I think of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now as QF35 nears its destination of Singapore. From my window seat I view the fluffy white cumulus clouds below and my mind is transported back to 2012 when I travelled into the Arctic region of Canada and Greenland. Today, from my vantage point, the clouds resemble the sea ice that forms on the inlets and bays in the Arctic in the Autumn months. On the horizon I see banks of clouds that somehow resemble icebergs, and when I squint, I could almost imagine that I can see these formations reflected in the stratified cloud below.
As we lose altitude and slip through the clouds that are no longer fluffy or friendly or white, visibility is lost momentarily as grey wispy clouds intensify into almost black ones filled with water, which lashes the plane as we approach Changi airport.
Changi airport is built on the site of the notorious World War II prison camp that bears the same name and each time I fly into Singapore, I am reminded of my voyage into the Artic in 2012 when I met a Dutch-Indonesian woman, whose name I have forgotten and whom I shall call Berthe for convenience, and whose story of her experiences as a child prisoner during the second world war was horrific, yet familiar. I want to tell you her story because I’ve often thought of it since, and I often wonder where she is now. I think her story is worth telling.
I’m not quite sure of the actual year this happened, but during the 1940s, Indonesia’s growing dissatisfaction with the colonial Dutch presence had inspired them to ask the Japanese to help oust the plantation owners from the country. The world was already in turmoil in Europe and more recently in the Pacific after the simultaneous bombings of Kota Bahru in Malaysia and Pearl Harbour, Hawaii in December in 1941.
The Dutch plantation owners in Indonesia had been facing increasing unrest from their local workers and Indonesia was becoming a dangerous place to live. For the Dutch people, however, they had considered themselves as Indonesian since they had lived in the country for several generations, and perhaps thought that since the rubber industry was of huge national economic importance, the uprisings were nothing more than a hiccup in Indonesia’s history. In other words, they had not read the room properly.
Berthe and her family lived in Java on a rubber plantation that her forebears had planted years before. As the war broke out, her family didn’t feel threatened as growing and collecting latex/rubber was important to the war effort. After all, the plantation workers had been there for generations, and Berthe’s best friends were the children of the plantation workers. Even when these same workers stopped arriving for work and the presence of the Japanese was evident, her family, along with many in the Dutch community did not leave. After all, nobody had ties to the Netherlands, and Indonesia was their country of birth. But the Japanese had other ideas.
One morning, trucks rolled into the plantation and right up to the front door of Berthe’s family home. Into one truck, at gunpoint, all the male members of the family were pushed. Berthe’s father, uncles, and brothers all were captured, joining the males of neighbouring plantations, some of whom they knew very well. The women and girls, with little time to pack personal items, were then jostled into a second truck, and without being able to say goodbye to their male family members, they were all transported from the only home they ever knew.
But there was a problem. Whilst the male prisoners would eventually find their way to Changi Prison of War Camp, the Japanese had no idea what to do with the hundreds of women they had in their custody. Since nobody from the Generals down to the lowly Japanese soldier wanted to take responsibility for them, they were marched by foot across the island from one prison camp to the next, and so on. And so began the longest march of women and girls in Java’s history, and possibly of the world. Berthe didn’t know for sure but believed that she was the youngest of the group and remembers learning to read from a bible that one of the women had picked up before being dragged from her home. As women succumbed to diseases or old age and died, the others tried to give them a Christian burial, which was difficult when the women were starving, ill, and exhausted. The bible, the same one that Berthe used to learn to read was also used over and over to affirm their faith as they marched, and, according to Berthe it stands out as being the most important of all their possessions. Eventually when the war ended the remaining group of women were found and were taken to Singapore, where they were to be reunited with their male family members.
Berthe smiles as she recalls that they received the news that her father and brothers had survived the war, and they would be reunited at a formal ceremony held in Singapore. On that day and dressed in new clothes that someone had given them, they waited in anticipation as official after official made a speech outlining the horrors faced by those held in Changi. Eventually, it was time for the prisoners of war to be reunited with their loved ones. A band, its members resplendent in crisp white uniforms played the first bars of a song.
Berthe turned to me, her eyes swimming with unshed tears.
‘After all that was done to us, our lasting memory is of that blasted song that they played. It wasn’t irony. It was insulting. They played the old Western song, Don’t fence me in, and I’ve hated it ever since.’
Berthe’s family was once again whole. Not one of them died, despite their personal ordeals. However, they no longer had a home; they no longer had a country, and when Canada offered the family the opportunity to make a new home there, they accepted, and the rest, as they say is history.
If you think that this story is familiar, it certainly is. Images of the roles Rachel Ward and Bryan Brown played in the film version of Nevil Shute’s iconic classic novel, A Town like Alice come to mind. I had asked Berthe whether she had ever read the book, as I knew that Shute had used the story of Women’s March across Java as the basis of his novel, which he set in Malaya, but she had never heard of any story being written about the women being marched under Japanese guard. Sometimes I wonder how many of heroic stories have been lost, or in the case of Berthe’s story, which was written but is no longer viewed as important as it should be.
We land and disembark at Changi airport. The view of Joni Mitchell’s clouds that reminded me of my Arctic voyage, which reminded me of Berthe’s story, have all but fled as I walk towards the arrivals hall to collect my things ahead of a new adventure.
We have just a few hours tomorrow to quickly explore the environs surrounding the Grand Park City Hall hotel, where we are staying just one night.
I will never be able to predict who I will meet on the forthcoming voyage to Japan, but I would be surprised if I ever meet anyone with a story as interesting as that of the Dutch-Indonesian Canadian woman I met all those years ago.
Comments