DUTCH INDONESIAN MEMOIRS 1941 - 1948

HANGER 6  Naval Airstation Morokrembangan

PAGE1. 4th MEMOIR ACCOUNT FROM HANGER 6
JOHN H FRANKEN

This is the fourth story from the escape of four ships from Tjilatjap.
The Kota Baroa and Tawali made Ceylon. A fourth that was sunk and the Tjisarua,
All the men mentioned in previous memoirs were all on the 'Kota Baroa'.
John should have been but fate put him on board the Tjisarua.

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour on the 7th December 1941.  We listened to the speeches of the Governor General and the Queen, who declared war on Japan.  We were transferred to Malang, a small city on the slopes of a mountain.  In an old sugar factory, we used the old machine shop to make guide-fins for deep-sea bombs, were attached under the wings of the Catalinas water/land planes to combat Japanese sub-marines.  Sometimes the sirens went off and we saw some dogfights between our Brewsters and the Japanese Navy Zeros.  We stayed in Malang until the end of January 1942 and then we were sent back to Surabaya to prepare for evacuation.  From Tjilatjap, a harbour town on the South coast in Mid-Java, we would be sent to an unknown destination.

On the 10 December, the British flagship the 'Prince of Wales' and the battleship the 'Repulse' were sunk in a torpedo attack near Malakka by Japanese planes.  Most of the Dutch Navy ships were lost in the 'Battle of the Java Sea' on the 27 February 1942.  After that the ABDA (American-British- Dutch-Australian) alliance also collapsed.  The coasts of the island of Java were now wide open for landings by the Japanese invasion's forces.  All the other islands were already taken.

In the meantime, at the navy base in Surabaya we had to make use of air shelters which looked like the torn of the end of a big cigar.  The walls were three feet thick.  The air pumps had to be turned by hand to get fresh air inside.  One day I was sitting on the toilet in the quarters where I was staying, when the sirens went off.  In a hurry I ran with the others, to the air-raid shelter and as soon as I saw the heavy door close behind me, I heard the bombs dropping all over the area.  One of them hit the toilet where I had been on just minutes before the air-raid.  The airport was built on a swamp and when the bombs hit, the landing strips looked like a rice field, that had just been ploughed.  The damage at the airport was terrible.  Some of the hangars, filled with fully loaded planes ready for combat, exploded.

There were also machine guns installed along the waterfront.  One day, the commanding officer on an inspection tour, accidentally pulled the trigger of one of those machine guns and of course, the bullets came flying out.  They went through the walls of the main building.  Some of the fragments hit a student mechanic by the name of Smethorst in his behind.  On the next air-raid one of these machine guns shot down a Japanese navy Zero.

Then the order came to actually evacuate to Tjilatjap, a distance of about 600Km from Surabaya.  Fourteen of us were assigned to an airport bus with an Indonesian driver.  Each of us received a gun (model 95) with ammunition, just in case we would meet some Japanese soldiers, what a joke!  While we were loading up the bus with food and drinks, the sirens went off again for another air-raid.  We were at the outskirts of the airport, and we saw the dogfight above the navy base.  We took shelter under the bus and when the raid was over, the driver had disappeared.  Only one of us could drive the bus.  His name was Theo Snellen van Vollenhoven.  He survived the war and is now a retired bus driver in the city of Los Angeles.

We discovered when we were on the road, that all the road signs were removed over the whole island of Java.  Every so often another man had to sit in front of the bus near the driver to show him the way, depending on which area they had been familiar with.  If he had relatives living there, he was allowed to say goodbye.  When we passed through Djokjakarta, I said goodbye to my mother.  That was the last time I saw her alive.  This stayed engraved into my mind.  My mother died on November 2, 1944, in a Japanese prison camp in Ambarawa.

In that same camp was a woman Mrs. Van der Velde with two children, a boy Benno and a girl Elise.  Benno today is an accountant in Amsterdam, Holland.  His sister is married and a grandmother in Jerusalem, Israel.  Their father, who passed away in a Japanese prison camp, performed the marriage ceremony of my brother Paul in 1937.  As he (Paul) was a pious Jew, the condition was that he would be married by a rabbi if he ever got to Holland.  Mrs. Van der Velde went to Holland after the war where she found out that she had T.B.  I had then married a sister of my brother Paul's wife.  When Mrs. Van der Velde went to Switzerland for treatment, I adopted her daughter Elizabeth until her mother returned healed from her illness.  Then her daughter went back to her.  I emigrated to Canada in 1951 and divorced in 1955 but I kept in contact with Mrs. Van der Velde.  She was the one who brought me into contact with my second wife, Sonic, who I married in 1960.

We had stopped our bus at that time in the middle of the night, for rest, refreshments and fuel near a little village called Ngawi.  The Japanese were very close.  We did not stay long and continued our trip to Tjilatjap.  We heard that the airbase Morokrembangan in Surabaja was completely demolished.  A long time before this war broke out, the Japanese had sent many spies to Indonesia.  The Navy-Airforce had put old planes on the water with fake bamboo guns and when the bombings started, not one of the decoy planes was hit, only the real ones.

The Japanese had landed at Rembang and were trying to cut off the evacuation from Tjilatjap.  Only a few of our side were thinking of forming a guerrilla group, but nothing was organized at this point in time.  When we arrived in Tjilatjap, we had to return our guns and ammunition and there was a lot of commotion and disarray.  The harbour was full of ships of the Dutch Merchant Marine.  In the meantime, a lot of air-raids took place as the Japanese knew that evacuation was in progress.  The boys in the three-year course were on the boat the 'Kota Baroe' and next to it was the Java-China-Japan line ship, the 'Tjisarua', the biggest of them all. 

Many of the corporals and sergeants of our Navy training school were there and they asked us to join them.  The other ships were full of women and children. The most important thing was to get on board as soon as possible and try to leave this chaotic place. Many ships were leaving, also planes loaded with officers and their families.  We stayed another day, without any explanation.  All fourteen of us boarded the 'Tjisarua' going to an unknown destination. We had one 7cm gun on board!  We heard that some of the ships that had left ahead of us, had been torpedoed after all the effort of getting out of this mousetrap on the South coast.  There must have been a circle of sub-marines waiting outside the harbour.  This was a rumour, and nobody knew for sure! Everything was upside down as the world was collapsing around us.

About 650 men were on board the Tjisarua and it was very crowded.  We slept on the upper deck side by side, with our navy bag as pillow.  We were very happy that we were aboard and leaving, not knowing what lay ahead of us in the future.  We left as it became dark and we went in eastern direction, keeping close to the coastline trying to avoid any waiting subs.  We left behind a quay full of just arrived war armament and complete planes, still in their crates, soon to be burnt so that nothing would be left for the enemy.  The next day we came to the end of the south coast of Java, and we changed direction to the south-east.  We then understood that we were on the way to Australia.  The sea was very calm.  Nobody complained as it was just like camping, it was the best under these circumstances.  As food we got porridge with jam, and we did not complain.  There was much better food for the officers, they got meat and potatoes with onions.

We were apparently escaping the ring of subs and were starting to feel safe.  With a calm sea, the night sky full of stars, the atmosphere became more relaxed as we were almost there, but not for long.  It was around eleven o'clock in the morning when the ship's siren went off, the sign of alarm like there was an air-raid in progress.  We were roughly awakened out of our dreams about Australia.  Three long blasts and one short one, which means the letter 'V' for aircraft alarm.  One single plane with a red ball under its wings, came flying over.  It circled once and disappeared in a southern direction.  We were hoping that the main fleet was too far away to block our escape before night-time.  Maybe, maybe, we were hoping, praying in silence.  But it was in vain!

At three o'clock in the afternoon, we saw a smoke plume at the horizon a Japanese warship!  We would not see Australia after all.  Shortly afterwards another one appeared, a corvette.  They were signing with their flags, and we stopped our ship.  The two warships were just circling, about a dozen torpedoes pointed at us and also their cannons.  Gabel and Van Veen told me, "Let's go to the other side of the ship, then we can jump off if they start firing". How naive we were... On the other side of the ship, we saw more torpedoes pointed at us and they kept circling like sharks.  They lowered a sloop with a crew of Japanese marines on board and they came to our ship. We lowered a rope ladder to let them come on board.  Then another three warships appeared on the horizon, three battle ships with double towers and now we discovered the enormous war power of the Japanese.  We were always told that they could not fight with their little crooked legs.  That they all wore glasses and were cross-eyed.  That their ships were top heavy with armament, but this was something different from what we were told.

These were beautiful ships and very modern, much better equipped than ours.  On the battleship decks we saw hundreds of Japanese Navy men all lined up in their yellow-brown tropical uniforms.  They looked at us from under their caps.  We felt humiliated and powerless with our only 7cm gun and to top it all off one of our officers went to the gun to fire it!  He was hastily told to get lost, as he would put all our lives in jeopardy.  Was this the first time that they had looked at some white people?  It was our first sight of the Japanese enemy and we felt powerless.  The cruisers were circling so close that we could see their faces and their dirty smiles of triumph.  We were just a little stop-over to entertain their crew.  The three battleships stayed for a while and then left the scene.  We started to realize that this was the beginning of becoming Prisoners of War.

The voices of the marines who came on board were very loud and mad sounding, but maybe they were just asking, "How are you”.  We were all told to come on deck to listen to a speech.  I will never forget this!  The Japanese officer jumped on the railing of our ship and walked to the front.  He made a good impression doing this.  He made a speech in perfect English and told us that they would win the war, that we were now prisoners of war without any honour.  We were very lucky that the weather was good and that there were hardly any waves so that nobody was seasick.  The officers told us that we had to follow all the commands, or we would be punished.  The cruisers kept close watch.  The engines of the 'Tjisarua' started again and we went in a north-easterly direction.  We were now on the way between the Sunda Islands, under the escort of one warship.  We could do nothing with the Japanese crew on board.

The next morning warships came alongside again.  I did not know if they were the same ones.  After waking up I thought that I was waking up from a nightmare, but the truth was that the Japanese flag was on top of our mast.  Yesterday it was red, white, and blue and now it was a red ball.  We were now in the Strait of Lombok and some men were talking about escaping, but with the strong current and sharks around, it would be just suicide.

On March 8, 1942, we were all called on deck and given a tin cup which was filled with wine from a wooden barrel.  We did not know what was behind this but we soon found out.  We had to drink the wine and when this was finished, the Japanese officer told us that we had just drunk to the downfall of Java.  We felt like throwing up and he was, laughing his head off.  For him this was a big joke.  This was their, kind of humour!  I never got used to it and we got more of it during the next three and a half years.  While on board we were counted again and again, a million times, over and over.

When we entered the harbour of Makassar, we passed beautiful little islands.  Was this the opportunity for escaping?  It was noon, small boats were around us from the local inhabitants, but we did not know if they were trustworthy.  They were not really known for their loyalty to the Dutch Government. Everything looked so beautiful, and it was hard to believe that a war was going on.  With a lot of screaming and pushing we disembarked.  On the way out, I passed the ship's kitchen where a nice steak was just sizzling.  I looked around and found a piece of cloth, took the steak out of the, frying pan and threw it at Gys Flammang as it became too hot, and he threw it back at me.  I hid it behind my shirt, not knowing that it would take another three and a half years to get my next steak.  We could not take anything with us but a toothbrush and a towel and were told that the rest of our clothing which was in our blue navy bags, would soon follow.  Many did not believe this and took most of their belongings with them.

We boarded a landing craft and went ashore with a lot of 'kurahs” (hurry, hurry,) kicks and hits with the butts of their guns, we had to climb on the quay.  On a small space in a corner, surrounded by fences, we had to stand to attention. We were counted, counted, and counted again, a thousand times.  In the meantime, it became completely dark.  The burnt out and empty buildings and sheds we saw across the streets, looked very depressing.  We saw ordnances on motorcycles passing by and more luxury cars with red headlights loaded with stolen merchandise of the Dutch civilians who had already been put in separate camps.  We had to wait a very long time while we were sitting around on the ground.

Suddenly there were the loud 'kurah's, at the top of their lungs they screamed, and we learned the meaning very fast.  In this case we had to stand up very fast and be counted again.  We had to walk in a long row.  At first, we just walked then we had to walk faster and then in a slow run.  As I was then 20 years old, it did not bother me very much, but my thoughts were with the much older ones, who were also carrying heavy luggage.  It did not take very long for them to throw it to the side of the streets.  It was too heavy to carry and even the younger ones had to do the same.

The natives, watching us from the sides of the roads, had never seen the Dutch running like that, all the time being pushed and shoved along by these little people.  They were enjoying this scene very much; they were shouting at us while fighting for the luggage which we were not able to carry any more as it was thrown to the side of the road.  There and then I realized that this was the end of the Dutch East Indies being a Dutch colony.  Now we had surrendered to the Japanese and now we also had the hate of the local natives upon us.  We stopped in the darkness of the night in front of a big ugly building, which was a women’s prison.  In groups of fifty we had to enter after being counted a thousand times and once more, before we entered the cells, pushed by an animal of a Jap who used a heavy piece of wood for counting.  Everybody received a hit when he passed by this bully.

The cell was made for 18 women, and we were in it with 130 persons.  Many were sitting, some were laying down.  The ones at a wall had a little back support.  The prisoners of this prison, thieves, and murderers, were released and we took their places.  The boys in the next cell had come in a day earlier.  We found out that they were the ones who survived the Battle of the Java Sea and were from the battle ships 'De Ruyter', 'Piet Heim', 'Van Amstel', 'Dubois', 'Kortenaar', 'De Java', the American destroyer 'Pope', the English cruiser 'Exeter' and the 'Encounter'.  Their cells were also very overloaded, and we were trying to get information from each other about friends and about the results of the battles.  No paper headlines, but careful information through the prison walls by morse code.

We were very hungry and very tired from all the emotions and were trying to sleep on the hard cement floor.  The cell had only one window with steel bars and one wooden toilet which had to be emptied many times.  The smell was unbearable.  At that time, we were still a mixed bunch of sailors and officers together.  The officers were thinking that they were the only ones there in the cell and took possession at the only window for fresh air.  We made it clear that we also had some rights for fresh air.  The next morning, we received our first breakfast, a slice of bread.  After that we had to wait until the evening for a little rice and a piece of dried flying fish.  Plates were not available.  We had to use anything, a handkerchief, a hat, or your bare hands.

We were let out the next day on an open cement platform for a so-called bath.  We were sprayed with a hose by a small native boy.  He most likely washed his buffaloes like that as he enjoyed this spraying very much.  We washed ourselves very well and even held our underwear in the stream of the hose.  It would not be cleaned, but it had the fresh feeling of cleanliness.  That bath was followed by some quick exercises to loosen our muscles as they were very stiff from sitting in those crammed quarters.  We had to run three times around the enclosed area, followed by making rows of five on our knees followed by being counted then counted and counted again.

The Japanese officers and ships' crew came to see us in our cells like it was a zoo.  They arrived especially around mealtimes as this had a special attraction for them, just like feeding the monkeys. One day, on one of these visits, one of the English Java Sea Battle survivors made a remark, "Bloody bastards!".  One of the officers who happened to understand English overheard his remark.  He was taken out of the cell, fastened to a pole with his hands tightened above his head and then he got a beating with a ships rope which was soaked in water first.  It was the first of many tortures I had to witness.

But slowly the treatment was getting better.  The food arrived twice a day in two big, galvanized washing tubs.  They were filled with rice and again with the dried flying fish.  The prisoner who distributed the rice was responsible that everybody received the same quantity.  Drinking water was in an earthen-baked tub where we could drink it with a halved coconut shell tied to a handle.  The dry cooked rice was not so healthy as it made us constipated.

One day my friend 'Gys Flammang' was called to the guard commander to give him a massage.  When he was finished with it he had to pass by a storage room full of cans, among which were five pound cans of dried prunes.  He managed to steal one can which he smuggled under his towel into the cell. We could not open it as we had no can opener.  I found a rusty nail and punched small holes next to each other till it was enough to pull the can open.  The four of us finished the whole can and felt much better the next day.  I had not gone for the last seven days.  The others got laxatives from our own doctors who had taken over the health care in the prison camp.  There was no treatment for other illnesses though, as there was no medicine available.  The time for exercise also became longer, so did the time outside the cell, sometimes a whole day.  We were moved into a bigger cell and were now sleeping shoulder to shoulder on a bamboo platform instead of on the cement floor.

On March 18, 1942, the day started as usual by counting, then breakfast of rice and fish and then counting again, when I heard a commotion outside our window to the courtyard.  I heard a lot of 'kurah's.  I saw a young Ambonese boy of about 18 years old, ready to be shot by an officer of the guard house.  The people of Ambon loved the Dutch Queen as many Dutch should.  The young man was called to the guardhouse by the Japanese officer where he was told to take down the picture of the Queen of Holland, which he did.  The officer threw the picture on the floor and started to dance on it, broke the glass and then tore the picture to shreds. 
The young Ambonese then hit the Jap officer in the face.  The officer took the boy to the courtyard in the back of the guardhouse and asked if he would like to be blindfolded, but the boy refused.  He was then told that he would be shot.  They tied him up to a pole, the officer walked backwards took out his pistol and got ready to shoot.  We were watching with horror through the window.  At that moment the boy managed to release one arm and started to yell at the top of his lungs, 'Long live the Queen!'  The officer kept on shooting and the boy kept on yelling, but the boy was not dead.  The officer walked over to him and put the gun to the boy's temple and fired.  Now we knew what to expect in the future!

We were told to do some work outside the prison walls, in small groups, to clean up the debris of the bomb raids by the Americans.  We also had to load coal into the ships or clean the streets.  In by-gone days it was unacceptable for Dutch people to do this kind of work, but now we had to do it for the new masters.  The natives soon saw that this was very humiliating for us and realized that the reign of the Dutch was over.  Sometimes when we were outside working, they watched us and sung a song to us that went like this. "The rain came, the lamb ran away, The Japanese came, and the Dutch ran for cover" (in their own language in rhyme form).  They were really rubbing it in.

In the evening when we were together after mealtime, we were telling the stories of our experiences of the day and about the situation in town.  We talked about home wherever this might be, or about our families.  We were speculating and made-up fantasies of how the war should end as this imprisonment could not last forever.  In our expectations and fantasies, we sometimes imagined that the Australian troops would soon liberate us, maybe in a matter of weeks.  Of course, there were the ones among us who were more realistic, and they would like to know where we based these rumours on.

These men were the negatives and the pessimists that we did not like to listen to.  They were saying that it would take at least a year.  We believed in only predictions of weeks and were on the positive side.  Soon we had bets going about when the war would end.  We started telling jokes and sang songs to keep our spirits high, especially in the early days of capture.  From different cells songs were coming loud and clear in Dutch.  The English and Americans were joining in with their own repertoires.  Many of us liked to go and work outside the prison, even if some jobs were very dirty and depressing but when we were outside, we were able to smuggle in books, which we found when we had to clean out abandoned houses and schools.  Besides that, we could bring in bananas, eggs, soja sauce etc.

To keep ourselves occupied, we made our own games.  When after a few weeks the food started to improve, our own cooks were assigned to prepare and buy the food at the market.  We were not spoiled, but it tasted much better, especially the rice with a little bit of vegetable soup and a small piece of dried fish.  We were also trying to keep the hygiene as pure as possible applying strict discipline.  Our cell was mopped every day and the only toilet, a drum with cover, was emptied daily and more times, if possible, cleaned out and dusted with calcium powder to eliminate the stench. Slowly we acquired more utensils from the abandoned houses, which we had to clean the debris out of, so that the Jap officers could live there.

Then there was that part of changing clothing and underwear which was not always possible.  The so-called room service which the Japanese had promised by sending our luggage from the ship, never materialized.  The ones who had to throw their luggage to the side of the road when they had not been able to carry it anymore, had practically nothing to wear.  It was very hard to keep our limited wardrobe clean, especially in the tropics where it is so hot.  Finally, when it was about time to leave the prison to go to other quarters, our luggage was brought in by truckloads and dumped right in the middle of the courtyard.  Everybody could look for his own property.  This proved impossible and then we decided to distribute it to the ones who had nothing.

It was now the beginning of April.  We had been about three weeks at this 'hotel' and we were slowly getting fed up with it.  We were told that we were going to another location, but nobody knew where it was going to be.  There were no trucks and we had to walk so it could not be far.  We were counted in rows of five, over and over again and then we were on our way.  We carried everything with us and we looked like a mass of landed immigrants.  The natives were again lining up along the side of the road like before, but this time they got nothing and even a group of P.O.W.'s walking on the street did not look so special anymore.

When we came to the new place, we had to wait in front of it, and then after being counted again, we had to go back where we came from.  Somebody had the instructions wrong, and we had been sent to the wrong place.  We would have to try again the next day.  It was chaos and we were buying food from the natives with the little money we had.  The next day it was a repeat performance, only this time we were going to the ex-Dutch army barracks.  It was a big improvement from what we had before.  The Dutch army P.O.W.'s who were already there, were walking freely all over the grounds in the shadow of big trees. 

The campsite was made up of four quarters with a centre point which was the mess hall.  After being counted, John Koch, Joop Brinkert and I were in barrack 16, altogether 116 men.  The floor was made of stone tiles and each of us got the width of three tiles, a total of 24 inches. I managed to get a hold of a straw mat so that I was not laying directly on the cold floor.  Soon we were surrounded by the Dutch army P.O.W.'s and treated with candy as a matter of sharing.  They had bought it from the inhabitants when they went out on cleaning jobs.

My monetary possessions were only 15 guilders which I had hidden in my shoe.  The rest was taken as they searched me on the ship when I was captured.  In room 16, I was lucky with a place right under a window, where I could climb in and out onto a little grass field.  We could walk around and see other boys and exchange stories about their experiences.  We were pleased not to see the Japanese guards very often, only when we went to the toilets. 

When we had to pass by the guard, we had to make a proper bow.  In the beginning we did not do this right.  Then we were called by the soldier to stand to full attention in order to receive a blow to the side of our head with the inside of his fist.  With your eyes closed you would not know when the fist would come.  The idea was to fall immediately to the ground, otherwise the guard would call another prisoner and he had to hit you as hard as he was able to.  If this was not done to the guards liking he would do it for you, until it was done right.  We practised how to hit and make a bad fall!  If the guard laughed loudly, it meant that you did a good job.

Every day the rumours were different, from landings to fighting on the island but it was only wishful thinking.  In the evening we were singing all kinds of songs or were listening to the experiences of other prisoners.  Many were playing self-made games like chess and checkers, and many were writing diaries.  The food was much improved as we did our own cooking in the camp kitchen.  Everything in the barrack was kept very clean and we had our own inspection team.  Our officers were kept in different and better quarters.

We had a lot of trees on the grounds and also coconut, trees.  Around the camp was a barbed wire fence and about ten feet further out another one which formed a piece of no-man's land in between where nobody was allowed to be.  Lots of smuggling was done by throwing food and other items over, then we would throw the money over fastened to a stone until the guards put an end to it by replacing the outer barbed wire with sheets of tin plate and that did stop the smuggling.  We were quite a mixture in the camp, Australians, Dutch, Indos, English, Americans etc.  My friend Joop Brinkert survived by swimming for 20 hours in the Java Sea.  He now lives in Delft, Holland and is coping with health problems which are a result from his P.O.W. time.

The toilets were set a little further away from the barracks.  They were made of stone and there were no doors in them.  There was a trench about 10 inches wide and a foot deep over the length of the floor, through which a small stream floated the faeces away.  At the end was a cesspool.  Once a week, a large truck with a big container on a rig, sucked the faeces out of the cesspool and drove it out of the camp to the seaside where it was dumped. 
These weekly cleanings were very important to us, as this was our only source to order food and other things from the outside.  When the faeces were dumped into the sea, the six-inch diameter hoses were flushed with sea water and then filled with the goodies we ordered. They passed easily by the guards who never investigated the hoses.  We did not have seats on the toilets, so we had to squat.  Also, paper was not available.  Everybody carried a bottle of water with him.  In Indonesia today, this is still the custom.  One hand to hold the bottle, the other to wash. The Indonesian crews on the cruisers today always wear a glove on their left hand according to their custom.

Then came the announcement again that work crews would have to clean the debris from the bombings.  We were divided in groups of ten to report for work in the morning, after of course, first being counted.  Washing was a big problem as soap was hard to obtain.  When you were counted, you had to turn your head sideways and you called out the number.  After that you had to turn your bead forward again.  If you did not do this fast enough, you got hit on the head with a stick of about 3/4-inch diameter, or you were called in front of the group and hit in the face.

One day the guard asked for volunteer telegraphists and the Navy boys who were familiar with the morse code, stepped forward in the hope to get news from the outside world.  They marched to the main gate and when they returned, in the late afternoon, we were eager to hear some news, but they told us that they had to carry telegraph poles the whole day.  The poles were 40 feet long and one foot in diameter.  This was the Japs kind of humour.  On a later date they asked for volunteers for a swim and there were many who went, escorted by two guards.  When they returned, they were full of red blotches all over their whole body.  They had to bring in a small, stranded boat by dragging it to shore.  It sat in water full of very poisonous jelly fish, the Portuguese Man of War.

Many buildings, stores and harbour warehouses were destroyed.  The cleaning had to be done by us 'Horios' or P.O.W.'s.  The ones at the harbour were very special to us as there were still supplies of clothing and canned food under the debris.  Much was spoiled by fire and water, but some was still in good condition, and we ate it on the spot as it was too risky to bring it into the camp.  One day we found a burnt-out wine cellar under a store.  The guard had no notion of it.  There were three big wine barrels and many bottles.  Some of us kept a watch and some kept the guard busy to distract him.  One by one we went into the cellar to have a taste of the wine.  Some of the men could not stop and over-indulged themselves.  Some of them were quite drunk and on the way back to the camp we were the happiest prisoners ever!  The guard did not know that we were drunk he thought that we were giving a good show, but at the camp when we were being counted, we had a hard time standing straight.  We managed somehow and we also had to hold our breath so the guards would not smell the wine.

One prisoner was caught who tried to smuggle a bottle of wine in.  He was severely punished and beaten with the 'famous' rope soaked in water which was followed with a lot of screaming and yelling.  When the man became unconscious, he was revived by a couple of buckets of water and then received a second beating with the same rope, but this time he was tied to a pole, so he could not fall over.  In the olden days this must have been the cat with the nine tales.  At this point the man was too drunk to react as he was completely numb.  He started singing at the top of his lungs.  He was then taken off the pole and with a rope he was tied to a bicycle and dragged with his face scraping over the ground.  Then our own camp commander, by the name of Gortmans, who also witnessed this torture, walked slowly over to the Japanese bully, by the name of Yoshida.  He snapped at him in the Malay language, 'Tjoekoep'. which means, 'That is enough.'  The poor victim was now unconscious, and Yoshida acted surprised. He got off his bicycle and released the Navy man to us.

Who was this man Gortmans?  He was a man who, with a small group of soldiers kept fighting a guerrilla warfare, even after the official capitulation.  They fought in the mountains but weakened by disaster and exhaustion the group became smaller and smaller.  One way or other, the Japanese let him know that if he did not stop fighting, action would be taken to destroy the families of the group.  So he had to capitulate.  The Japanese thought that they had been fighting a bigger force and were surprised that Gortmans only had a handful of men.  This was the reason that Gortmans could ask for a few concessions before he surrendered.  The officers were allowed to keep their sabres and there were no reprisals taken against the soldiers' families.  Due to this behaviour, Gortmans automatically became the P.O.W camp commander.  Everybody had the highest respect for him, so did this bully Yoshida.

On another occasion this same bully Yoshida saw a prisoner not bowing properly.  It was an Englishman.  He was tied to a pole of the barbed wire near the guardhouse, with his face towards the street so that the city inhabitants could see him.  Soon a small crowd had gathered.  The Englishman was hit with a billiard cue.  His hands were tied behind his back and were also hit, so that both his wrists were broken.  Yoshida kept on hitting and hitting till his pants were wet with semen.  When the ordeal was over and the Englishman was untied, he looked Yoshida straight in the eyes and walked away... that was sheer willpower!  When I saw this happen, I asked myself how people can do this to others, sometimes in the name of their Gods, to inflict such pain to their fellow man.  This man must have had parents or a family at home.  I did not know how all this fitted together.

The smuggling of food became more intense and sometimes we had eggs for breakfast.  We dug long trenches of about a foot deep and covered them with branches and grass, so it would not be noticed.  At the end of the dug-out we made a small fire where we cooked the eggs and other goodies.  We were rather free to do what we liked except when we found out that there would be an inspection or counting.  There was one good Japanese soldier, who risked his life to give us, usually, a day's advance notice so that we could prepare ourselves.  Then it was time to hide all our food treasures. Usually, we tied it to the tree branches, out of sight.

There was a day that we ran out of wood, and we had to find something to make a fire.  We decided to take a piano apart and strip it of the wood.  This piano was standing in a little cabin on the campgrounds near the guardhouse.  Some of the soldiers sometimes used it to practice on.  When we were finished with it, only the strings were left.  When the Japs found out, all hell broke loose.  Our barrack, which was closest to this cabin was suspected, but nobody came forward.  We all had to stand in line and each of us received four hits with the famous rope on our behind.  Mine had all the colours of the rainbow, from purple to black for weeks.  Yoshida was a specialist in torture.  To name some things he did for example, if you were caught smuggling bananas, you had to run a couple of circuits around the camp with a banana sticking out of your mouth.  Or, you had to kneel with a stick behind your kneecap, which stopped your blood from circulating.  When you got up, you could not stand on your feet and the pain was unbearable, also, if you had a moustache, he pulled it out, sometimes the skin came with it!

We were still sent outside the camp to do slave labour, especially cleaning up the debris.   On one of those occasions, I had found a small bag of finely ground hot dried peppers, the hottest chilly you could find.  It was called 'lombok rawit'.  I had hidden it inside my shoes which I carried over my shoulder as I walked on bare feet.  I had used this method many times before, but this time the guard called me back.  He stuck his hand into my shoe and found the bag with chilly.  As punishment I had to eat the whole bag.  My mouth and stomach were burning, but as it did not go fast enough to his liking, he pushed it down my throat.  For weeks afterwards I was very sick and could not eat any food.  I am still on medication today.  The doctors found scar tissues and fissures which may bleed at any time, even to this day.

Many things were happening, and we still heard all kinds of rumours.  If you were caught with a sliver of newspaper in Malay or Japanese, the punishment was severe.  Sometimes they put iodine into your nose.  Or you were put into a push-up position and if you were sagging, you would come down on hot coals which they had put there underneath your stomach, so you kept yourself straight.  Your stomach muscles were painfully tight for weeks afterwards.