Correspondence with Robert Rouveray

Of http://www.rouveroy.com/


On May 10, 2007, at 8:46 AM, Dean McInerney wrote

Dear Robert.

I enjoyed you site and found your collection of pictures very helpful. I am currently researching an animated documentary currently in development here in Melbourne Australia. The subject is the diaries of Herman Fokker, a civilian dutch-german and an inmate of a couple of Civillian POW camps in Java and Sumatra, and who died in Sumatra. He was first interned in Tjimahi near Surabaya in Java and died in a camp near Palembang Sumatra, (Not sure what one it was...). His Grandson-in-law is producing a film out of the diaries and I am gathering a clearer picture of what these camps were like.

There are so many questions I would like to ask. Keeping any form of record was in some cases very clandestine and possibly fatal. In the case of Herman he was forbidden to write about the future... This is what he does... what is lacking is much description about what actually happened inside. I get the feeling he was protecting his loved ones from pain...
Can you help me by pointing me in the right direction... Maybe I can call you and we can talk some time over the phone.

Yours
Dean McInerney


On 5/15/07, Robert Rouveroy wrote:

Dear Dean,

Thanks for your flattering observations on my site. I wish I could help you, but the camps differed very much in treatment. It often mirrored the local sentiments of the natives and the Japanese were very quick to respond to that, resulting in widely diverse situations for the camp internees.

For instance, Tjimahi camp was actually a former Dutch Army base, situated near Bandoeng (West Java, approx. 1000 miles west of Surabaya (East Java). The natives there, Sundanese, were quite friendly towards the Dutch, so Tjimahi camp was rather relaxed. Towards the end of the war most Tjimahi detainees were scattered to other camps and the gentleman you named, Herman Fokker, ended up in Palembang. Now there was quite a different situation. Food became very scarce, also for the natives, as most food, rice, animals, were shipped to Japan. Out of frustration because of the imminent Japanese defeat the treatment became more extreme and many died. I cannot say how that particular camp was: I was interned about another 1200 or so miles north of Palembang, at Sirengo-rengo, south of Medan on Sumatra's East Coast.

The Allied soldiers, the POW's suffered the most, I'm told that the Aussies were particularly sought out by the Japanese as you must have read many accounts of the atrocities inflicted on them. My brother was a Dutch soldier who worked on the infamous Pakan Baru railroad and barely made it out alive. But he was one of the lucky ones, lived until he was 89 years and has died recently. My mother died in Aek Pamienke, a women's camp. My sisters are still living, 82 and 84, myself 80 years young.

You will find a very well written account exhaustively researched, of the horrors of the Pakan Baroe railroad called: "Last Stop Pakan Baru", written by Henk Hovinga, a well respected historian who wrote down the stories as told to him by the survivors. It can be had from him on a DVD In English, profusely illustrated with (I think) more than 150 drawings, photographs etc. It will give you an excellent idea how it was in those camps.

You should contact him here: henk.hovinga@tiscali.nl

Thank you again for your interest. It is easy to forget what happened all these years ago for those who have not experienced it. I hope this will help you in your endeavors with your film. Please feel free to contact me if you need to know more.

Yours truly,
Robert Rouveroy

On 15 May 2007, at 4.30PM; Dean McInerney wrote...

Dear Robert

Thanks for the response, and thanks for the clarification regarding the cause and fate of Palembang. There is a lot of discrepancies in the information left by Hermann. I believe that Henk Hovinga has been contacted by my research partner already, and the DVD/CD-ROM is around and I will get a chance to read it soon. We are certainly referring to the drawings as they are the only surviving portraits of the interiors of these places.

Perhaps Hermann was actually spared the kind of horrors you read about. Naturally there are differences between camps, interesting that you think the Japanese acted according to the prevailing local indigenous sentiment. Does that mean that the Commander in each camp restrains his own individual attitude and follows such dictates. I realise that the Japanese Military is a pretty uniform and rigid hierarchy, even as far as any military is... but even so. I find the politics between Japan and the Nationalists in Indonesia during the War baffling. Acting as anti-imperial avengers, synchronising their actions to be in concord with local people, yet working thousands of young Indonesian men to death (with Soekarno's approval).

I'm also interested in your comment about Australians being singled out for brutality... Who told you that one... I am curious. If you read the compendium of WWII atrocities in the pacific campaign, you notice a lot of Australians getting killed. Australians were hardly imperialists at the time, it makes me wonder what was happening.

Cheers

Dean


15/5/07
Dear Dean,

A few misconceptions of course. What happened was that the Japanese Army was very thinly spread in Indonesia. You may appreciate that, while Indonesia is mostly sea, distances are like in Australia. So, they used hastily trained natives, called Hei-ho's to guard the camps, together with Korean draftees. Those were the worst, the Hei-ho's were used to the Dutch and in many cases were muck kinder towards the (civilian) detainees. And in the beginning of the occupation they thought that the Dutch might come back to power, so they acted accordingly.

The situation of the Romusha's, the 'volunteer' Indonesian workers was also quite different at first. They were asked to work for a "greater Indonesia" and were promised land. Most of them came from densely populated Java with little expectations of gainful employment and were sent to sparsely populated Sumatra and Kalimantan. So they did think this was a great opportunity indeed. Only, food was scarce all over as the Japanese stripped Indonesia bare of nearly all natural resources to ship them to Japan. So, internees in the camps were fed, if sparsely, but the Romusha's were in the end left to fend for themselves and as a result, hundreds of thousands died a miserable death. It is one of the great (and little known) horrors of WWII, not adequately researched. I do have an Indonesian recruitment film made in 1943 or thereabouts. You're welcome to it if you're interested. BTW, as far as I know, Sukarno did not initiate this.

You should understand a little of the "bushido" attitude of the Japanese. They had great respect for bravery and always bowed deep before an enemy-before lopping off his head if the opportunity arrised. It so happened that many Dutch (professional) soldiers left the Dutch East Indies after 1941, to fight the Germans, leaving the Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) greatly depleted. The then government had mostly trained natives, mostly Ambonese soldiers, augmented by hastily mobilized civilians with little or no training, our so-called weekend soldiers. They were supposed to stop battle-hardened Japanese soldiers with 12 years service in China and Korea.

So, the Indies were quickly overrun. The Dutch army surrendered and as POW's were put to work, even shipped off to Japan to work in the coal mines near Nagasaki. Many of them died at sea because the Jap ships were sunk by submarines who often did not know there were POW's on board. The way that the Japanese saw the Dutch soldiers was that they were cowards as they met little resistance. Accordingly, they had little respect for them.

The Australians were a different bunch. Initially shipped to defend Singapore, they ended up after its fall on Java or Borneo and the Spice Islands. They kept on fighting, harassing the Japanese and were generally a pain in Japan's butt. So when they were captured, they were treated with respect and, if judged guilty, dispatched with ceremony. Sometimes excesses occurred, at one occasion a group of Aussies were herded inside an abandoned mine and the entrance was bombed shut. A Google search will tell you more, also, check my "LINKS" page. And quite a few movies were made of such incidents: you can find them on IMDB.

I've hated the Japanese for a long time. They stole my youth, they killed my mother. I did not understand them. About 5 years ago I visited Japan with a group of Dutch intend to try to get reparations for the losses we suffered. What we saw was a totally different country than we had imagined. I made a film of my impressions, culminating in a confrontation with an ex-camp commander. He denied all and every thing that had happened in those camps. The dichotomy in my feelings still bothers me. I keep on hating the old guard, but the new, young Japan is alright.

But I was glad to leave the country behind. I never want to visit there again.

Robert

...a sea of time quickly evaporates...