‘Initially I lived with my parents and two brothers on a tea company forty kilometers above Soekaboemi in West Java. My mother was a nurse before she got married. In 1918 she contracted the Spanish Flu in the Binnengasthuis in Amsterdam. Her father was Frank van der Goes, co-founder of the SDAP and director of an insurance company. Since my mother’s older sister had died of tuberculosis, my grandparents sent her to Davos for treatment. There she ran into my father. His name was Willem Pieter and he came from a prominent Dutch East Indies family. During his savage single life in Sumatra, he contracted tuberculosis.
White tropical uniforms
Besides tea, our plantation also produced rubber. Every Friday was payday, when the rubber tappers and the tea pickers would all sit on the floor under a lean-to, waiting for their weekly wages from the gentlemen in their white tropical uniforms sitting behind a table. I remember when I was a toddler with Aiman, our main djongos (house boy) sat on the arm. Then he walked to the edge of the slope and made monkey sounds blowing his hand. Whole groups of monkeys flocked to it. Beautiful. From the age of six I had to go to school in Soekaboemi and then I ended up with my two brothers in a boarding house in that town. It was very strict there. But when it was vacation, my mother would pick us up with the driver. I remember playing a slide with my younger brother on slippery paths. When it rained, the clay was very slippery. When we got home we were completely covered in mud. Then the babu had to tjoetjie, the laundry girl, cleaning everything again.
My brother later returned to the company. The new house that my father had built there was only a ruin. A pit had been dug nearby because people thought the Dutch who had lived there had buried a treasure there. Tragic, because my mother had nothing left when she fled with us to Bandung in great haste in early 1942 because the Japanese were coming.
At the beginning of the war I was injured in a Japanese bombing raid. I lost my left hand and I went blind in one eye. I don’t remember much about that.
submission
Initially we could just go to the pool. When the Japanese soldiers came for a swim, we had to get out of the water quickly. We would peek out of our bathing cubicles and see that the Japanese were not wearing swimming trunks, but only a square piece of textile for their gender. We thought that was very Japanese. Just like that greeting. When you passed a sentry box, you had to say ‘kire’ and ‘nore’ and bow. And that was not a matter of submission but just greetings. Only many Dutch did not understand that.
When I turned twelve, I had to take a train from the women’s camp at Bandoeng to the boys’ camp in Ambarawa. That was hundreds of miles away. I remember holding my stump in my pocket during morning roll call because I was ashamed. In addition to the Japanese camp commander, there was a Dutch camp leader. The Dutchman then shouted: “Son, take your hand out of your pocket.” And then, trembling, I pulled out that stump.
Bowing to the Japanese was not a matter of submission but just greetings. Only many Dutch did not understand that
Finally the war ended. It was dangerous outside the camp so we went in an open truck with armed agents to Semarang, from there to travel to Bandung where my mother was. Incidentally, a nun also went with us in that truck. She had had enough, put on a flowery dress and left.
Strange sensation
My mother decided to go to New Zealand with us to recover and then emigrate to the Netherlands. That trip was quite an experience. On the way we went ashore in Brisbane, Australia. Well, if you’ve been in a camp for years, that’s a bit different. We went there in the evening to the cinema. That was a very strange sensation. For example, I had never seen folding benches. And when the lights came on during the intermission, the ceiling looked like a vault of heaven: so many lights. You went from one surprise to another. In New Zealand we waited for my father for a while, but he never came. He had moved in with another woman. We sailed to the Netherlands with the Volendam and slept in hammocks in the forecastle. Near Rotterdam two farm boys with a Dutch flag stood on a dike to welcome us. That was touching.’