Books of Note
The Diary of Prisoner 17326 by John K. Stutterheim, Fordham University Press , New York 2010.
John Stutterheim was born in 1928 , and therefore was fourteen years old when he and his mother and younger brother were ordered out of their home in Malang, Eastern Java, by the invading Japanese army. Thus began their internment, taking them to Surabaja, and Solo. Eventually John was ordered to leave his mother and go to a boy’s camp, where he had the presence of mind, and tenacity to maintain a diary, complete with sketches. This book therefore gives a rare, detailed glimpse of the horrors experienced by boys in those camps and moreover provides information about internment in eastern and central Java . This book is a good read .
In Deze Halve Gevangenis, (In this half Prison), a Diary by Dr. L. F. Jansen, Annotated by G. J. Knaap, Uitgeverij van Wijnen, Franeker, 1988 (CIP/ISBN 90 5194 016 5).
This is a most remarkable account of a little known aspect the Japanese occupation of South East Asia, unfortunately only available in Dutch. At the outbreak of the Pacific War, Leo Jansen, a recent arrival in the Netherlands East Indies, had thanks to his legal education and a gift for language, acquired a senior admininstrative position in the Netherlands East Indies Colonial Government. This, along with his near fluency in Japanese and Malay (inn addition to his excellent command of French, German and English) made him a prime target for rendering assistance to the Japanese propaganda work , centred in Jakarta. Refusal to participate in this form of forced collaboration was not an option, but Leo’s reputation was such that the Japanese Director offered him limited choice: he need not broadcast propaganda. His task was to translate Allied broadcasts into Japanese.
The Japanese Propaganda Bureau had three objectives: to create despondency among European listeners ( especially in Australia), to assure Indonesian listeners and readers of Japan”s assured victory and to ‘hide from Japanese troops the scale of Japanese reversals. Leo, having a modest amount of freedom of action, had daily dinner table discussions with his English, Dutch, Singhalese, Indonesian and Japanese counterparts, which he confides to his secret diary on a daily basis and in great detail. The discussions range over politics, the progress of the war, nationalist movements and philosophy. Leo’s final undoing was the fact that he knew too much and attempted to alert the Allies about the chilly reception they could expect after Japanese capitulation in Indonesia. He was apprehended, suffered torture at the hands of the kempetai (the Japanese military police).
Assisted by a Eurasian girl friend and a sympathetic Japanese soldier he barely survived the war, only to suffer a mis-diagnosis in hospital after liberation.
The story of how this remarkably insightful diary survived the war, eventually was found and after years of research, placed within the proper historic context of occupied Java is almost as amazing as the contents.
TJIDENG REUNION: A MEMOIR OF WW II ON JAVA
A Brief Note on the History of the Pacific War
This surely must be one of the most bizarre wars in recent history. Although its official commencement is given as Dec 7 1941, Japanese soldiers had by then already imposed Japanese imperial authority on Korea, Manchuria, French Indo China and a large part of China where a bloody conflict, punctuated by unspeakable brutality, was dragging on with no end in sight.
All that happened was that on that fateful December Sunday Japan set its sights on the resource rich Netherlands East Indies, a colony whose Imperial master had recently fallen under the heel of the Third Reich. All that stood in the way of Japan’s lunge to the south was 2000 miles of Ocean and the questionable willingness of America and, let’s be generous, the ability of Britain to intervene in such a venture. The diplomatic manoeuvring preceding the conflict has been described in great detail by Dr Herman Bussemaker in his PhD dissertation for the University of Amsterdam (1).
A pre-emptive strike against the only significant opposing military force in this area enjoying, on Sunday December 7, a well-earned day of rest, made a Japanese defeat inevitable, but Japan could at the end of the war claim that with respect to one of its professed strategic objectives: ridding Asia of European dominance, she was successful. The Netherlands East Indies ceased to exists on March 8 1942, and for practical purposes that situation did not change with the ending of the war on 15, August 1945.
Did the atomic bomb end the war with the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima? No, those apocalyptic blasts did not cow the Japanese Government nor its people but precipitated a hurried offensive by the Soviet army to ensure control over the Pacific Shores of Asia and perhaps a Communist act of retribution for the humiliation of the Tsarist defeat in 1905. Japan feared a Russian invasion more than an American one (2).
It is small wonder that the Dutch and other European prisoners languishing in internment camps throughout south east Asia were so flabbergasted by the turn of events after the so-called Allied (actually American) victory. Prisoners they were before August 15 and prisoners they remained afterwards, only finding ultimate relief by exchanging their prison garb for that of refugees. There is no question as to who lost that war.
The one Dutch observer on Java who could see the entire drama unfolding, and made a desperate attempt to forestall, what he saw as, impending postwar disaster, lost his life in the attempt, and would have sunk into oblivion were it not for the fact that his fascinating, intelligently written, insightful diary, survived the war and spurred its postwar owner into a investigation lasting twenty-three years in order to unmask the identity of the mysterious, intelligent, polyglot author and the personae discussed in his daily observations while working for the Japanese Authorities until his final fatal move. (3)
(1) Bussemaker, Herman Th., “Paradise in Peril”, PhD Thesis, University of Amsterdam, Faculty of the Humanities, 2001.
(2) Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi, “The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion, which was more important in Japans’ decision to surrender?” Stanford University, 2007.
(3) Jansen, Dr. Leo F., “In Deze Halve Gevangenis”, van Wijnen, Franeker 1988.
(2) Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi, “The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion, which was more important in Japans’ decision to surrender?” Stanford University, 2007.
(3) Jansen, Dr. Leo F., “In Deze Halve Gevangenis”, van Wijnen, Franeker 1988.
Other Books of note:
Dr Lou De Jong, “het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden”, Vol 11 deals with the Netherlands East Indies (1939-1945).Staatsuitgeverij, S’Gravenhage, 1985.
Johan Fabricius: “Brandende Aarde” , s’Leopolds Uitgever Maatschappij, the Hague, 1949. ( regarding the role of Petroleum resources in the conflict).
Dr Lou De Jong, “het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden”, Vol 11 deals with the Netherlands East Indies (1939-1945).Staatsuitgeverij, S’Gravenhage, 1985.
Johan Fabricius: “Brandende Aarde” , s’Leopolds Uitgever Maatschappij, the Hague, 1949. ( regarding the role of Petroleum resources in the conflict).
Memoirs
Ernest Hillen: “the Way of a Boy”, Penguin, 1993.
Mark Felton: “Children of the Camps”,Pen & Sword, 2011.
Ernest Hillen: “the Way of a Boy”, Penguin, 1993.
Mark Felton: “Children of the Camps”,Pen & Sword, 2011.
Web Articles
Center For ResearchAllied POWS Under The Japanese
Roger Mansell – Director
Roger Mansell – Director
199 First Street, Suite 335
Los Altos CA 94022 (USA)
Tel: 650-941-2037
Los Altos CA 94022 (USA)
Tel: 650-941-2037
http://www.mansell.com/pow-index.html
http://www.mansell.com/apuj-site_index.html
http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/liberation_photos.html
Elizabeth van Kampen (http://www.dutch-east-indies.com/story/index.htm) Her lengthy account includes a particularly gruesome description of the pig basket atrocity.
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