I am new on board, so I’m not certain if that what I tell you now will interess you.
I grew up in former Dutch East Indies,today Indonesisa. And I was there when the Japanese ovvupied the D.E.I.
I have seen many drama’s during that occupation, my Dad and my uncle Pierre were killed by the Kempeitai. I have been in a concentration camp.
And I have seen 5 trucks with military in bamboo pig baskets loaded and piled up on those trucks. I have heared them scream and cry for help and water,
in English and Dutch.
I was a girl of 15 years old when I saw this in October 1942 in the mountains
above Malang, East Java.
When the Allies capitulated to the Japanese in East Java in 1942, around two hundred Allied soldiers took to the hills around Malang and formed themselves into groups of resistance fighters. Eventually they were rounded up by the Kempetai. The captured soldiers were squeezed into three foot long bamboo pig baskets and transported in five open lorries, under a broiling 38 degree sun, to a rail siding and then transferred in open railway goods wagons to the coast. (Eye witness to this transfer was a 15 year old girl, Elizabeth Van Kempen, who witnessed this while standing together with her father, on a nearby ridge of the mountain Semeru. They could plainly hear the prisoners screaming for help and water. (Miss Kempen’s father was later killed by the Kempetai at Malang on March 25, 1945, for hiding weapons and ammunition. Elizabeth Kempen now lives, as of 2004, in Tilburg, Holland)
Half dead from thirst and cramp, the captives were carried on board waiting boats which then sailed out to the shark infested waters off the coast of Surabaya. There, the unfortunate prisoners, still enclosed in their bamboo cages, were thrown overboard to the waiting man-eaters. The commander in chief of Japanese forces in Java, General Imamura, was later acquitted of this atrocity in a Netherlands court for lack of evidence. A subsequent Australian Military Court found General Imamura responsible and handed down a sentence of ten years imprisonment.
I am very happy that you read my website, and even more so because your family also comes from that beautiful country, Indonesia.
I am very greatful for your answer.
The Japanese occupation in the former Dutch colony is a forgotten history. I guess that is mainly because of the Dutch government, they are ashamed that they ever had a colony. The British don’t suffer from such complex.
Yes, the bamboo pig baskets: 60 eye witnesses are laying in our National Archive, that is not open for public. I have found about 30 other eyewitnesses, including 2 Indonesians. But nobody will publish it overhere, because people don’t believe this has really happened, it can’t be true.
It’s strange that the eye witness accounts concerning the pig basket incident would be kept from the Dutch public. Also strange that General Imamura was handed such a light sentence of ten years imprisonment. Although, by now probably most of the Japanese military men that were involved were either killed during the war or have since passed away.
My mother always spoke fondly of their way of life in the Indies prior to the war (from the perspective of a young girl). After the war, most emigrated to other countries such as the Netherlands, United States, Australia and Canada. Many, like my mother have married into the populations of those countries. And their children have assimilated into those cultures.
I think that after that last generation goes, that culture that existed for 300 years in the Indies and perpetuated in exile will come to a close.
I think that I will have some questions for you later, which I will send via private message.
Elizabeth, thanks for sharing real history with this site. I found your story both excellent and informative. It is a real pity that your government doesnt give the East Indies the recognition it deserves. I guess thats not a subject that the modern Netherlands wants to dwell on. Its also about time that Japan actually acknowleged the crimes its Army commited in the WW2 era.
Thanks for sharing your story with the world and all the best wishes.
During the British War Crimes Investigagation Team no 3 under Wingcommander in Jakarta between 1946 an 1949 , general Imamura was pleaded not guilty in the bamboo basket affair. Imamura called those stories hallucinations. They forgot to ask the Indonesians if they had seen something, that of course is far too late today.
Bur as I wrote, I have two Indonesian eyewitnesses. One came from Surabaya. East Java, he saw that white men in bamboo baskets were dumped in the Java Sea between Surabaya and the island Madura.
Many of them must have been Aussies.
It is so very sad!!
It was Australia that Imamura was sentenced for 10 years.
Thank you ever so much for your compliment about my website. I know that my English is far from perfect, but I realized that I had to write in English, Dutch is useless.
I am very pleased that you liked the way I wrote it all down. Thank You!!
