Month: October 2013

Held by the Kempeitai – Part Three

Terror struck my heart. There it was! Clanking noises. The iron gate opened and the mantri (Indonesian guard) mentioned me to come, not saying a word. I entered the room. White walls. A Japanese Kempeitai officer sat behind a table while an Indonesian translator sat beside it. Did I know so and so? No? You must know him! The Jap stood up and belted me one across the face. Speak up! I know you were at his house. Another belt right across my nose. Blood gushed onto the floor. There was a wash basin in the corner with a rubber hose. The translator pointed to it. If you don’t say the name, we will pump your belly full of water and stomp on it, he explained. I urinated in my shorts. Nothing more happened and I returned to my cell.

In the first camp, I had brushed my knee against a tree, breaking the skin. After several days this opening started festering and by now had become five times the original size and was oozing pus. Days went by. I had a lot of pain and was feverish. When I managed to attract the mantri’s attention, he looked at my wound and said I should go to the saal sakit (sick ward). That afternoon I was moved to a long low building with rows of beds. Beds! What a luxury! Later I found myself wishing for a concrete slab. The beds were infested with armies of lice and the itching was soon unbearable. My wound took a turn for the worse and now covered my whole knee. I could no longer stand. The mantra had gedebok pisang (the outer layer of the banana tree trunk) which he cut into ribbons. I nearly died when he attempted to cleanse the wound with salt. He had only quinine pills for malaria fever. These he crushed, sprinkling the powder on the wound, and bandaging it with gedebok. Between the pain, the itching and the moans of the dysentery sufferers around me, I did not sleep much.

There were maggots in my wound and I also came down with dysentery, but there was no pain. One afternoon they came for me. I was carried out on a stretcher to the same room with the white walls and the table. On that table was a large magneto, the kind of ignition magneto that was used in the first auto and marine engines. This one was extra large and it had a crank at the end. Wires hung from it. My stretcher was put on the floor. Judging by the reaction of the two men I must have smelled bad. Again they posed the same question “Do you know?” Again I denied it. The men then picked up the wires and wrapped them around my ears. The crank was turned and I was writhing sideways on the stretcher. The questions were repeated and once again the crank was turned. Dysentery did not permit me to hold back, and all my diarrhea ran out. Kicks and punches hammered down, which were especially painful on my wounded knee. Fortunately I must have made such a mess and caused such an odor that I was not kept there very long. The gedebok had come apart too. I was very lucky – more so when the dysentery subsided and the maggots cleaned the wound and allowed it to heal.

Sentenced to Life

One morning two Japanese came for me. I was chained by the wrists to other boys and forced onto a truck. An hour later, still chained together, slumped on the floor in a large building, we listened while a “judge” pronounced life sentences on us. After the war we heard that Benny van Dam and many others wee executed, and only through an error in documentation did some of us escape the same fate. We were herded into a train and left Malang. The windows were covered but from the sound of the centre-gear track system we guessed that we were headed for Ambarawa in central Java. Our destination was to be FortWillem I, which had been converted into a Kempeitai prison. A sorry troop of near-skeletons with swollen beri-beri legs marched in. Our quarters were large, open cement floors where we slept side-by-side. There were no latrines, only one large drum per floor. Upon this everyone perched with wobbly legs after waiting in lineup. Our luxury was a water pipe between the old fort walls where we could take a shower.

Excerpt by Robert Schultz, published earlier in  Four Years till Tomorrow 

To be continued

Listen to the sounds of War: the ominous sounds of Japanese soldiers marching, enemy aircraft, the Bomb on Nagasaki:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01k6q9MvSpM&feature=youtu.be

As always, I welcome your comments.

Until next time

Ronny

 

 Held by the Kempeitai  – Part Two

One day all those who were between the ages of fourteen and sixteen (that is how young we were at the time of this story) were summoned to report to the Japanese commandant on the alan-alan (city square) to be sent to what we were told were training camps. Ordered to climb onto open trucks and standing shoulder to shoulder, we bounced up mountain roads to what had been a plantation named Telogosari. Here we did forced labor, making arang (charcoal) by stoking wood in large earth mounds. We also planted jarak (caster oil bushes), the oil of which was to lubricate machinery. We were harassed, not so much by the Japanese, but by one of our own who had been appointed by the Japanese to be responsible for production.

We spent the nights sleeping on the floor of a large wooden structure previously used for drying out plantation products. One night a great commotion woke me. Shouting came from a far corner, “kolo jenking, kolo jenking!” (scorpions). The sound of boots and shoes crashing down came from everywhere; there were no lights. No one went back to sleep that night. Early morning revealed two dead scorpions. Everyone took a good look in his shoes and sure enough, there was another purplish-black scorpion, its tail menacingly arched forward. It did not last long, crunched under a boot.

One night a few weeks later, we heard trucks coming down the gravel road into the camp. Voices from the square became louder. Sounds of boots crunching on the gravel came toward the quiet barracks. Lights shone. Names were called out, interspersed with many bakaeros (stupid bastard). Rudi, Wim, Jim Brandligt, then,,,Rob Schultz – me! There were about twenty of us. “Ayo, keluar, jalan – lekas, lekas.”(Come on, get out, walk, quickly, quickly). In the square the commandant talked to us but all we could understand was the bakaeros and buruk (bad). Into the trucks we went, then up the road out of the camp. The wind felt cold as we stood in the back.

We arrived in the dark at a gate set in a stone wall. Herded inside, we had to dump all our belongings and empty our pockets. We were then led down a corridor, through an iron gate, into a chamber where many men were slumped down on long concrete surfaces. Hushed voices. This was the Lowokwaru Prison on the outskirts of  Malang.

I could not sleep. When morning came, tin plates clattered down at the gate. Kanji (laundry starch) was our breakfast, and not much of even that. Afternoon came, bringing tin plates with watery corn. My stomach ached: Hunger! This went on for several days. We learned to chew each kernel for half a minute, making the meal last an hour. It took an enormous amount of self-discipline.

In the evening the Amboinese men among us began to sing. Anyone who has heard Amboinese songs knows how heart-rending they can be. When sung n harmony in that desolate place, many of us felt tears well up.

After what seemed an eternity, names were called. Two at a time were to go, but none came back. My turn came. Two minutes later I was in another place, alone. It was a very small, solid concrete cell with a tall iron gate. My bed was a cement slab. The toilet was a round hole in the floor; cockroaches scurried at the rim.

What was that? A voice? From down there? I bent over the hole but could not make out the sound. Then I stuck my head part way down it. “What’s your name? I am Johnnie.” My neighbor was communicating with me – through the sewer connecting pipes! He gave me some information: Rooie lap (red rug) means the guard is coming. He then told me that Nono had just come back, and that his hands were swollen and red and he was unable to hold anything. He had been hung by his wrists from the wall for half an hour while the Jap had asked him questions. Then I heard an ominous warning, “You may be next!”

Excerpt by Robert Schultz, published earlier in Four Years till Tomorrow 

To be continued

Listen to the sounds of Japanese soldiers marching into town, the droning sounds of enemy aircraft, the Bomb on Nagasaki:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01k6q9MvSpM&feature=youtu.be

As always, I welcome your comments.

Until next time

Ronny

 

 

 

 

Many survivors of the brutal treatment by the Japanese during World War Two in the Pacific wrote down their stories. Some are widely published, others are not. I will be posting a series of excerpts from survivors on my blog in the weeks to come. Following is the first.

HELD BY THE KEMPEITAI

In December 1941 at the LBD (air-raid warning post in Malang, East Java) boys and girls from the local high school sat perched along a stone verandah, legs dangling, happily chatting. Although more interested in each other than in trying to comprehend what they were there for, a sense of foreboding was all around. The Japanese were coming! There were close! What did it mean? News was sporadic and rumors were many. What was going to happen?

In early March of 1942 all the schools were closed. Hundreds of kids were on the streets, most of them on bikes. People had been told on the radio to cooperate when the Dutch authority would be transferred to the Japanese. We were soon to see what this meant. A column of unfamiliar looking soldiers with rifles in hand came down the street. Many more followed. A peculiar smell of clothing textile and sweat accompanied them; I smell I would never forget. Where these the Japanese? Where were our people?

A friend and I kept going on our bikes, curious. we came to a large building, a hotel, and the gates across its driveway swung open. Inside we could see groups of our military men standing, no weapons on them, their sacks and things lying on the ground. At the gate stood a Japanese soldier wearing a cap with strips of cloth hanging from the back. He had puttees (strip wrappings) around his legs. He spotted us as we stood beside our bikes, watching. Immediately he screamed at us in Japanese, jumping toward us. The next moment his hand flung across my face, sending my glasses flying and me staggering, knocking my bike to the ground. Another soldier came to my friend, kicking his bike down also. Then the two of them dragged us forward while pushing down on our shoulders. Meanwhile from inside came voices shouting in Dutch, “You must bow to them! Bow forward!” and we could see our men pointing at us.

Then we understood. Introductory “lesson one” in Japanese authority: You stop and bow when you pass a Japanese sentry. Another smack across my face. Then one of the soldiers picked up my glasses from the sand and handed them to me.

The large number of kids roaming around on bikes must have begun to worry the Japanese. Soon, most Dutch people were concentrated into wijken (sections of the city) marked off as a camp. Those of mixed blood, part Dutch/part Indonesian, could stay outside the camps but had to carry ID papers. Within a few weeks, however, all the men in this category were rounded up and taken out of the city.

My father, a proud ex-KNIL man, refused to have anything to do with ID. Before the round-up occurred he took off towards the mountains, never to be heard of again. After the war I learned that he had been spotted, captured, and so severely beaten that he died the same day he was taken to Sukun Hospital. Whether he had actually connected with resistance groups I don’t know.

Excerpt by Robert Schultz, published earlier in Four Years till Tomorrow  

To be continued

As always, I welcome your comments.

Until next time

Ronny