View Single Post
  #1  
Old 15-08-20, 11:23
Hanno Spoelstra's Avatar
Hanno Spoelstra Hanno Spoelstra is offline
MLU Administrator
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 14,400
Default VJ 75 - Lest We Forget

The 75th anniversary of the end of World War 2 triggers the recollection of my late father, Rob Spoelstra. He was born in the Netherlands East-Indies (now Indonesia) and lived there from 1931-1945.

During the war, the family was separated and sent to internment camps.His father was in a mens camp, his mother and sister in a women and children camp. At 12 years of age, he was taken away from his mother and put in a boys only camp. After V-J Day, he fled from the Japanese interment camp at Tjideng and went looking for his father, mother and sister.

When they hear the war is over, my father, as a 14 year old boy, and a friend decide to go and find their family. They had some letters via the Red Cross so they had a clue where they could be, not knowing if they were still alive. They traded some clothes for a couple of goose eggs, made a knapsack and crawled under the barbed wire and headed in the direction of their father's camp.
Out on the road they were stopped by a Japanese patrol (who were now tasked with protecting the Dutch against the Indonesians). They were about to be taken back to the camp, when a column of British-Indian Army trucks passed by. A British officer asked what was happening and after his explanation, my father and his friend were taken along by the British-Indian troops as they were heading in the direction of their father’s camp.
My father told me they “drove in trucks with peculiar back-slanted windows”, identifying them as Cab 13 CMP trucks. My father told me this story when I first showed him my Ford F15A CMP.

Luckily, my father was reunited with his father, mother and sister and they were repatriated to the Netherlands. First by trucks and a flight in a PBY Catalina, then back to the Netherlands by ship. All their belongings fitted in a single trunk. When they got back in The Netherlands they were given some clothes and some money. They had to move in with my great-grandmother and build up a new life.

My grandmother passed away some years after the war, she never fully recovered from the malnourishment and ailments contracted in the internment camp. The rest of the family went on to live a good life.

Click image for larger version

Name:	1E93F952-787C-4D0C-B6BC-56DD2015CAA5.jpeg
Views:	5
Size:	96.6 KB
ID:	115522
Reply With Quote