End the Silence

Hurray! We officially “launch” the book October 2, 2011 at the place where its keel was laid–Trinity Lutheran Church in Freeland, Washington, where I first heard Ilse tell a tiny piece of her story. That story compelled me to offer to help Ilse write her memories for her children and grandchildren to read someday.

You can click on our new Book page to read “The Handkerchief,” the story she told that night.

A non-Indo reader says she picked up the book one afternoon and did not put it down until 3 am. She writes, “…you and she have made a tremendous addition to understanding not only about that terrible history… but what happens when people can’t talk.”

Well, that’s what we were hoping to hear.  So now, let us hear what you think!

This Fathers Day I am thinking of Priscilla McMullen, a new Indo friend from Boston, who came to my home for lunch–chili relleno casserole with plenty of hot sauce on the side. One thing I’ve learned about my Indo friends: they like spicy stuff that would wipe the lining right out of my sissy mouth.

Priscilla sat at the lunch table, in tears as she talked about her father. “He was a proud man,” she said,”an engineer. He was in charge of the power plant that supplied most of the island.” She was talking about Java when it was the hub of the Dutch East Indies.

“But here…” her voice faltered. “Here, he was a janitor. A janitor! He scrubbed toilets.” She was talking about the United States, many years after the demise of the Dutch East Indies.

Three Indo women–of Dutch and Asian heritage–sat at the table. Ilse was born in the Dutch East Indies before World War II; Priscilla was born there after the revolution that gave it today’s name, Indonesia; Bianca was born long after the war, in the Netherlands. They all shed tears for their fathers, each a victim of World War II and the fall of their homeland.

Priscilla’s father, born to wealth and privilege, lost it all, along with his dignity. “What does that do to a man?” Priscilla sobbed. Bianca’s father, a prisoner of war forced to work on the Thai-Burma Railroad by the Japanese, came out of it with his life hanging narrowly by a thread. Who knows what Ilse’s father experienced; he was never able to tell about it.

Three fathers, three daughters who weep for them. I am privileged to weep, too, for them and all the others who lost everything.

Editor’s note: Thank you, Sylvia. We will look for your father’s story.

As my mother told me:
She was born in Bandung,a child of Dutch- Indonesian father and Dutch- Italian mother. She met my father at the age of seventeen, he was from a pure Dutch father and Dutch-Chinese-Indonesian mother. They married and had seven children. My father was KNIL.

When the Japanese conquered Java, my father was taken prisoner, and was transferred first to Sumatra into hard labor on the railroad, he was further transferred by boat to Burma, again to  work the railroad.
The Japanese officers took control of all living quarters, including my parents’ house. My mom  and her six children had to leave, all she could take was what fit in a bed sheet. She was not imprisoned since she only had one sixth Dutch blood.  Her solution was to disappear into the local population with two of her sisters, their children and mother. She lost her twin girls of sickness and no medication that year.
They moved into the desa(Javanese village) and found a room in a small hut. The Indonesian family was pro Dutch so it was safe.

The first year they used whatever money they had left on food . The adults rationed their food to once a day, the children received food twice a day. The second year my mother lost a baby boy;  he was also buried on the land by their village. That second year they ran out of money, and started bartering all their belongings. This lasted another year.  They planted vegetables, but those were gone as soon as a leaf grew large enough to eat. They ate young papaya leaves, certain roots, and grasses. The women ate every other day, all the people were  so hungry, there wasn’t an animal they had not eaten.

The Japanese army allowed everyone once a week cup of rice, and salt. They told the women, they had to work for them, knit socks for the troops out of sugar bags (jute)/ The bags had to be unraveled and out of these they had to knit the socks. For each pair they received a quarter of Japanese currency. All the women started at that job, their hands bled and it took a week to knit four pairs, my oma would unravel the bags, my mother, my sister and aunts would knit.

When that work dried up they moved on to another village. My mother’s younger sister disappeared one day looking for food. Everyone thought she had died, but she turned up three weeks later bleeding and broken in many parts of her body; she was all black and blue. The Japanese found her steeling rice and took her prisoner, she was beaten and raped many times over. She didn’t talk for a long time. The sisters were desperate for food for there was nothing more to eat. They kept on moving; local people helped with whatever they had. The women ate once a week, what they had was given to their children. My oldest brother was ten at the time and the Japanese took him. My mother had two children left.

They somehow survived untill the allies  came to liberate the people of Indonesia. My parents didn’t see each other for another year, my father was not aware (along with the troops imprissonned with him) that the war was over untill 1946.) The Red Cross brought the family together in 1946.

I was born in 1947. My parents are gone now, they never spoke of the horrors they encountered, it was always “pukul terus”aka: keep on going, work hard, be positive, keep smiling, for life is better they told me a hundred times. Late in their lives, my son, born in the US, questioned all the strange missing links in our lives. He is the reason they started telling their stories.

Thank you Ilse, you are my mother’s story and thank you Dorothy for telling it. Many of us children, grandchildren and great grandchildren need to hear the story of our exodus as it was. Next time my father’s story.

From Josta: When Pearl Harbor was attacked in December, 1941, they also attacked the island of Borneo.  At the other end of Borneo lived my mom and three siblings.  My father worked for the Dutch Government in Bandjermasin.  My mom and the kids had to be evacuated to Java.  The youngest was only 6 months old.  My father stayed behind and had to give up to the Japanese soldiers all the important things and any money that he was in charge of.  He was eventually placed in a prison camp.  He came out of it with very little muscle left on his bones.  His younger brother had to carry him out.  Had my father not survived, I would not be here today.

From Eileen: Oh I am so very happy that you are helping Ilse share her story – in
English! It is the story of thousands from a generation that will be gone
from us far too soon. I’m married into a family where the mother was interned throughout the war
as a child from 4-8 yrs old with her pregnant mother, brother & sister while
her father was sent to build the Bhurma RR.. She speaks of it to me because
otherwised I’d have few outlets in English to know the tales – I’m an
American. Her husband also was born there to an Indo-Dutch mother & Dutch
father – His father and older brother were also on the RR while he and his
mother were left behind.. It is surely an experience that should be shared
before it is too late. Perhaps I will share some of it with you another time if you are interested.
We have also toyed with trying to publish the story in English for the
family & for other Americans. They were dismayed that I had never heard of
any of this in my education here in the States. Bless you, Ilsa & her
family!

Okay, I have to admit that I was culturally and geographically ignorant on the topic when I started this project. I did not know, for instance, that the Dutch East Indies had morphed into Indonesia. In truth, I used to wonder what became of the Dutch East Indies, as it just kind of disappeared.

A little further along the learning curve, I did not know why Ilse bristled one day and told me never to call her Indonesian. I realized I’d stumbled onto a cultural canker. It was tricky, writing the story. I could not talk about Indonesia–it did not exist in that time frame. Nor could I talk about Indonesians–they did not exist, either. They had to be Javanese, Sumatran, Balinese, etc, depending upon which island they came from. Ilse said she was an Indiesa; she’s not terribly keen on today’s term, “Indo,” but she accepts it.

So I thought I was doing quite well until we got toward the end of the story and I made the mistake of saying she emigrated to Holland. “Emigrrrrate? Emigrrrrrate?” she said, her r’s rolling indignantly. I knew I was in trouble again. “We did not emigrrrrate–we were Dutch citizens, with Dutch passports.” Her eyes flashed, and once again, I learned something about this complex culture we now call Dutch Indo, or just plain Indo.

Their ethnic roots are in a country that stopped existing in 1949. Their Dutch citizenship worked against them. In the country of their birth, they were the despised oppressors; in the “motherland” they were not welcome. My learning curve goes on, as I gain insight from my blog responders.

Daniel says, “The Dutch Indonesian (Indo) has always been an outsider.” Calvin points out, “The Indonesian History books deleted all the involvement of Indo in the collective knowledge. I guess it can’t be helped because Indo was always considered as ‘Dutch’ by the natives.” Mark says, “Let our culture not become a figment of the imagination…” Tina says, “As a very ‘watered’ down Dutch/Indo, I would love to know the history of my roots.” Jack says “…you have an almost incalculable number of third generation Indo’s….I think they are silent, because they are lost, not because they don’t care.” David speaks for many when he says, “I would like to show my friends who don’t understand about my heritage and how it shapes who I am today.”

From the beginning, my passion has been to get Ilse’s story out for the world to hear. Now I have extended my passion to getting the story of a dispersed culture out to the world and to the Indos that need to know their proud heritage.

What are the chances of two women who were in Japanese concentration camps on the island of Java during WWII meeting for the first time at a mega-church service in Snohomish, WA 65 years later? It happened! Ilse, her new friend, and I spent Thursday afternoon together. Clara is in her mid-eighties and she is just now writing down her story, with the help of a friend.

“But not for publication!” Clara emphasizes. Of course, dear woman: your story is important as a vital piece of history whether it is presented to your own family or to the whole American family. The key thing is to TELL it. Clara’s children and grandchildren will finally know what happened.

I hope Clara will agree to share a little piece of her story by letting her friend go to “Share your stories” on the sidebar, to the right. I hope others will add theirs. Firsthand from survivors, or secondhand from the next generation, let’s work together to end the silence.

Imagine just learning that your grandfather survived malnutrition, every kind of vermin you can name, recurring dysentery, and was subject to abuse at the whim of cruel captors–all before he was seven years old. Imagine looking at this beloved Opa–your granddad–and knowing that he was targeted for death, along with his sisters and aunt, as they trekked through the bush and jungle. This is what the family of René Evelynveer (Anglicized spelling) is learning, through End the Silence, the story that René’s sister has told.

René’s family is on a quest now, to learn this part of their family history.  And there are oh, so many more out there, descendants of the Dutch and Indo people who lived in the ill-fated Dutch East Indies and who left when it became Indonesia–400,000 displaced Dutch/Indos. They all had stories. To truly end the silence, we need to hear them all. There are many more grandchildren out there, like René’s, who need to hear the truth of their courageous heritage.

Ilse tells about her courageous mother in a story that takes us all back into the hellhole called Camp Halmahera.

“End the Silence” Chapter 20 – The Handkerchief

Ilse Smit

All Ilse wanted to do was tell her father what happened. She wanted to share the burden of the terror, the hunger, the grief. She deserved no less. She was only thirteen years old, and she needed someone to listen and to care what had happened to her. But it never happened.

Oh sure, she shared bits and pieces, but usually when she tried to speak of those years, she was cut off.

“Do not live in the past.”

“If you have problems, keep them to yourself.”

“You must forget about it and move on.”

Perhaps the ones she tried to tell were simply not interested. Or perhaps they could not bear to hear the truth, and so they forced Ilse the child, the sibling, the wife, the mother, to bear the truth alone.

So for over sixty years, the whole story lived in her memory, unforgettable and unresolvable. I listened to her story, painful bit by painful bit; she relived moments that paralyzed my sensibilities. I wrote it as she told it, and as she lived it.

Has Ilse suffered emotional trauma from her silence? I think there’s no doubt of it. We were together in a small take-out restaurant near a touch-and-go landing field. The Navy pilots were practicing that day, and a jet sliced the air overhead with a mighty roar. Ilse buried her face in her hands and tears streamed as her body shook. I had never seen anyone experience a flashback, but there was no doubt I was seeing it here. The restaurant owner and I soothed and comforted Ilse until she came back to the safe present.

Has the writing of her story brought Ilse peace of mind? I don’t know if that’s possible after all these years. But at least she no longer suffers the truth alone.

Welcome my friends. I am honored by your presence here.

I had heard Ilse Smit was looking for someone to help write her story—you know, for her kids and grandkids to read someday. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good luck. Then I heard her tell a little piece of that story, and I was so moved, I hastened to offer my help. It interfered with my writing schedule—after all, I am an author with a few short stories in print and a big novel in progress. But, like I said, I was moved.

Ilse Smit & Dorothy Read

When I read through Ilse Smit’s thin little spiral notebook of journalings, I knew this was a story that went beyond family history. This was world history and it needed to be shared with a world audience. And so, Ilse and I began the project that became the book, END THE SILENCE.