Cimahi revisited in 1973, posing in front of my
former home. The Indonesian commander at the gate allowed me to inspect my old
barrack. It had been turned into a school and hopefully they got rid of the bed
bugs.
It was already dark when we arrived at the gate of our new “home” in Cimahi on
November 24, 1944. The journey from the boy’s camp Grogol on the outskirts of
Jakarta to Cimahi had been exhausting, taking about twelve hours of what is
normally a three-hour journey. I estimate that there were hundreds of us
adolescents in the train, which crept laboriously up into the mountains to a
destination unknown. Thirst and hunger had plagued us from the beginning. The
small supply of water I had taken with me when we left Grogol early that morning
was soon finished. I could not resist the temptation and drank it all when we
were stalled in the hot railway yards of the old town of Batavia in the stifling
heat of coaches of the former Dutch East Indian Railway. Finally, when we moved
south and out of Jakarta and we could breath again, it was apparent that we were
heading for the fertile plains, mountains and volcanoes of the Bandung plateau,
called the Parahyangan.
Cimahi, a fifteen minutes drive from Bandung, has always been a garrison town,
first under the Dutch, then under the Japanese and these days it is a base town
for the Indonesian army, the TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia). At the time, the
fourth and ninth battalions were turned into one huge camp holding approximately
10,000 civilian (male) prisoners. Previously it had been a camp for POWs who
were shipped to Burma, Thailand and Sumatra. From the writings and other
evidence they left us, we gathered that life hadn’t been too bad for them up to
the point that they were put on transport.
Our contribution to the catering and medical
department.
Weary with fatigue and lack of nourishment, we were marched into the large
square inside the gate. It was packed with people, but I was hardly aware what
was going on in the darkness. Suddenly a stocky and hairy westerner grabbed me
and said in Dutch with a foreign accent, “This is the one we want.” Apparently,
when it was known that our contingent of boys would arrive, some of the more
charitable men who were already there offered to adopt some of us. I was so
lucky to be taken under the wings of five young fellows of which the one who
opted me, the oldest, was an Australian from Brisbane, of about 31 years of age
and a planter. He was called Mike but his real name was Charlie Hildebrandt. On
the way to the barracks my benefactors questioned me about our place of origin
and I was asked whether I had food with me, to which I proudly answered that I
had a lot of sugar, a most precious thing to have among one’s possessions.
Just before we left Grogol, the Japanese had given us a small ration of sugar,
which I, with great strength of will, had kept for future emergencies. Normally
I ate it in one sitting. We arrived in my friends’ barrack and what we called
“cell” and as soon as possible they made me sleep on one of the wooden cots and
covered me with a thin blanket (the nights in the mountains can be quite cool).
Still half-awake I heard them rummaging through my knapsack and with great
hilarity they produced the tiny bag of sugar. I trusted them and never told them
I had been aware of their indiscretion and they never betrayed this trust.
These cells weren’t real cells as the ones in a regular jail but a compartment
in the barrack, of which the walls were partly demolished, formerly used for the
accommodation of the Indonesian soldiers. Our cell had two double wooden beds
and one single. I was initially supposed to be sleeping on the floor but that
night they decided that I should have the single cot. One of the great menaces
of our nights were the millions of bed bugs who would emerge from the crevasses
in the wall and the holes in the wood and attack us with great ferocity, mad for
our blood. I was always covered with white scars of bites from the coriander
smelling pests.
Two of my new friends were labouring in the so-called “fourage” or “supplies”
while the others worked in the camp’s bakery, which also baked the bread for the
Japanese army camp opposite of our camp. At first I was given a light “corvee”
or light duty because of my chronic dysentery and general state of health. I
found this so boring and depressing, however, that I begged them to try to get
me in the fourage so that I could take my mind off the hopelessness of things in
general. The other advantage was that we were sent out of the camp practically
daily to get rice, maize, and other provisions for the kitchen, as well as
sawdust for the fires of the ovens. I was accepted.
One most interesting thing about our camp was that everywhere along streets were
sawed off drums in which people were asked to urinate. This urine was used for
the production of yeast for our bread and that of the Japanese army and also as
a medicine and tonic. Some chemical engineers from the plantations had invented
this unique process and it was said that the urine of older men was especially
desirable because of its richness in broken down materials. The doctors supplied
the weak and sick with small doses of this greyish milky substance. It did not
taste of urine at all as some may surmise (I was given it to drink a couple of
times and although it was quite disgusting, it did not resemble urine).
I have dealt enough in former articles with the physical and psychological
horrors inflicted on some us by the Japanese camp staff and their Korean stooges
(in general we feared the latter more than we did the former). I will this time
refrain from commenting on it, lest I would become another James Clavell. I used
to smuggle sugar and pieces of meat into the camp in little bags, hidden in a
most private and secret place and was fortunately never found out. Reflecting on
this brave but irresponsible behaviour, I now realise that I probably lost more
energy worrying about the consequences if I was caught, than it was worth.
Two years ago, in June 1995, on the occasion of the fifty-year anniversary of
the end of the Second World War, I wrote how we were not liberated at all after
the war had ended in August 1945. Nobody bothered.
Note. In September or October 1945, Charlie Hildebrandt married a Dutch lady on
a ship anchored on the roads of Tg. Priok, the port of Jakarta. Afterwards he
sailed for Australie with his bride and I have never heard from him again. In
the fifties when I was a deck officer in the merchant marine, I visited
Brisbane, Australia. There I went through the phone book and called every
Hildebrandt I could find and none of the people who answered knew anything about
this warm and friendly man. He always reminded me of a bear. The other five of
my benefactors disappeared as well and even with the aid of the Internet I was
not able to locate them after all these years.
Note 2. According to studies of Dr. D. van Velden in her “De Japanse
internerings kampen voor burgers gedurende de tweede wereld oorlog” (The
Japanese prison camps during the Second World War), about 96,300 civilians of
Dutch and Dutch Indonesian extraction were taken prisoner, most of them over the
full period of three years. Of these about 13,120 succumbed or 13.6 percent.
Other estimates show figures of 15 or 17 percent (from a report the Japanese
Government gave to the International Red Cross during the war). I do not know
when these last data were taken. It is obvious that the casualties among the
Dutch and Indonesian POWs was higher, about 19.5 percent. This, I believe,
because of bombardments like those at the Burma railway or accidents like the
sinking of the Yunyo Maru and other marine or land disasters. The data for the
Romushas, the Indonesian “voluntary” labour are not exactly known but rough
estimates are that at least one in the three Romushas perished.
