Rememberance Day, August 15.

Commemorate, 67 year after World War Two.


Commemorate.For us August 15. 1945 is the day we were liberated. We were free, but so many of our friends had lost their lives.They lost their lives in the Japanese concentration camps, and during the Bersiap and Political Actions, after the war.

Each war brings destruction, death and victims. People, forever marked for the rest of their lives, because of the loss of their loved ones.

We should remember and never forget what happened in World War Two. Maybe by remembering mankind will find a way to diplomacy. Maybe we become better people, otherwise there will be no future for mankind.

In the Dutch East Indies now called Indonesia after August 15 there was no August 16 for us.Yes; August 15, 1945 we were freed from the Tyrant, the Japanese, but after August 15 the Bersiap, the Political Actions started. Thousands of Dutch women, children and men were murdered.My mother and I, her sister and two children, were one of the lucky ones who made it out alive.

I think about my mother how sad it must have been for her after she arrived in The Netherlands without her husband.
For her there was August 15, but never a August 16, like it was in The Netherlands  when they got liberated on May 4,1945. They were able to celebrate again on May 5, etc. etc.

In The Netherlands they do not celebrate August 15, 1945. not even one Dutch flag will be raised. For my mother August 15 went by, like any other day.It was like it had never happened.So many times she was told that she had no idea about how the Dutch had suffered during the War. She was always told that she had been in Paradise, where it was nice and warm, food was growing on the trees. How ignored can people be.How alone my mother must have felt.

When we arrived back in The Netherlands on April 25, 1946 the Dutch people greeted the repatriates with chilliness. The reception of the Dutch Indies Military, Officials and fellow country-men and women, who arrived in The Netherlands total indigent, never got any support from our Government.Even the simple clothes they received from the Red Cross during their journey home had to be paid back, even the cost of the boat trip.For years my mother never talked about The Dutch East Indies, it was not social accepted and not political correct.My mother never received one penny of my fathers wages, when he was fighting and died for his country.

More then 24,000 citizens were killed during the occupancy of Japan in The Dutch East Indies. It would be very appropriate if the Dutch flags would be seen blowing in the wind on every building in The Netherlands to commemorate the victims from that very painful time in the history of The Netherlands, on August 15.

Never be forgotten,

                                 My father Klaas van der Wal.

                                 My fathers grave in Kanchanaburi

                                 My uncle Tobias van Driel, who died on the O16 submarine.

                                 This is his grave.

                                            Rest in peace.