HerStoriaMagazineIssue9_japs.pdf Mar. 2014 | Page 4

Postscript

Pen drawing by woman in Camp Tangerang.
Image: Image Bank WW2 – NIOD-C.W.C.A. Augustijn. www.geheugenvannederland.nl

were appointed to guard us from the
Indonesians. Prior to this, there was
a chaotic period when many civilians
were massacred by the native people.

God knows what would have happened
if we had got separated then. It took
three days to get to Batavia. The train
stopped at night. The rails were broken

We caught and boiled snails for food
Eventually lists of missing people
were distributed around the camps by
the Red Cross. We searched for father’s
name. He was not on any list but we
received a postcard from the hospital
in Batavia (modern Jakarta) informing
us that daddy was very sick. A Sister
had written that he desperately wanted
to see us. Camp security warned us
against leaving the camp. But my
mother was a very determined woman.
We got a lift from the camp to the
station on the back on an ox wagon.
It was chaos on the station platform
with hoards of people squashing onto
the train. My sister and I managed to
squeeze through the crowd to get on
the train but mum was crowded out
and left on the platform. We had to haul
her in by her arms though the window.

Need to Know
Angela Williams lives in
Amsterdam. She is a writer and
teaches English as a foreign
language. Her mother-in-law Dee
de Smalen (née Kiesling) is now
in her eighties and lives in Heiloo
(North Holland). Two years ago she
and her husband celebrated their
sixtieth wedding anniversary.

and had to be repaired in places. By
the time we reached the hospital in
Batavia we were told that daddy had
died a week before of starvation. The
professional care that the allied doctors
gave him came too late. We had missed
the last chance to see him alive.
We did not know what to do then.
Going back to camp was not an option
and we needed to be safe. Mum asked
around in the hospital and she found
some old friends that we could stay
with in Batavia. We stayed there for
a month and put our names on a
list to get a ship back to Holland.
After a few weeks of waiting and
hoping, a handsome young man walked
up the garden path, dressed in a white
sailor’s uniform. Everything about him
was fair, his skin, hair and clothes. I had
my hairpins in and looked a total sight.
He had sailed over as First Mate on a
Dutch ship bringing allied forces to
Indonesia. The people we were staying
with were relations of his. He was
looking for surviving family members.
Mum said ‘Rob de Smalen, you’re
the spit of your dad!’ She was a friend
of his father’s. I had forgotten by then,
but Rob and I had known each other as
kids and had played together. He had
three days leave before his ship returned
to the Fatherland. Fate took over from

In the 1990s, the former
internees were offered
compensation by the Dutch
government which had effectively
abandoned them to their fate.
Unlike other colonial powers in
the area, no evacuation plan had
been organised by the Dutch
authorities. My mother-in-law is
always very dismissive of her time in
the camps - merely saying that they
did what they had to do in order to
survive: existing day to day, trying
to get enough to eat and keeping
their heads down. Around 80,000
Dutch civilians were imprisoned
on Java during World War Two and
approximately one in six did not
survive the ordeal. Mortality rates
reveal that women had a better
survival rate; this can perhaps be
attributed to their flexibility and
domestic skills. Mothers were also
able to stay with their children (until
sons turned ten at least) and this
must have given them a reason
to keep going even when despair
beckoned. On the whole women
generally took better physical care
of themselves and, where possible,
their loved ones. Unlike many men
they did not experience the same
loss of a professional identity and
purpose after imprisonment.
It is over sixty-five years since
the internees were liberated
from the camps. Perhaps a fitting
time to remember that they, like
so many women war victims,
expressed their bravery not by
heroic deeds but by their stoical
tenacity and will to survive.

there. We heard that we could sail
back to Holland on his ship! During
the journey back to Holland we
fell in love. In 1949, after a long
engagement, we got married and a
year later I gave birth to my first son.

HerStoria magazine Summer 2011

19