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Millions perished in Indonesia during WWII, including both native and European captives of the invading force — a story that is rarely heard and understood.
By Heather B. Moore
“Will I ever see Papa again?” Marie Vischer asked her mother, while perched on the wilting fence in front of the house she’d been sharing with over 100 other women and children, in the heart of the Tjideng Women’s Camp on Java Island, Indonesia.
It had been three years since Marie and her pregnant mother, toddler brother and elderly grandmother were forced into an internment camp by the invading Japanese army. Three years since she’d had a full meal. Three years since her father left to join the conflict with a group of Dutch Navy officers and their small warship was torpedoed by a Japanese destroyer.
The war had finally ended, but the Dutch prisoners weren’t allowed to leave the camp yet. And the Japanese soldiers had remained to protect them from civil unrest outside the camp.
“We have to keep faith, Rita,” Mother murmured, using her childhood nickname.
But Marie heard the crack of her voice, edged with grief that loomed dark with each day passing without Papa. Marie examined the faces of the men and boys hobbling and limping into camp, their gaunt faces mapped with three years of war, skeletons of their former selves.
Would she even recognize Papa? Would he recognize her?
Could she hope that he was still alive? Every day she checked the list that the British Red Cross sent to the internment camps throughout the island of Java.
His name had yet to be on it.
A man with scarecrow-thin legs and brown eyes like her father embraced a different woman, a different child. Weeping. Not her father, then.
They’d made it this far. Marie, Mama, Georgie and Robbie. Defying all odds against diseases like malaria, the mumps, dysentery, measles, whooping cough and tropical sores. Not to mention the hours long roll calls beneath the weight of the merciless sun and suffocating heat, as they paid obeisance to the Japanese commander twice a day. Even then, Marie hadn’t broken.
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2024/03/11/wwii-indonesia-dutch-tragedy/