated the change in command with a feast consisting of two piglets. The internees celebrated in other ways, including a musical soiree where “Mrs. t’Hoen gave a short violin recital followed by the singing of some chansons by Greta Beuk and Crince le Roy” (Tjideng Reunion, 371).
Chapter 29
Once Captain Sonei left Tjideng Camp, the children began to play in the streets. They invented many games with sticks and yarn spools. They also played hopscotch with stones and created stilts from tins (Tjideng Reunion, 378). Siblings Ralph Ockerse and Evelijn Blaney remember playing marbles, spinning the tops, and an Indonesian game called gatrik “which involved various ways of hitting a smaller with a larger stick” (Our Childhood, 126).
In Japan, the philosophy of fighting to the death rather than surrendering was strong, dating back to the twelfth century and enshrined in the Bushido Code. “It became the official philosophy of education for Japanese of all classes until the post-World War II period” (The Defining Years, 159).
A welcome change after Sonei left was that Japanese guards began paying the women thirty-five cents to knit socks. It was required, however, that the socks be thirty-five centimeters long. “The women soon discovered that the thirty-five-centimetre standard sock could be achieved faster and with less effort if a shorter product was soaked in water and then stretched with the help of a brick, providing as well a small surplus of cotton” (Tjideng Reunion, 379).
Mary Vischer’s dream about the war ending comes from a personal interview with Marie (Rita). She told me that “On the night of the 15th of August, Mom dreamed that the war was over. And the next day, August 16th, on her birthday, a train came by on the railroad tracks elevated by a dike, along one side of the camp’s fence, so we could see it going by. Javanese were shouting and hanging out of the train, saying that the war had ended. We had no contact with the outside world at all and had no idea that Europe was already free.”
As depicted in this chapter, four to five people were still dying each day in camp, despite the war being over (Tjideng Camp, 381). Jeroen Brouwers, who spent time at Tjideng Camp, recalled, “I saw dead women every day: their legs gave out during the prolonged roll calls in the hammering heat in the kampulan square (the roll call square); they fell forward or backward or sideways while on work detail; they did not get up when it grew light in the morning, or they sat down or lay down in the middle of the day, closed their eyes and turned out to be dead” (Sunken Red, 48).
I took some details about life in Tjideng on the days leading up to and right after the end of the war from Boudewijn Van Oort. According to Van Oort, August 23, 1945, started out as any other day. His mother rose early to join the kitchen staff, and breakfast consisted of starchy tapioca porridge, dished out from bathtubs to each house. Since the end of war announcement, rice rations had increased due to approval by Lt. Sakai. Roll call, since Sonei’s departure, had switched to only once a day. That afternoon, the vegetable truck arrived with food to be delivered, and carried out coffins on the way back through the gate. Then later in the afternoon, Sakai sent for the house leaders. No one thought anything was too amiss until the house leaders called the residents of their houses together for an announcement. “There will be no more appèl [roll call],” a house leader announced. “Lieutenant Sakai’s formal announcement can be found in the camp office. I believe it says the war is over, but we must stay in the camp until the Allies arrive” (Tjideng Reunion, 392). The announcement was a statement written in English and tacked to the notice board (393).
