Want to learn (more) about WWII in the Dutch East Indies, the Bersiap Period and the Independence War? Watch the 40-minute documentary by Simone Berger & Armando Ello with English subtitles. Meet the Filmmakers: Live Q&A ONLINE on December 3, 2023 11am PST Register and/or send in your questions here An Exceptional Resource The Indo…
On August 15, 2023, the victims of the Second World War in the former Dutch East Indies were commemorated in over fifty places in the Netherlands. The war experiences and the large-scale displacement that followed are still affecting two million people in the Netherlands with an Indies family war story and in the Dutch society…
By Priscilla Kluge McMullen August 6 & 9, 1945 – Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki While the world mourns and modern historians might accentuate the horrific deaths and devastation caused by these two atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese people over seventy years ago, we should not forget that the ultimate effect of these…
by Jane Vogel Mantiri Introduction I met Sonja in October 2011, almost seven decades after Papa was captured by the Japanese, shackled, and forced to work the Death Railway in Siam (Thailand) as a POW (prisoner of war). Papa would endure almost four years of torture before he was released from hell. He never told…
By Gerard Willem Charles Lemmens The Imperial War Museum in London asked me to write the following story. The Dutch East Indies Around my birth on April 24th, 1940, in the R.C. hospital of Surabaya, my parents bought this rattle at the silversmith—de Wolf—in honor of my birth. I (Gerard Willem Charles Lemmens) was the…
“Who was in which lifeboat?” A mission by Peter Versteeg to find out which of the three remaining lifeboats his father traveled in — as one of 116 survivors of the sunken “Poelau Bras” — and who were in the other two lifeboats? www.poelau-bras.nl (To translate this website from Dutch to English: Go to Google…
By Ralph Ockerse When The Indo Project posted on social media, “TIP wants to know: Tell us about your Omas and Opas! What did they mean to you? What did you learn about Indo culture from them?” , many Indos responded including Ralph Ockerse responded with this riveting story about his grandparents. An Opportunity Missed!…
Read TIP’s Indo Profile about war camp survivor and musician Hannie Blaauw. Hannie Blaauw is my very special friend. I met him about twenty years ago when I moved to Arizona. Born and raised on Java, he is eleven years older than I, so he was a teenager during the years of Japanese oppression. He…
[Featured Photo: From Left to right: sister, mother, Oscar and father. Oscar in tub in Malang] By Oscar Micola Von Furstenrecht Born 1929-December-03 in Malang, Indonesia (Java) At a very young age, growing up in Malang, I was admitted into a military hospital with Bacilary Tifus. After a difficult time, I slipped into a…
On Saturday, August 10, 2019, The Indo Project board member, Eric Morgan, was honored to lay a wreath on behalf of The Indo Project at the annual commemoration ceremonies ‘Herdenking Ceremony,’ which was held at the National Cemetery of Los Angeles. Approximately fifty people came together out of respect for the fallen forces and civilians…