Rose : "One day, after a year and a half or so spent in the Brastagi camp, we were put into open lorries (called "Grobaks") and driven down the mountains in the direction of the forest.
No official reason was given for this transfer; we were convinced that the Japanese wanted to better conceal us and prevent the allies from discovering us. The foliage of the forest was so dense that no plane could have found us from the air.
Aek Pamienke is the collective name for three Japanese civilian POW camps established on a former rubber plantation of the same name in the Rantau Prabat region, along the north coast of Sumatra and east of Medan, the island's capital. When the camps were liberated in August 1945, they contained 4,700 women and children.
The three camps were set up between April and July 1945, and populated by women and children mostly from the Medan region and the many surrounding rubber plantations.
The populations of women and children at the end of the war were as follows:
- Aek Pamienke I- 1400 (location B on the map) - Aek Pamienke II- 2000 (locations A, C on the map) - Aek Pamienke III- 1300 (Location D on the map)
After the lorry, we were put on a train to Aek Pamienke. From there, we walked at least 30 km through the dense forest of rubber trees without knowing exactly where we were going.
I remember that we passed several other camps. Before one of them, Nana recognised one of her friends in the small crowd behind the barbed wire watching our procession. They exchanged a few words and this friend told her that she had seen the Japanese building a new camp a little further down the road.
Bird's eye view created by Joke Wassink-Broekema at the request of Rudy Kousbroek (author) for his book "Back to Negri Pan Erkoms". Nana, Anita, James and I were in the second building from the right.
Once settled in Aek Pamienke, the camp routine resumed.
In our camps, there were only Dutch and British nationals. The Japanese had decreed that it was forbidden to speak English, so everyone had to speak Dutch or Indonesian. I don't know why. Maybe because there were spies among the prisoners and it was easier to limit the number of languages spoken.
We children all spoke fluent Indonesian because, before the camps, we spent all our days with Indonesian domestic staff, - our 'Babus' (the women who did the housework and looked after the children) and our 'Djonos' (the men who served in the house and were always dressed in livery).
Over time, our food rations were drastically reduced. We were only given a tiny bowl of rice a day - no meat or vegetables - so we had to make do.
Fortunately, many edible things grow in the tropics. For example, when they returned from the fields, Nana and Anita always collected ferns to add to the rice. Like all women, they went to the clearings every day to grow vegetables for the Japanese. (I was too young, so I had to stay in the camp with the other younger children). The Japanese also suffered from a lack of food, and I remember some of them complaining to us.
Liberation
In the Pacific, the Second World War ended on 14 August 1945, when the Japanese capitulated. The Australians, who had landed in Indonesia at the same time, flew all over Sumatra looking for prison camps, but they couldn't find the one at Aek Pamienke. They knew we were there somewhere, because the local people had told them that the Japanese had taken us out of Brastagi a few months before and driven us somewhere to the south. So they took Jeeps from Medan and went deep into the forest looking for us. As our camp was the furthest away, we were also the last to be 'liberated' by the Australians.
As for our Japanese guards, they had learned of the end of the war almost by chance. Their compatriots had already left the country without bothering to inform them - they had been completely forgotten. So they quickly packed their bags and left quietly. When the women in the camp saw them leaving with their bags on their backs, they called out to them and asked what was going on. It was only then that they informed us of the situation.
Prisoners in a camp in Singapore, circa 1945. This photo could have been taken in our camp, as we too had to bow to our Japanese captors during the daily roll call. Copyright: Getty
But at that stage of the war, we were all far too weak to flee, and above all, we were all afraid - mainly of the hostile local population, and of the dangers of the forest.
Anita, James and I were in a desperate personal situation at the time: poor Nana was suffering from terrible leg injuries, caused by the harsh conditions in the camp, and was so ill she couldn't stand up. Her condition was so serious that several women decided to talk to us, the children, to prepare us for the possibility that our mother might die soon.
But then one day, a jeep with a small Australian flag flying proudly at the front arrived in our camp, occupied by two Australian soldiers and a third person.
This third person was a doctor. As soon as he arrived, he went round all the sick people in the camp. We hadn't seen a doctor for three years. What's more, we were in a catastrophic state of hygiene, because of course there were no showers in the camps and we only washed in the open air when it rained. As a result, we were all infested with lice and vermin. The doctor examined Nana, disinfected her wounds and gave her an injection of penicillin, a miracle product that had just been invented by the Americans. Her condition improved rapidly after a few days.
In the meantime, the Australian soldiers had contacted their headquarter and reinforcements arrived shortly afterwards. We were transported by truck and then train to Medan. We were housed in barracks where we were washed with petroleum-based liquid black soap to rid us of all the grime accumulated over three years.
And so began a new chapter in our lives..."
