The Fourth and Ninth Battalion

Cimahi, West Java, November 1944 until September 1945

Cimahi revisited in 1973, posing in front of my former home. The Indonesian commander at the gate allowed me to inspect my old barrack. It had been turned into a school and hopefully they got rid of the bed bugs.

It was already dark when we arrived at the gate of our new “home” in Cimahi on November 24, 1944. The journey from the boy’s camp Grogol on the outskirts of Jakarta to Cimahi had been exhausting, taking about twelve hours of what is normally a three-hour journey. I estimate that there were hundreds of us adolescents in the train, which crept laboriously up into the mountains to a destination unknown. Thirst and hunger had plagued us from the beginning. The small supply of water I had taken with me when we left Grogol early that morning was soon finished. I could not resist the temptation and drank it all when we were stalled in the hot railway yards of the old town of Batavia in the stifling heat of coaches of the former Dutch East Indian Railway. Finally, when we moved south and out of Jakarta and we could breath again, it was apparent that we were heading for the fertile plains, mountains and volcanoes of the Bandung plateau, called the Parahyangan.
Cimahi, a fifteen minutes drive from Bandung, has always been a garrison town, first under the Dutch, then under the Japanese and these days it is a base town for the Indonesian army, the TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia). At the time, the fourth and ninth battalions were turned into one huge camp holding approximately 10,000 civilian (male) prisoners. Previously it had been a camp for POWs who were shipped to Burma, Thailand and Sumatra. From the writings and other evidence they left us, we gathered that life hadn’t been too bad for them up to the point that they were put on transport.

Our contribution to the catering and medical department.

Weary with fatigue and lack of nourishment, we were marched into the large square inside the gate. It was packed with people, but I was hardly aware what was going on in the darkness. Suddenly a stocky and hairy westerner grabbed me and said in Dutch with a foreign accent, “This is the one we want.” Apparently, when it was known that our contingent of boys would arrive, some of the more charitable men who were already there offered to adopt some of us. I was so lucky to be taken under the wings of five young fellows of which the one who opted me, the oldest, was an Australian from Brisbane, of about 31 years of age and a planter. He was called Mike but his real name was Charlie Hildebrandt. On the way to the barracks my benefactors questioned me about our place of origin and I was asked whether I had food with me, to which I proudly answered that I had a lot of sugar, a most precious thing to have among one’s possessions.
Just before we left Grogol, the Japanese had given us a small ration of sugar, which I, with great strength of will, had kept for future emergencies. Normally I ate it in one sitting. We arrived in my friends’ barrack and what we called “cell” and as soon as possible they made me sleep on one of the wooden cots and covered me with a thin blanket (the nights in the mountains can be quite cool). Still half-awake I heard them rummaging through my knapsack and with great hilarity they produced the tiny bag of sugar. I trusted them and never told them I had been aware of their indiscretion and they never betrayed this trust.
These cells weren’t real cells as the ones in a regular jail but a compartment in the barrack, of which the walls were partly demolished, formerly used for the accommodation of the Indonesian soldiers. Our cell had two double wooden beds and one single. I was initially supposed to be sleeping on the floor but that night they decided that I should have the single cot. One of the great menaces of our nights were the millions of bed bugs who would emerge from the crevasses in the wall and the holes in the wood and attack us with great ferocity, mad for our blood. I was always covered with white scars of bites from the coriander smelling pests.
Two of my new friends were labouring in the so-called “fourage” or “supplies” while the others worked in the camp’s bakery, which also baked the bread for the Japanese army camp opposite of our camp. At first I was given a light “corvee” or light duty because of my chronic dysentery and general state of health. I found this so boring and depressing, however, that I begged them to try to get me in the fourage so that I could take my mind off the hopelessness of things in general. The other advantage was that we were sent out of the camp practically daily to get rice, maize, and other provisions for the kitchen, as well as sawdust for the fires of the ovens. I was accepted.
One most interesting thing about our camp was that everywhere along streets were sawed off drums in which people were asked to urinate. This urine was used for the production of yeast for our bread and that of the Japanese army and also as a medicine and tonic. Some chemical engineers from the plantations had invented this unique process and it was said that the urine of older men was especially desirable because of its richness in broken down materials. The doctors supplied the weak and sick with small doses of this greyish milky substance. It did not taste of urine at all as some may surmise (I was given it to drink a couple of times and although it was quite disgusting, it did not resemble urine).
I have dealt enough in former articles with the physical and psychological horrors inflicted on some us by the Japanese camp staff and their Korean stooges (in general we feared the latter more than we did the former). I will this time refrain from commenting on it, lest I would become another James Clavell. I used to smuggle sugar and pieces of meat into the camp in little bags, hidden in a most private and secret place and was fortunately never found out. Reflecting on this brave but irresponsible behaviour, I now realise that I probably lost more energy worrying about the consequences if I was caught, than it was worth.
Two years ago, in June 1995, on the occasion of the fifty-year anniversary of the end of the Second World War, I wrote how we were not liberated at all after the war had ended in August 1945. Nobody bothered.
Note. In September or October 1945, Charlie Hildebrandt married a Dutch lady on a ship anchored on the roads of Tg. Priok, the port of Jakarta. Afterwards he sailed for Australie with his bride and I have never heard from him again. In the fifties when I was a deck officer in the merchant marine, I visited Brisbane, Australia. There I went through the phone book and called every Hildebrandt I could find and none of the people who answered knew anything about this warm and friendly man. He always reminded me of a bear. The other five of my benefactors disappeared as well and even with the aid of the Internet I was not able to locate them after all these years.
Note 2. According to studies of Dr. D. van Velden in her “De Japanse internerings kampen voor burgers gedurende de tweede wereld oorlog” (The Japanese prison camps during the Second World War), about 96,300 civilians of Dutch and Dutch Indonesian extraction were taken prisoner, most of them over the full period of three years. Of these about 13,120 succumbed or 13.6 percent. Other estimates show figures of 15 or 17 percent (from a report the Japanese Government gave to the International Red Cross during the war). I do not know when these last data were taken. It is obvious that the casualties among the Dutch and Indonesian POWs was higher, about 19.5 percent. This, I believe, because of bombardments like those at the Burma railway or accidents like the sinking of the Yunyo Maru and other marine or land disasters. The data for the Romushas, the Indonesian “voluntary” labour are not exactly known but rough estimates are that at least one in the three Romushas perished.