We will seek justice!

We will keep fighting for justice till the end.The Jewish people had to deal with a Germany that has done everything moral and financial to make up with what they had done in world war two. Japan has never done that. This country refers to the fact that it was The Netherlands who declared War to Japan. Queen Wilhelmina told in a radio message from London that all damage received to her countrymen in the Dutch Indies would be compensated for after the war.What happened to this promise?It is 2011 now and we still trying to get justice.So many people who were there, have passed away. Is the Dutch Government waiting for all of us to be gone?The Dutch who came back after the war were so tired and weak, they had no energy left.They arrived back in the Netherlands totally ignored by their fellow country men. All they were trying to do was made a new life for them selves as good as they were allowed to do.They had to start from scratch, they had nothing. No house, no furniture, just some clothes they had received from the Red Cross in Egypt.
When the war broke out in Asia, the English were evacuated. Their country took them out of harms way. The Netherlands told the Dutch not to leave, because it would be a bad example. Do not worry we will compensate all your losses.That's how we ended up in these terrible Japanese camps. The Japanese called these camps protected camps, but they used these men and women for slave work , they tortured and starved us to death. We were not in protected camps we were POW's. We had landed in HELL. These women, children and men who were in these camps were always pushed in the back ground when they returned in the Netherlands.Nobody in the Netherlands ever listed to what they endured in World War two. They were ignored These Dutch countrymen had been in Hell,in Japanese Hell, just the same as the Jews and Gypsies had been in Hell, in Nazi Hell. For fifty years we swallowed. About our prison camp years we never got a chance to talk about.When we arrived back in the Netherlands from the Dutch Indies we were left on our own. We were to busy trying to build a new life. The Dutch Government did not liked to hear about it anyway. So we tried to forget. It was of no use anyway. We came from Paradise it was said.
Other countries who's countrymen had suffered and lost all their belongings while in Japanese prison camps, did compensate, these countries are England, Canada, Norway, Australia and New- Zealand.I am ashamed that I used to be Dutch. My father died fighting for his country, my mother was never told where my father was buried. She never knew that he was transferred from the Burma railroad tracks and was laid to rest in Kanchanaburi  in Thailand.My mother passed away in 2003, she would have been so happy and more at peace if she had known this. I am a proud Canadian and gave up my Dutch Nationality. Our group to seek righteousness are getting old, it is not  money we are looking for, but justification.It is so sad that most of the women and men who suffered so unbelievable in these Japanese camps have passed away, without ever being able to tell, how they had suffered just the seem as the Jews.


In 1990 on August 11, an article in the Telegraaf a dutch newspaper wrote about" transports in pigbaskets"
This dossier 5284 in the Telegraaf mentioned about these Japanese crimes of POW's  in the Dutch Indies. These files are lying in the National Archives in The Hague. It is sad that it became quiet about these very terrible war crimes.

Never was spoken about these war crimes again. This is what happened and had been told by eye-witnesses.

Military Japanese trucks were driving along the Sumatrastreet in Surabaya, he, the eye-witness was riding a bike, he was Indonesian.He saw big pig baskets in the trucks with people in it. These baskets used to be for transportation of pigs.He noticed brown arms and white arms sticking out these baskets and people were screaming for help and asking for water. The men in these baskets were naked, and they had ropes around their arms and legs.Later he heard that these people were Indonesian, Dutch , English and Australian soldiers who had been hiding in the mountains and had been taken prison by the Japanese.He biked behind these transport trucks, but took a short cut to the Harbor of Tanjung Priok.What he saw there took his breath away and made him vomit. The pig baskets were loaded on these flat barges. He told that from the harbor Tandjung Priok the island of Madoera was clearly visible.That's when he saw and many others with him, how these Japanese threw these pig baskets with the men in it, into the sea. He also told that many Ambonese women, children and men were murdered by these Japanese soldiers. Many Ambonese were in Prison Camps and were murdered and burned to death, because they were on the side of The Netherlands.These transports happened daily.

I feel very sad that I have to write about it, now that we have arrived in the year 2011. But I think it is very important that these things which happened in the far East  so long ago should not be forgotten.I am writing this for all the women, children and men who died in this forgotten War, which was world war two and was not only fought in Europe as Holland likes us to believe, but was also fought in Asia.The Netherlands specially liked to forget about this war which they fought in the Dutch Indies. Never in school in the Netherlands were we taught about this, always heard these terrible stories about what happened in Holland, under the occupancy of the Germans.The Dutch people in The Dutch Indies had a very good relationship with the Indonesian people, many are still our friends. I am ashamed of how the Dutch treated the Indonesian people who choose to be Dutch and came to the Netherlands after the war. Hardly anybody in the Netherlands has ever heard about the Bersiap period, which was going on till Holland was forced to give this up.It could have been so different, if they had found a peaceful solution. But it was greed, which is a very bad thing in human mankind.The Netherlands is ashamed about this page in history,( and they should be) that's why they never like to talk about it
I have written a book, about my mother and me, my aunt and her two children,what we endured in these Prison camps. My book is called " I Thought You Should Know" and is under my maiden name Tetske T. van der Wal.It is sold on Amazon.com, Xlibris.com ,Barns and Nobles and in your local bookstores.I hope you will read it.
I hope you will keep following my blog coconutconnections, because I have a lot more to tell.