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Internee camp Kare-es, Bandung

A daughter

I was growing enormous. The baby started to assert itself and one evening, when my pregnancy was in its seventh and a half month, I was scared to death by a Jap, who suddenly appeared in front of my nose, just when I went outside. I slipped down the few steps and ended up lying in a puddle of amniotic fluid. At my shrieks, people flew towards me to help. My father almost attacked the Jap, but managed to chase him from the yard. I think the man was also shocked by all the chaos.
Supported by papa and mama I walked to the small hospital, which had been set up by a midwife. There, the midwife, Sister Martha, welcomed me and a Salvation Army nurse dressed me in an old gown and took me to the delivery room. It already contained three women with legs up high in various stages of labour. I was given a bed opposite them, another woman was lying in a bed next to mine.
When I had settled down I asked to go to the toilet.
‘For doing what?’
‘A number two’, I said.
‘Oh no, nothing of the sort. We only have a ‘thunder box’ (a very primitive toilet) and that is far too dangerous. You stay in bed and we give you a bedpan.’
I strained a few times, for the need was great… and out slipped a small parcel.
The baby was lying, completely wrapped in the membrane, in the bedpan.
Sister Martha and the other nurse threw themselves on me and the bedpan, removed the child and took it out of its membrane.
‘Aduh, born with the caul’, sister Martha exclaimed.
Apparently this is supposed to be a sign that the child will have second sight.
I was totally confused. I had born a child without very much pain and no shriek had passed my lips. Somewhat later I heard that it had been the worst evening in my father’s life. With each shriek he heard coming from that room he thought it had been me. Poor papa.
In the meantime they had washed the baby.
‘It has been born far too early,’ Sister Martha said. ‘She will need to go into the incubator.’
It already contained a tiny baby that had arrived too early. His father had already died and his mother, of Negro descent, had died when she was six months pregnant. The baby had still shown signs of life, so Sister Martha had performed a caesarean. It had been a great battle to keep the little boy alive and when Jantje was nine months old, my little girl joined him. We called them ‘Black and White’.
So, I had a little girl, perfect but very tiny.
‘What are you going to call her?’ The Salvation Army nurse asked.
‘I would like to call her after my husband. Robert Christiaan.’
The nurse protested that this was a boy’s name and I said we could stick a letter ‘e’ at the end. So she became Roberte Christine.
My parents were warned and were allowed to admire their grandchild.
‘Oh dear’, the brand-new ‘oma’ (granny) exclaimed. ‘Such sturdy names for such a small thing! Can we add Marianne? I think that is such a lovely name! It is also symbolises freedom in France’
A small baby with an impressive set of names: Roberte Christine Marianne Halberstadt.

Without the men

Then came the order that all men would be collected.
We tried to ‘hide’ papa in the toilet when the Jap arrived in the yard, but we were only successful once. The following day the lorry arrived again and the remainder of the men were taken. It was dreadful! We tried to send messages. We don’t know whether these ever reached him.
Mama had some photographs made to send to papa. We managed to do this and Rob’s photographs were adorable. By then I knew the address where papa was held, the tenth Batallion, a military camp.
Mama gave me the small parcel and with many women I queued for hours in front of the gate. As the Jap pulled each woman behind a screen I had not been able to observe what had happened to the others, so I was totally unprepared when it finally was my turn. After I handed over the parcel, the Jap pulled up my skirt and before I knew it he used a finger to see whether I had hidden something ‘down there’. I could scream but it would make no difference, I thought.
I was then dismissed.
Only a little further down the road I started to sob with fury and disgust. I never told mama for she would be too upset. Later, when I was told about his death, it turned out that papa had received Robke’s photographs.

Enclosed

After the men were taken away, the Japs enclosed our district, Kare-es. We were now really imprisoned. The date was 8 March 1943. The idea was a horrible one but we could not do a damn thing about it.
Everything became more difficult, because the women from the plantations were also placed in our homes. In total, approximately 6000 women and children had to be found a place for in the houses in Kare-es, once a desirable part of Bandung. Each room of these houses was used, also the servants rooms and the garages. The servants, of course, were no longer allowed to help us and were sent away. We sorely missed Ikin and Una, who had been taking care of us for so long.
Occasionally some men were allowed into our enclosure to do some repairs. One day someone I knew walked past me. We had to stand with our backs turned towards the men. He threw something right in front of my feet, which, when I opened it, turned out to be a poem written by the men to all the ‘decent women’. There were also women who were whoring for the Japs.

Together with Robke, I was allocated our garage. My sister and brother, Mien and Henk, and mother lived together in the large bedroom. The front room was given to a woman and her two young children and the dining room and my bedroom housed a female vicar, her three children and nanny. The vicar was an awful woman. As vicar, she had registered herself for extra rations to give to the sick. However, she kept it all for herself.
This all came to light when Robke had to go to hospital suffering from diarrhoea due to some intestinal problem. When Robke had recovered, I decided to go and ask whether she could have an egg.
I walked into her room and discovered the whole family K. sitting, in the middle of the room, around an ‘anglo’ (a small charcoal cooker) busy frying a whole pan-full of eggs. I politely asked for an egg for my sick child but she refused, saying ‘No, they are all gone.’
I was so furious that I gave a kick to the pan, which flew upwards, scattering the eggs around the room. I then ran outside, bumping into someone, who I told what had happened. She immediately went inside and lambasted the vicar woman as well. Mama was also furious and had a go at her the following day. From then on, the woman hardly dared to look at us whenever she passed us. The story spread like wild fire and everybody sent her to Coventry.
What a Christian-minded woman!

I suppose Camp Kare-es was not too bad. We had a roof over our head, a camp kitchen supplying us with food and we were able to cook when we managed to obtain something edible, such as ‘krokot’ (a kind of sorrel, or dock), which was quite edible with a lot of ‘sambal ‘ ( a kind of very spicy pickle made from chilli peppers).
Not to forget my brother Henk, who was a volunteer at the camp kitchen, and voluntary would snatch a thing or two. One day he came home with a piece of meat hidden in his pants. Mother cut it up and we had a feast. Another day he came home with a dead snake, which tasted like eel, according to mama. We had no idea what an eel was, but what the heck, when you are hungry you eat everything.

Then came the order that all boys of ten years and older had to leave the camp, because they would be ‘too dangerous’ to us women. They were going to be sent to a camp in Tjimahi. The moment of departure came all too soon and there he went…. our Henk, our ‘dangerous’ little man.
It is still a sight I never forget..…a group of small, stalwart boys who were determined not to cry. We did that for them instead.

On transport

Life in the camp, however, went on until one day we too received the order to leave. We were told that, the very next day, we must gather on the ‘tenko’ field, with all our belongings! [Tenko is the gathering of prisoners forming files in order to be counted].
It was 19 November 1944.
Mama panicked, sorted something out. Mien panicked too, did not know what she should take. I had a baby so therefore needed to take a lot. From some material I made a sort of belt around my waist to which I could pin and tie little vests, pants and diapers. This almost gave me a girth of ten meters, but I also had to take my own clothes! A small case contained the most necessary items and papers. Thank God we no longer menstruated, a whim of Nature. We could at least leave that stuff behind.
‘For the honest person who may find them’, I said.
I had been so busy sorting everything and everyone out, that I had totally forgotten my shoes. I always walked on bare feet at home. Now I would be walking barefooted for the rest of the camp years — three years! I was blissfully unaware of that duration then.
It was terribly chaotic on the field and everybody was confused and depressed. Very understandably so!

After an endless wait we had to walk to the station. We were stowed into goods wagons, whereto we had no idea. It was unbelievably hot in the wagons and very dirty, for we had no toilets and no water. Imagine the rest!
Days later we arrived in Buitenzorg, now called Bogor. We then were forced to walk for miles which was an exhausting journey.
Rob, carried by me in a ‘slendang’ (a length of material slung over one shoulder to the opposing hip) dropped her dolly at a certain moment. I bent over to pick it up but received a blow against my head.
‘W²¹±ô°ì!’
Rob was crying for her dolly. I was crying with fury with the stinking Jap and crying because my head hurt.

Internee camp Kota Paris

We arrived in camp Kota Paris on 30 November 1944. We were put into a house together with other women. We had to share the front room with mevrouw Koekes, who was a very nice lady. It was a typical Indonesian house: open front veranda, back room and an open back veranda. Next to that three bedrooms, one after the other, followed by the gudang (servant’s room, often used as store room), kitchen, another gudang and then the bathroom and toilet.
Mama looked after Rob and I had to work. We had to dig trenches. How these Japs thought of these tasks, I don’t know, but I guess they had to keep us busy. So why not let those women dig, with a small shovel and so now and then with a ‘patjol’ (pick axe). Anyway, we were kept out of mischief….

There was very little food, so we had to try and find extra nourishment from somewhere. I found this one morning in a couple of enormous snails and gave them to mama and asked her ‘Can you cook them? We will have something extra to eat.’
Yes, mama cleaned them She cleaned them very well, for she boiled them with some salt! Afterwards they were very clean!
I just drilled a few holes in the now empty shells, tied them together with some string and it was a nice toy for Robke. Yet Robke missed her dolly, but luckily one of my camp mates gave me a piece of material with which I made a lovely little dolly. It made Robke very happy for especially at night she needed something to cuddle.

I also hunted for frogs, quietly, in the dark. It was quite a job to be just that little quicker than the frogs, jump on them and kill them. Their legs made a nourishing soup for Robke, who was losing a lot of weight.

One awful day a squad of young girls had to inspect the lights. One of the girls climbed on top of the roof to prepare the connection. The electricity had been shut off, but one rotten Jap switched it back on again just to see what would happen: a loud scream and the poor girl was dead.
Kota Paris was an awful camp. Again and again we were given senseless things to do.
In the evenings we went to bed early, for there was nothing to do, just waiting for all this to end.

The implication of nail clippings

One day, end February 1945, I was called to the Jap. They let me wait for ages and when I finally was summoned inside, he chucked something at me, which turned out to be a large envelope.
When I stood outside again I opened it. Inside were Robke’s photographs and two other small envelopes, on each written, in Malayan: ‘toe nails’ and ‘finger nails’, respectively.
The bastards!
I was raging with fury. It meant my father had died
Thank God, I thought, that it had been me and not mama who had been called to receive this. It would have killed the poor woman.
I never gave those small envelopes to mama. I walked straight through to the kitchen and threw them on the fire.
The larger envelope also contained my father’s shaving apparatus. I held it in my hands and wondered what in earth I should do with it. I could not summon up the courage to go to mama and tell her, so I went to work: ‘to patjol ‘ — working on those bloody trenches. How empty and miserable I felt.
When I arrived ‘home’ some time later I found my mother, Mien and mevrouw Koekes having a cheerful chat. Should I tell them now? I just did not have the courage and kept my mouth shut. I kept it to myself for over a month. Papa’s birthday had been on 14 January and he died on the 18th. On his birthday mama had been especially cheerful and was convinced it would soon be over, for the Jap had been very restless of late, she observed. Yes, indeed he had been very restless for they were making preparations to put us on transport again.
Then one evening I simply had to tell her. She had been in such high spirits that day. I hated doing it, felt so miserable. She had been feeling so good and now I had to destroy that. I would rather kill the filthy Jap.
Mama took the message quietly at first, then disappeared into our room and cried all night long. That night mevrouw Koekes and I slept on the veranda, for we did not want to disturb her. It had been such a terrible task. I sincerely hoped I would never have to do such a thing again. Therefore I will hate the Jap for the rest of my life.

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