Tuesday, May 23, 2006

The Japanese Invasion

The Japanese invaded and occupied the Dutch East Indies from 1941 to 1945. Many of our grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins were in the middle of this occupation. They endured P.O.W. camps, internment camps, torture and eventual evacuation never to see their homeland again. Please click on the green link above regarding the Dutch East Indies 1941-1942 campaign.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The war cast a long shadow over my family. My father remembers the German occupation of Rotterdam (he was 5 years old when the war ended). My mother has few distinct memories of the Japanese occupation of Java, but to this day she has a visceral fear of air raid sirens and massed aircraft engines. My grandmother took me aside when I was about 10 and said (to paraphrase): "You're old enough now to hear this. I am going to tell you what happened to us when the Japanese came..."