by Maureen Welscher The Bombing of Pontianak When I was 8 ½ years old, I lived in Pontianak, the capital of Borneo, Indonesia. On the morning of December 19, 1941, I visited a friend who lived opposite the military barracks. We sat in the lounge facing their barracks. We heard planes, which was a rare…
The former Netherlands (Dutch) East Indies is present-day Indonesia. The Japanese military occupied the Dutch colony in 1942 during the Pacific War, then placed Dutch nationals in internment facilities and prisoner-of-war camps (90,000 civilians, 40,000 military personnel). Some officials of the Japanese military forcefully transferred Dutch women and women of mixed race from the concentration camps…
By Willem ten Wolde I was researching books written in English about the Japanese prison or internment camps in the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, when I found Annelex Hofstra Layson’s autobiography Lost Childhood: My Life in a Japanese Prison Camp During World War II. I was intrigued because it was—so far—the only one…
By Tamara Fielding, New York, USA ADEK CAMP – BATAVIA (Jakarta) – August 1945 My mother was clairvoyant. She always seemed to know things before they happened and had telling dreams. News had penetrated Adek Camp that the Japanese had lost the war and freedom was near. A rumor which we had heard before, but…