Chapter 3
Occupation
haiku of contents
A convoy of tanks
kempeitai and razzia
father imprisoned
Extract
Early one morning, my brother, Ed came running into my room, yelling, “Listen! Can you hear them? This is a different sound. Different from the Yanks, different from the Dutch. These are Japanese planes.They're here.”
For quite some time, conversation amongst adults consisted of discussion of war, initially the war far away in Europe. With tyres screeching on the soft asphalt, the truck skidded to a sharp halt, stirring sleeping birds in the midday heat. A soldier in KNIL (Royal Netherlands East Indies army, a military force maintained in the colony) uniform jumped out of the truck and began running albeit rather slowly and seemingly exhaustedly, towards the kampong road.Before he reached the kampong, he discarded his uniform so by the time he entered, he was dressed only in his kattock (underpants).The reason for his peculiar behaviour became clear the following day when sounds of clanging up the road in Sophia Street heralded the arrival of tanks turning into Wilhemina Street and coming to a shuddering halt. White flags with a red ball mounted to the tanks, flew in the breeze, soldiers in yellow-green uniforms appeared on either side of the tanks, shouting in a guttural language never heard before in our quiet cul de sac. As they lined the street, we stood silently watching our new rulers. My first impression of the Japanese army filled me with a sense of eeriness – strange guttural sounds, eyes that could not be seen under their caps from which, at the back, hung flaps of cloth in the style of Foreign Legion caps as worn by Beau Geste in the movies I had watched. However, there was no Digby Geste here to help his more famous brother, Beau, no soft voice of Gary Cooper – instead, a convoy of conquerors dressed in foreign colours with foreign voices, officers with samurai swords hanging at their sides, so very different from the previous military occupants in our town. The day those little round tanks came rumbling into sight, men in yellowish uniforms filling the turrets, others marching behind, that day innocence was strangled in me. Suddenly I knew that life has teeth and the teeth are those of death.
Fragment: the Madurese
Fixed bayonets entering with a shout so ferocious
it made my blood crawl when in the park
a Madurese was bayonetted to death
because he had laughed.
Three steps forward and jab. Shout at the jab.
Blood-grimaced face but not a sound out of his dying Madurese mouth.
Died with the pride of his being intact.
chapter 4
The Camps
haiku of contents
Bangkong, dysentery,
Samurai, Traviata,
Max and energy
Extracts
Prelude
There on the other side,
the barbed wire stretched tight.
A group of boys, just like my brother and I unsmiling, faces blank, eyes downcast.
Our mother between us steadying us with her eyes, warning us
when suddenly
the overture to Verdi’s
La Traviata
soared over us through the loudspeakers.
The entrance to our sojourn
into the hell of camps and we all stood transfixed each alone,
knowing the end to beauty
was here for now.
My mother took a hand
of each of her two sons
into hers, as we entered ...
Later, sitting at her first piano
after all the suffering was done,
she gingerly sounded the prelude to that first act of Verdi’s La Traviata
and my father’s brothers, sisters and mother watched and listened in silence as her tears fell.
Dysentery
Shit streaming down my legs alone
filling the gaps in the floor giving
filling the gaps in between toes filling ultimately the head ending
filling tears.
all Father, a mere echo
and leaving memory of death. of a dream.
Whips on the back What is the use
one, two, three of lion-hearted kings now?
more Friends die.... beheaded
no more disembowelled
promises alone
everlasting pain inside a cocoon of fear.
inside What memories should I tell,
sun which devours the skin should I not speak about,
sinks madness into the brain sun should I swallow,
sun spit out?
sun
sun What?
where is water
where is
love?
Mother’s eyes seeking inside you for your resilience
your courage
your survival
you
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fragments of a Journey, A Fisful of Life
Jose de Koster
Mask One, by the author, oil on hardboard
Drawing of Japanese soldiers, on paper, by the author
Mask Two, by the author, oil on hardboard