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Slave Labourer in Nagasaki – Part Three

Whenever we passed a guard we had to make a proper bow. If we did not do this properly we were called by the soldier. While standing at full attention, we would receive blows to the sides of our heads with the inside of his fist. With our eyes closed we would not know when the fist would strike. The idea was to fall immediately to the ground, otherwise the guard would call another prisoner and command him to hit us as hard as he was able. If this was not done to the guard’s liking, he demonstrated for us until we got it right. We practiced how to hit and make a bad fall. If the guard laughed loudly, it meant he was satisfied.

We were divided into work groups to clean up the debris from the bombing. Many buildings, stores and harbour-storage places had been destroyed. The cleaning of the storage buildings proved especially fruitful as there were still supplies of clothing and canned food under the rubble. Much of the food had been spoiled either by fire or weather conditions, but some were still in good condition. We ate it on the spot, as it was too risky to bring into the camp.

One day we found a burned-out wine cellar in the basement of a store. There were three wine barrels and many bottles. Some of us kept vigil and kept the guard busy to distract him. One by one we went to the cellar and tasted some of the wine, but of course some could not stop themselves and overindulged. They became quite drunk and on the way back to camp were the happiest prisoners ever. One prisoner who had a bottle of wine was caught. He was severely beaten with the famous water-soaked rope, followed by a lot of screaming and yelling from the Japanese. When the man became unconscious they revived him by throwing several buckets of water on him. Then they tied him to a pole so he could not fall over and beat him again. The man was too drunk to react as he was completely numb, and he started singing at the top of his voice. Tied by a rope to a bicycle, he was then dragged with his face to the ground. Our own commander, Gortmans, now walked slowly to Yoshida, the Japanese bully, and snapped at him in Malayan “tjukup” ( this is enough). The man was unconscious and Yoshida acted surprised. He got off his bicycle and released the navy man to us.

Who was this Gortmans? Nicknamed Jan Oorlog (John War), he and a small group of soldiers had continued fighting a guerilla warfare in the mountains even after the official capitulation. He had taunted the Japanese army by broadcasting through his own radio that the Dutch East Indies had not yet surrendered and that the Dutch flag was still flying. Weakened by war and exhaustion, the group had become smaller and smaller. The Japanese had let them know that if they did not stop fighting, action would be taken to destroy the fighting men’s families. The Japanese were infuriated, however, when they realized that Jan Oorlog had only a handful of men and a few bits and pieces of armour. They had been fooled into believing they were dealing with a much larger force.

Due to Gortman’s heroism, he automatically became the POW camp leader and everybody, including Yoshida, had the highest respect for him. After we left for Nagasaki, however, he was decapitated. Was it possible that the Japanese at last took revenge on this man who had humiliated them with his mock surrender?

One day Yoshida saw an English prisoner not bowing properly. As a result he was tied to a pole of the barbed wire fence near the guard house, facing the street so that the city inhabitants could see him. Soon there was a small crowd. Yoshida began whacking the Englishman with a billiard queue. He kept hitting and hitting till his own pants were wet with semen. The prisoner’s hands, which were tied to his back, were also hit, breaking his wrists. When the ordeal was over and the Englishman was untied, he looked Yoshida straight in the eyes and with sheer willpower walked away.

When I witnessed this I asked myself how people could inflict pain on their fellow men, sometimes in the name of their gods. This man Yoshida must have parents and a family at home. I do not know how all this fits together.

The smuggling became bolder, and we sometimes had eggs for breakfast. There was one good Japanese who risked his life by giving us a day’s advance notice if there was to be an inspection. We would usually tie the food to the tree branches out of sight.

One day we ran out of wood and had to find something to make a fire. We decided to take a piano apart and use the wood. This piano was standing in a little cabin near the guard house; when we were done only the strings were left. When they found out, all hell broke loose. Our barrack, which was closest to the cabin, was suspected, but when nobody came forward we all had to stand in line. Each of us received four lashes on our behind with the famous rope. I was black and blue.

Yoshida was a specialist in torture. Sometimes we had to kneel for long periods of time with a stick behind our knees. This cut off the circulation so that standing up became impossible and the pain excruciating. Moustaches were pulled off, sometimes with the skin. If we were caught with the tiniest piece of newspaper, the punishment was very severe, like putting iodine in our noses or being put in a push-up position with hot coals under our bellies.

One day when returning to camp after a day’s work, I carried a small bag of fine-ground dried hot peppers, the hottest you could find, the Lombok rawit. I had the bag in one of my shoes which I carried over my shoulder. I had used this method many times before, but this time the guard called me back and stuck his hand into my shoe, finding the peppers. As punishment he ordered me to eat the contents of the bag while he stood by and watched. I began to experience severe burning sensations in my mouth and stomach, but I was not eating it fast enough to his linking, so he pushed it down my throat. For weeks I was very sick and could not eat. My esophagus was totally damaged. I still suffer from the damage done and continue to take medication because of the scar tissue which can bleed at any time.

Excerpt by John Franken. Published earlier in Four Years till Tomorrow

To be continued.

As always: I welcome your comments right here on this page.

Until next time,

Ronny

 

Slave Labourer in Nagasaki – Part Two

About 11 o’clock the next morning the ship’s siren went off. One single plane with the markings of the Japanese flag came flying overhead. At 3 o’clock we saw a smoke plume on the horizon from a Japanese warship. Shortly afterwards another ship appeared, a corvette. They signaled for us to shop our ship. The two warships just kept circling, their two dozen or so torpedoes and their cannons pointing at us. Gabal and van Veen said: “Let’s go to the other side of the ship – then we can jump off if they start firing.” How naïve we were! When we were at the other side we saw more torpedoes and their cannons pointing at us, and the ships kept circling us like sharks. They lowered a sloop with a crew of marines who boarded our ship. Another three battle ships appeared on the horizon with double towers. Now we could see the enormous war power of the Japanese!

We felt humiliated and powerless with our insignificant gun. The Japanese officer made a speech in perfect English and told us that they would win the war and that we were now POWs without any honor. The Tjisarua started its engines again and we headed northeast to the Sunda Islands under escort of one war ship. Our red-white-and-blue flag was gone from the mast and instead there was the red circle.

Celebes

We entered the harbor of Macassar on the Island of Celebes (now Sulawesi). With a lot of screaming and pushing on the part of the Japanese guards, we disembarked. On shore we were counted, and counted and counted. Then came a loud “Kurrah” (hurry) and we had to jog. In the darkness of the night we finally were given the order to stop in front of a big ugly building which was formerly a women’s prison. We had to be counted again and again by a fierce Japanese guard who used a heavy piece of wood for counting. We were put in a cell that was made for eighteen women, and there were 130 of us! The ones at the walls had a little back support. The boys in the next cell had arrived one day earlier. We found out that they had survived the Battle of the Java Sea. We got the information through the prison walls by Morse code.

The next morning we had our first breakfast, a slice of bread. After that we had to wait till evening for a little rice and a piece of dried flying fish. Plates were not available and we had to use whatever we had – a hat, a handkerchief or our bare hands. The Japanese officers and ship’s crew came to watch us in our cells as if we were animals in a zoo. On one of these visits, one of the English survivors of the Battle of the Java Sea made a remark like “bloody bastards.” One of the officers who understood English overheard the remark. The culprit was taken out of the cell and fastened to a pole, with his hands above his head. Then he was beaten with a ship’s rope that had been soaked in water. This was the first of many tortures which I had to witness.

March 18 started as usual with counting, then breakfast, then counting again. Suddenly I heard commotions outside our window in the courtyard and heard a lot of “Kurrahs”. When I looked out, I saw a young eighteen-year-old Amboinese boy about to be shot by an officer of the guardhouse.

The Amboinese loved the Queen of Holland very much and in every one of their homes one could expect to find a portrait of Queen Wilhelmina hanging on the wall. The boy had been told to take down the picture of the Queen, which he did. The Japanese officer of the guardhouse threw the picture on the ground and started dancing on it, breaking the glass. He then tore the picture to shreds, whereupon the young Amboinese hit the Japanese officer in the face.

The officer took him to the courtyard behind the guardhouse and asked him if he would like to be blindfolded, but the boy refused. He was told that he would be shot, and they tied him to the pole. The officer walked backwards, took his pistol out and was ready to shoot. We watched with horror through the window. At that moment the boy managed to release one arm and he started to yell at the top of his lungs, “Long live the Queen!” The officer began shooting, and the boy kept yelling. After repeated shots the boy was still not dead; the officer walked over and put the gun to his temple.

Excerpt by John Franken.  Published earlier in Four Years till Tomorrow

To be continued.

As always:  I welcome your comments right here on this page.

Until next time,

Ronny

 

Other than civilian concentration camps for women and children, numerous men’s camps existed as well. Men were also used as slave laborers, not only in the Dutch East Indies, but as far away as Japan. The following story was written by John Franken, an amazing Canadian-Dutch man, whom I met on deck of the USS Missouri, moored in the harbor of Bellingham, WA, for the 50^th anniversary of the end of the war in 1995. Part of his story runs parallel with that of my father, ten years his senior. My father was a pilot with the Dutch Naval Air Force in Soerabaja since 1937. John Franken joined in 1941. In February 1942 both men were ordered to evacuate to Tjilatjap and board a ship with unknown destination. From thereon out, their lives continued in different directions. Both survived! Read excerpts of John Franken’s story in my upcoming Blog posts.\

Slave Labourer in Nagasaki

I was born on April 10, 1922, in Semarang, capital of the middle part of the island of Java. I was the fourth of five sons. My father was a traveling salesman for an insurance company while my mother tended a small store. When that became too much for her, my father closed the shop and rebuilt it into a hotel, since there was a big demand for accommodation for salesmen passing through, selling imports from Holland. I learned a lot about my Jewish background during this period because many of the salesmen were Jewish. My mother ran the hotel with a firm hand. She was fair to everybody and was always there when needed. She had many friends among the natives and was very much loved. My father passed away on May 3, 1941. Before he died, he called my brother and me to his bedside and told us to learn a trade.

In July 1941, when I was nineteen, I was mobilized and went into the Naval Air Force in Surabaya, the capital of East Java, and signed a contract for ten years. At the end of January the order came that we had to evacuate to Tjilatjap, a harbor city on the south coast of Middle Java.

We were to be shipped to an unknown destination. Fourteen of us were assigned to an airport transport bus with an Indonesian driver. Each of us was given an antiquated gun (model 95) with ammunition, in case we would meet Japanese soldiers. What a joke! While we were loading the bus with food and drinks, the air raid sirens went off again. We took shelter under the bus and when the air raid was over, the driver had disappeared. Only one of us, Theo Snellen van Vollenhoven, could drive the bus. When we passed through Djogjakarta (now Yogyakarta) I said goodbye to my mother. That was the last time I saw her and it remains engraved in my mind. She died on November 2, 1944, in the Japanese concentration camp of Ambarawa.

When we arrived in Tjilatjap there was a great deal of commotion and disarray. The harbor was crowded with ships from the Dutch Merchant Marine. Meanwhile, there were many air raids because the Japanese knew that an evacuation was in progress. Many ships left but we had to stay another day without explanation. All fourteen of us boarded the Tjisarua and left for an unknown destination, with one seven-cm gun on board. We heard that some ships which had left ahead of us had been torpedoed while trying to get out of this mousetrap on the south coast. It was one big chaos; the world was collapsing around us.

We kept close to the coastline to escape any waiting submarines. The next day we came to the end of the south coast of Java, and we changed direction to southeast. Then we understood that we were heading for Australia. We were apparently escaping the ring of submarines and were starting to feel safe. The sea was calm, the night sky full of stars. The atmosphere was more relaxed – but not for long!  

Excerpt by John Franken. Published earlier in Four Years till Tomorrow

To be continued.

As always: I welcome your comments.

Until next time,

Ronny

I don’t know about you, but the New Year  started ever so slowly for me. Friends who died, two birthdays and a wedding anniversary, and not to forget all the Christmas cards and newsletters from friends and relatives that I wanted to re-read and sometimes respond to made for a very relaxing first week. Then, after I was featured on Highlighted Author.com: http://highlightedauthor.com/2014/01/welcome-ronny-herman-de-jong/  a flood of reactions got me back into the saddle.

Have you made New Year’s resolutions? I would love to hear what they are and I will share a few things I have set my mind to.

1) I have started my bucket list and am very excited when I think of all the things on that list that I will see and do in due time.

2) I have started a list of things I can do to preserve water here in our high and dry part of Arizona.

3) I have started a list of things I already do and can add to in order to save money.

4) If you have read my book, you would know that I would not be Ronny if I did not have a birthday/anniversary/Mother’s Day/Christmas wish list. 🙂 If you have not read my book, please do, because, looking at all the wonderful reviews it got on Amazon, I am sure you will love it and learn from it.

I am looking forward to your comments. I hope I can learn from your suggestions.

Until next time,

Ronny

Christmas Wishes

The final weeks of the year are a busy time for most of us. Buying, wrapping and shipping presents, cooking, parties, you name it, fill our days. So this is a good time for me to take a break!

Before I do that, I have one question for you. Who can tell me the difference between a gift and a present? Is there actually a difference?

I am interested in your comments!

Have a joyous Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

Ronny

The Navajo Code Talkers

Traditionally, Navajos are private people who don’t seek praise for just doing their duty, and because they were sworn to silence the Code Talkers didn’t talk to anyone about their war experiences. What many people don’t know is that there were also members from other tribes among the World War Two Code Talkers. And, what was disappointing to countless Native American Indians who fought to defend their country but were not part of the Code Talkers, is that only the Code Talkers got recognition and they did not. Their recognition finally took place on Wednesday, November 20, 2013, when Congressional leaders formally awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to representatives of all Native Americans from 33 tribes for their service to the U.S. Armed Forces during World War I and World War II.

I recently traveled with my husband to the Navajo reservation, eager to see the Navajo Veterans Memorial in the capital of Navajo Nation, Window Rock. On the way, in a town by the name of  Kayenta, we discovered a small, unobtrusive structure faced with split pine logs and surrounded by Navajo Hogans and sweat lodges. Called the Shadehouse Museum and built by elder Richard Mike, it contained a wonderful collection of code talker memorabilia, letters, uniform parts, some weaponry and historical Navajo items, collected on the various battlefields by his father, King Paul Mike, who was one of the Code Talkers.

Two monuments dedicated to the code talkers deserve mention: the first, installed in 1989, in Phoenix, is a larger-than-life bronze statue of a seated Navajo holding a flute. “Why a flute and not a radio?” you may ask. A plaque next to it states “Among many Native Americans, the flute is a communications tool used to signal the end of confrontation and the coming of peace.”

The second monument is at the Navajo Code Talkers Veterans Memorial Park in Window Rock, the destination of my journey. The bronze statue – also larger-than-life – of a Code Talker in full military gear, complete with radio, antenna and submachine gun is placed at the base of Window Rock, a mystical Redstone rock formation in the shape of an arch. The memorial park is shaped like a medicine wheel, to many Native Americans a primary representation of the four cardinal directions, the four sacred colors, the circle of life, and at the center the eternal fire. A circular path outlines the four directions; there are 16 angled steel pillars with the names of war veterans, and a healing sanctuary used for reflections and solitude with a fountain made of sandstone. It is a sacred place, like many areas of the Navajo reservation, and I was glad to have finally been there. It was a moving experience for me.

After we arrived at our motel, the one and only in Window Rock, a friend of a friend, a surgeon on the reservation for fifteen years, took us to her modern hospital and guided us through many hallways where we saw an amazing collection of old historic photographs of Navajos, a collection that surpassed the one in the museum we visited the following morning. What a treat!  Several Code Talkers had been her patients and two of them are still alive today. We very much appreciated the personal contact, her stories and guided tour of the town, a worthwhile end of my pilgrimage to the Navajo Code Talkers monument.

                           

 

 

 

 

 

This concludes my story about the Navajo Code Talkers. I hope you found it interesting.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Until next time,

Ronny

The Navajo Code Talkers

Today, December 7, the world remembers the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and involved the United States in the War in the Pacific. I also remember with gratitude the Navajo Code Talkers, whose efforts helped end the war and save my life.

The first group of Code Talkers was deployed to a small island in Melanesia called Guadalcanal, east of Papua New Guinea. Infested with leeches and crocodiles in its dense jungles as it was, the Code Talkers did not have an easy time for they were used as everyday soldiers. Officers were very reluctant to use them as “radio messengers” because, even though their code had been tested and proven extremely fast and undecipherable it had not been tested before in combat. The Navajos proved to be adept as night scouts and natural guerilla fighters thanks to their lives on the reservation but it took a while before they were operating as “radiomen”. Slowly, but surely, the code proved to be convincing as the Marines conquered island after island on their way to Japan. Because for many other Marines it was difficult to distinguish them during battle from short Japanese men, many Code Talkers got their own bodyguard.

As the Allies progressed towards Japan, the enemy realized that a strange code was being used, and to prevent them from deciphering it, the Code talkers got together between invasions to update the code. Messages to their families at home were never delivered, in an effort to conceal the source of the code. The most difficult thing to get over for the Navajos was the bloody carnage and the dead bodies they encountered everywhere.

In February 1945, preparing to invade the little island of Iwo Jima, Code Talkers recalled their “Blessing Way” ritual and sprinkled corn pollen while other Marines prayed with their chaplain. Then they hit the beach wading through the dead bodies washed back by the tide. During the first two days, six networks of Code Talkers sent out over 800 battlefield communications with perfect accuracy and a month later, when they transmitted Victory at Iwo Jima, nobody doubted their code any more.

After the war, back on the reservation, they were Indians again, back in their Hogans, working hard for a meager existence, plagued by recurring nightmares, sickness, deafness and memories they could not forget.

The country did not recognize or reward them in any way because the military wanted to maintain their advantage for possible future wars. But the code was never used again and was finally declassified in 1968. President Ronald Reagan named August 14 “National Code Talkers Day” in 1982.

In the year 2000, Congress awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to Navajo Code Talkers, and recognized others in 2008 because “there is no question that their contributions were unparalleled.” (Sen. Tim Johnson)

To be continued.

As usual, I welcome your comments.

Until next time,

Ronny

                          The  Navajo Code Talkers             

It is quiet on the Navajo reservation. It is Thanksgiving weekend 2013. One day just does not seem long enough to take a break from our busy lives and reflect on all the things we are thankful for. So do as I do: take a long weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. Count your blessings. Here is my wish for a Happy Thanksgiving Weekend to you all.

Until next time

Ronny

 

The Navajo Code Talkers

Strangely enough, it was only a couple of years ago that I first heard about the Navajo Code Talkers and the important role they played in the War in the Pacific. More than 3,600 Navajos served in World War Two and fought at every Pacific beach from Guadalcanal to Okinawa. Just 420 of them were Code Talkers. They were instrumental in winning the war. “Without the Navajos the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima” Marine Major Howard Conner said.

I was impressed by what I heard and set out to do research on the Code Talkers. Without them, the Pacific War would not have come to an end when it did, and I would have died in September 1945. So it was important to me to find out exactly who they were and what they did.

On the morning after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, dozens of Navajo volunteers with ponytails and red bandanas, carrying hunting rifles and sacred corn pollen for protection, showed up at the office of the superintendent of the Navajo reservation, ready to defend the United States. The men were sent home because they only spoke Navajo and no official call to arms had been issued.

In Los Angeles, a civil engineer by the name of Philip Johnson, having grown up on the Navajo reservation in Arizona as the son of missionaries, had an idea. He proposed to the Marine Commandant Thomas Holcomb in Camp Elliott, north of San Diego to recruit Navajos whose language was like a secret code, extremely well suited for fast, secure communication. As a result, in April 1942, 29 men, fluent in Navajo and English, were enlisted on the reservation and boarded a train that would take them to a California boot camp. Most of them had never been off the reservation and before going to fight in a foreign land across an ocean they had never seen, medicine men performed a Navajo ritual for them called “The Blessing Way.”

After six weeks in boot camp, where they proved to be model Marines, used as they were to walking miles each day in the high desert, they became the 382^nd Platoon, USMC, and were taken to Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California, to be trained in turning their complex language into a code.

The Code Talkers turned to nature to create their code. Since the Navajo language knows no words for modern warfare like ships, tanks, airplanes or bomber, the Code Talkers had to improvise. For instance, destroyer became calo – “shark”; submarine beshloiron – “fish”; bomb – “egg”, Japanese –  “slant eyes”, grenades – “potatoes”.

When the code was finished, Navy Intelligence could not decipher a single message but the Code Talkers could encode and decode sensitive military information in no time at all. Because in Navajo everything is stored in memory, they had no problem remembering the code names. A couple of them stayed behind to teach the next group and the others were shipped overseas.

To be continued.

Did you know about the Navajo Code Talkers? Did you see the movie “Wind Talkers?” What did you think of the movie?

I welcome your comments.

Until next time,

Ronny 

 

 

My Best Friend “Papa”

It was April 1942 when my parents, two brothers, our nanny Iwa and I were brought by open boat from the Island of Nias, west of Sumatra, to Sibolga, a village on the west coast. About 30 other prisoners – men, women and children – shared the boat with us. There were no toilet facilities; a number of pigs, expropriated by the Japanese, shared our  cramped quarters.

After arriving in Sibolga, the women and children were separated from the men. My father kissed us and told us to look after each other and especially after my mother, who was pregnant with my brother Kees. Then he and the rest of the men were taken to the jail.

In December we were again uprooted (after four earlier moves) and relocated to Brastagi. We traveled all day on very crowded trucks and many women and children became sick. In Brastagi, the Japanese commander, Mr. Saida, visited us in our barrack one day. My mother was working as a nurse in the camp, and when she asked him if he could bring some medicine and food, he did. This did not happen often, as food and medicine were hard to obtain, even outside the camp. I must have been three or four when I was allowed to take baby Kees for walks around the camp. One day, Mr. Saida saw us and walked with us. His visits became a daily routine, not only to Kees and me but for many other children as well. Mr. Saida would call me Ieteke, or “Blondy”. I called him Mr. Saida or “Blacky.” I don’t think our mothers liked our walks with a Japanese officer very much because we should have hated the Japanese. But how could we hate him? We loved him.

Some children called Mr. Saida “Papa” and I asked my mother, “Is Mr. Saida my papa too?”
“No,” my mother said and showed me a picture of my father, who was white.

One day Mr. Saida asked me where my papa was. I did not know, only that he was in the jail. He told me that he had a woman and a little girl. I asked him how old the girl was and he replied, “Four years old, just like you.” He patted my head and called me Blondy. I had so many questions. I asked,  “Does your little girl go to school? I’ll be going soon to the school run by the nuns.” By that time Mr. Saida could speak some Dutch, and he said, “I have not seen my little girl and woman for a long time.”

One day he asked if I would like to write to my papa and he would deliver the letters. So my mother and I would write our letters and I scribbled on a piece of paper: Lieve Papa scribble, scribble,  Ieteke.

My note was one of the many Mr. Saida would be caught with. He was to be beheaded. I did not know what “beheading” meant. He had refused to translate the letters and name the people who had written them. He knew that the writers, including myself, would be beheaded along with him.

One day, he came to say goodbye. Instead of going on our walk, we went behind the barrack. He kneeled down and asked to kneel in front of him. I did not understand…Mr. Saida would be beheaded, his head chopped off? Why? I did not understand.

He said goodbye and kissed me on my forehead and both cheeks, and then he pressed his forehead against mine and cried. Why did he cry? I did not understand. He told me to go to the place where he would be beheaded, so I would remember. “Ieteke,” he said, “remember, some Japanese are good.” I would not remember this until 36 years later.

When I recently asked my mother why she had allowed me to attend the beheading, she explained that towards the end of our stay in the camp she was often sick and spent much time lying down outside on a mat. She was extremely weak and unable to do her daily tasks, often unaware of what was happening. After the beheading had taken place, she did hear about it but thought it best not to talk about it.

Excerpt by Miriam Zwaan van Veen, published earlier in FOUR YEARS TILL TOMORROW
Yes, there were some good Japanese in some camps, who often had a wife and children back home, and who treated the women and children well, behind the backs of their superiors.

As always, I welcome your comments.
Until next time

Ronny