Tuesday, April 21, 2009

World War II and reactions of other nations


The WW II story is explained in the book of World War II filled with lot of suffering aspects, but we should take it as inspiring ones. Before taking effect though, the Franco-Soviet pact was required to go through the bureaucracy of the League of Nations, rendering it essentially toothless and in June 1935, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany easing prior restrictions. The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August. In October, Italy invaded Ethiopia, with Germany the only major European nation supporting her invasion. Italy then revoked objections to Germany's goal of making Austria a satellite state.
In direct violation of the Versailles and
Locarno treaties, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in March 1936. He received little response from other European powers. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July, Hitler and Mussolini supported fascist Generalísimo Francisco Franco's nationalist forces in his civil war against the Soviet-supported Spanish Republic. Both sides used the conflict to test new weapons and methods of warfare and the nationalists would prove victorious in early 1939.
With tensions mounting, efforts to strengthen or consolidate power were made. In October, Germany and Italy formed the
Rome-Berlin Axis and a month later Germany and Japan, each believing communism and the Soviet Union in particular to be a threat, signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy would join in the following year. In China, the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on a ceasefire to present a united front to oppose Japan. The death camp slaves suffered a lot in the Indonesian death camps like Ambarawa Camp Seven etc. This WWII story is explained through a kid’s view on WWII by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

German troops at the 1935


Adolf Hitler has a crucial negative role in the World War II. He, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, became the leader of Germany in 1933. He abolished democracy, espousing a radical racially motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a massive rearming campaign. This worried France and the United Kingdom, who had lost much in the previous war, as well as Italy, which saw its territorial ambitions threatened by those of Germany. To secure its alliance, the French allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired to conquer. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Saarland was legally reunited with Germany and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, speeding up remilitarisation and introducing conscription. Hoping to contain Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front. The Soviet Union, concerned due to Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of eastern Europe, concluded a treaty of mutual assistance with France. The death camp slaves suffered a lot in the Indonesian death camps like Ambarawa Camp Seven etc. This WWII story is explained through a kid’s view on WWII by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

World War II – Causes

The World War II started after WWI. In the aftermath of World War I, a defeated Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. This caused Germany to lose a significant portion of its territory, prohibited the annexation of other states, limited the size of German armed forces and imposed massive reparations. Russia's civil war led to the creation of the Soviet Union which soon was under the control of Joseph Stalin. In Italy, Benito Mussolini seized power as a fascist dictator promising to create a "New Roman Empire." The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese communist allies. In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Japanese Empire, which had long sought influence in China as the first step of its right to rule Asia, used the Mukden Incident as justification to invade Manchuria; the two nations then fought several small conflicts, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei until the Tanggu Truce in 1933. Afterwards Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, and Chahar and Suiyuan. This WWII story is explained through a kid’s view on WWII.

World War II, an overview

WWII was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all of the great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The war involved the mobilisation of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their complete economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Over seventy million people, the majority of whom were civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.
The start of the war is generally held to be in September 1939 with the
German invasion of Poland and subsequent declarations of war on Nazi Germany by most of the countries in the British Commonwealth and France. Many belligerents were at war before or after this date, during a period which spanned from 1937 to 1941, as a result of other events. Amongst these main events are the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the start of Operation Barbarossa , and the attacks on Pearl Harbor and British and Dutch colonies in South East Asia. World War II was a crucial period in the history of the world.

After the
World war II ended in 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the world's superpowers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The acceptance of the right to self-determination accelerated decolonization movements in Asia and Africa, while Western Europe itself began moving toward integration. This WWII story is explained through a kid’s view on WWII by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Treatment of comfort women

This painful story of the comfort women were hidden during Word War II. It is estimated that only 25 percent of the comfort women survived and that most were unable to have children as a consequence of the multiple rapes or the disease they contracted. According to Japanese soldier Yasuji Kaneko "The women cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance." Beatings and physical torture were said to be common.

Ten Dutch women were taken by force from prison camps in Java by officers of the Japanese Imperial Army to become forced sex slaves in February 1944. They were systematically beaten and raped day and night in a so called "Comfort Station". As a victim of the incident, Jan Ruff-O'Hearn testified to a U.S. House of Representatives committee, "Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps. But one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the “Comfort Women”, the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army. In the so-called “Comfort Station” I was systematically beaten and raped day and night. Even the Japanese doctor raped me each time he visited the brothel to examine us for venereal disease."

Although they were returned to the prison camps within three months upon protest of the Dutch prisoners against the Imperial Army, the Japanese officers were not punished by Japanese authorities until the end of the war. After the end of the World War II, 11 Japanese officers were declared guilty with one sentenced to death by the Batavia War Criminal Court. It decided that the case was not crime organized by the Army and that the ones who raped violated the Army’s order to hire only voluntary women. Some victims from East Timor testified they were forced when they were not old enough to have started menstruating and repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers. Some of those who refused to comply were executed.

Hank Nelson, emeritus professor at the Australian National University’s Asia Pacific Research Division has written about the brothels run by the Japanese military in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea during WWII. He quotes from the diary of Gordon Thomas, a POW in Rabaul. Thomas writes that the women working at the brothels “most likely served 25 to 35 men a day” and that they were “victims of the yellow slave trade.”

Nelson also quotes from Kentaro Igusa, a Japanese naval surgeon who was stationed in Rabaul. Igusa wrote in his memoirs that the women continued to work through infection and severe discomfort, though they “cried and begged for help.” These camp slaves suffered more than enouh during World War II.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Wartime comfort women

The so-called "wartime comfort women" were those who were taken to former Japanese military installations, such as comfort stations, for a certain period during World War II in the past and forced to provide sexual services to officers and soldiers.


Authors who wrote about these women in the post World War II Japan called them "jugun ianfu (comfort women joining the army)". And when the Japanese government first faced the issue of these women, it adopted this term, "jugun ianfu," and the AWF, when it started in 1995, it used this term as well. But in historical wartime documents we only find the term "ianfu (comfort women)". Therefore, we now always use this term "ianfu (comfort women)".

The comfort stations were first established at the request of the Japanese military authorities, as part of war efforts in China. According to military documents, private agents first opened brothels for officers and men stationed in Manchuria, around the time of the Manchurian Incident in 1931. Then term "ianfu (comfort women)" was not yet used and the attitude of the military itself was inactive.


When the World War II spread to Shanghai after the First Shanghai Incident in 1932, the first comfort station was established for a Japanese naval brigade posted there. The number of comfort stations increased rapidly after the Sino-Japanese war broke out in 1937. It was apparently Yasuji Okamura, at that time the Vice Chief of Staff of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force, who first promoted the establishment of comfort stations for the Japanese army.


There were apparently a number of reasons for establishing them: Japanese military personnel had raped Chinese civilian women in occupied areas on numerous occasions, and the military hoped to prevent a worsening of anti-Japanese feelings on the part of the Chinese people; there was a need to prevent the spread of venereal diseases among officers and men, as otherwise military effectiveness would be reduced; and it was also feared that contact with Chinese civilian women could result in the leaking of military secrets. The atrocities in this erra is explained through a Kid’s view on WW II by by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Number of comfort women

The Book of World War II has a long account on the number of comfort women. Lack of official documentation has made estimates of the total number of comfort women difficult, as vast amounts of material pertaining to matters related to war crimes and the war responsibility of the nation's highest leaders were destroyed on the orders of the Japanese government at the end of the war. Historians have arrived at various estimates by looking at surviving documentation which indicate the ratio of the number of soldiers in a particular area to the number of women, as well as looking at replacement rates of the women. Historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi, who conducted the first academic study on the topic which brought the issue out into the open, estimated the number to be between 50,000 and 200,000.

Based on these estimates, most international media sources quote about 200,000 young women were recruited or kidnapped by soldiers to serve in Japanese military brothels. The BBC quotes "200,000 to 300,000" and the International Commission of Jurists quotes "estimates of historians of 100,000 to 200,000 women."


After the war, a BC-level court martial brought to trial the Japanese military officials who forced the Dutch in the camps to be sent to comfort stations. The WW II story states of the 13 individuals accused in relation to the Semarang Incident, the Batavia Temporary Court Martial on February 14, 1948, sentenced Army Major Okada to death. Eleven others were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two to twenty years. Prosecutors did not succeed in convicting anybody in relation to the Muntilan case, which ended in acquittal.

Court records of the Semarang Incident have survived, and the Dutch Government commissioned a study of Dutch government documents on the forced prostitution of Dutch women at the Dutch East Indies under Japanese occupation. According to the published report , 200 to 300 Dutch women worked at Japanese military brothels, of which “some sixty five were most certainly forced into prostitution.” And that was the most pathetic situation in the Book of World War II.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

The reaction of the fathers

In the Book of World War II, on April 17, 2007 Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Hirofumi Hayashi announced the discovery, in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, of seven official documents suggesting that Imperial military forces, such as the Tokeitai (Naval military police), forced women whose fathers attacked the Kempeitai (Army military police), to work in front line brothels in China, Indochina and Indonesian death camps . These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing to having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokeitai members having arrested women on the streets, and after enforced medical examinations, putting them in brothels. On 12 May 2007 journalist Taichiro Kajimura announced the discovery of 30 Dutch government documents submitted to the Tokyo tribunal as evidence of a forced massed prostitution incident in 1944 in Magelang.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs resisted further issuance of travel visas for Japanese prostitutes, feeling it tarnished the image of the Japanese Empire. The military turned to acquiring comfort women outside mainland Japan, especially from Korea and occupied China. Many women were tricked or defrauded into joining the military brothels. The US Army Force Office report of interview with 20 comfort women in Burma found that the girls were induced by the offer of plenty of money, an opportunity to pay off the family debts, and on the basis of these false representations many girls enlisted for overseas duty and were rewarded with advance of a few hundred yen. This incident was going on continuously during the World War II

In urban areas, conventional advertising through middlemen was used alongside kidnapping. However, along the front lines, especially in the countryside where middlemen were rare, the military often directly demanded that local leaders procure women for the brothels. This situation became worse as the war progressed. Under the strain of the war effort, the military became unable to provide enough supplies to Japanese units; in response, the units made up the difference by demanding or looting supplies from the locals. Moreover, when the locals, especially Chinese, were considered hostile, Japanese soldiers carried out the "Three Alls Policy", which included indiscriminately kidnapping and raping local civilians. South Korean government designated Bae Jeong-ja as pro-Japan collaborator (chinilpa) in September 2007 for recruiting comfort women. The WWII history is a witness to this issue.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Japanese military prostitution

The World War II story has an unforgettable chapter on the exploitation and abuse of many innocent women through military prostitution. Military correspondence of Japanese Imperial Army shows that the aim of facilitating comfort stations was the prevention of rape crimes committed in Japanese death camps and thus preventing rise of hostility among people in occupied areas.

Given the well-organized and open nature of prostitution in Japan, it was seen as logical that there should be organized prostitution to serve the Japanese Armed Forces. The Japanese Army camps established the comfort stations to prevent venereal diseases and rape by Japanese soldiers, to provide comfort to soldiers and head off espionage. The comfort stations were not actual solutions to the first two problems, however. According to Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi, they aggravated the problems. Yoshimi has asserted, "The Japanese Imperial Army feared most that the simmering discontentment of the soldiers could explode into a riot and revolt. That is why it provided women." It was the same with the Indonesia death camps.

Recruitment

The first "comfort station" was established in the Japanese concession in Shanghai in 1932. Earlier comfort women were Japanese prostitutes who volunteered for such service. However, as Japan continued military expansion, the military found itself short of Japanese volunteers, and turned to the local population to coerce women into serving into these stations. Many women responded to calls for work as factory workers or nurses, and did not know that they were being pressed into sexual slavery. In the early stages of the war, Japanese authorities recruited prostitutes through conventional means. Middlemen advertised in newspapers circulating in Japan and the Japanese colonies of Korea, Taiwan, Manchukuo, and mainland China. However, these sources soon dried up, especially from Japan. The Japanese death camps are the witnesses for all these atrocities. And this sotry is an ever memorized and agonizing fact in the history of World War II.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

The testimonies of ‘comfort women’

The kid’s view on WWII written by Ralph and Cathy Brink explains about the life of slavery in the death camps. According to the testimonies of women who were transferred from the Ambarawa . Fourth and Sixth camps, on February 23, 1944, all women in the camp aged from l 7 to 28 were told to line up in the camp courtyard. They were then ordered to enter the camp office one by one. On the following day, February 24th, 20 were called into the office. Seventeen of them were selected on February 26, and transferred to a facility in Semarang City and forced to sign an agreement. The agreement was written in Japanese and nobody knew what she was signing. At the Halmahera Camp, eleven were taken, of which three were returned. At the Gendungan Camp, older women volunteered so that the younger women would be spared. Approximately 35 women were sent to four comfort stations in Semarang on February 26 or two to three days later. These four stations were the Hinomaru, Seiunso (or Futabaso), the Semarang Club, and the Shoko Club. At the other death camps, we know that the Dutch put up strong resistance and prevented the young women from being taken away.


Japanese death camps were horrible. Top military officials found out about the Semarang incident when the Dutch petitioned an officer who came to observe the camp from Tokyo. The officer realized that the women were forced into becoming comfort women against their will, and reported on the matter. On orders from the military headquarters in Jakarta, the comfort stations were closed within two months after starting operation, and the women were liberated. Yet some of these stations later resumed operation at the same place using women of mixed race.

Before this incident, in around December 1943 or January 1944, Japanese military officials began gathering women from the Muntilan Women's Camp in the same central Java area to be sent to a station in Magelang. They made the Dutch leader in the camp compile a list of young women who were suitable as bar hostesses. On January 25, the Japanese gathered the women on this list, subjected them to physical examination, and selected 15 who were then taken away. However, as the Dutch put up a strong resistance, the Japanese demanded surrogates, for which women who were rumored to be former prostitutes volunteered. After re-evaluation, 13 were sent to the comfort station. We can read more suffering stories of World War II in Brink’s publication.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

The ‘Comfort’ women in the military camps

The book of World War II narrates another terrible practice especially in the Japanese death camps. That is the captured and abducted women were used sexually to quench the thirst of the soldiers. At that time, the Japanese military occupied the Dutch colony in 1942 during the Pacific War, and placed Dutch nationals in internment facilities and prisoner-of-war camps.
Comfort women is a euphemism for women working in military brothels, especially those women who were forced into prostitution as a form of sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. Around 200,000 are typically estimated to have been involved, with estimates as low as 20,000 from some Japanese scholars and estimates of up to 410,000 from some Chinese scholars, but the disagreement about exact numbers is still being researched and debated. Historians and researchers have stated that the majority were from Korea, China and Japan, but women from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Dutch East Indies, Indonesia, and other Japanese-occupied territories were also used in "comfort stations". Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, then Malaya, Thailand, then Burma, then New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and what was then French Indochina during World War II.

At this War time, young women from countries under Japanese Imperial control were reportedly abducted from their homes. In some cases, women were also recruited with offers to work in military. It has been documented that the Japanese military itself recruited women by force. However Japanese historian Ikuhiko Hata stated that there was no organized forced recruitment of comfort women by Japanese government or military.

The nature of sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II is still being actively debated, as the matter is still highly political in both Japan and Far East Asia. Many military brothels were run by private agents and supervised by the Japanese Army. Some Japanese historians, using the testimony of ex-comfort women, have argued that the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were either directly or indirectly involved in coercing, deceiving, luring, and sometimes kidnapping young women throughout Japan's Asian colonies and occupied territories.

Now, women as the Japanese death camps who were forced into prostitution for the United States military by South Korean or American officials, accuse successive Korean governments of hypocrisy in calling for reparations from Japan while refusing to take a hard look at South Korea’s own history.

It is written in the WW II story that some officials of the Japanese military forcefully transferred Dutch women and women of mixed race from the concentration camps to comfort stations and forced them to provide sexual services to Japanese officers and men. The most famous of such cases is the Semarang Comfort Women Incident. According to an article in the report of the AWF documentation committee, in early 1944, approximately 35 Dutch women and women of mixed race were forcibly taken as comfort women from (1) the Fourth or Sixth Ambarawa Camp, (2) the Ninth Ambarawa Camp, (3) the Halmahera Camp, and(4) the Gendungan Camp located in Ambarawa and Semarang in central Java. Officers of the Southern Army facilitated these moves. It is explained well by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The sleepless nights in Ambarawa camp seven

When we turn the pages of a kid’s view on WWII we cannot reject the importance of Ambarawa Camp Seven in the book of World War II. Ambarawa is a market town located between Semarang and Salatiga in Central Java, Indonesia.

Ambarawa lies some way above sea level and was an administrative centre for the Dutch colonialists. It is now a popular area for local tourists, particularly with the nearby hill station of Bandungan and the Hindu-Buddhist temples at Gedong Songo. Foreign tourists pass through the area particularly in conjunction with visiting the Buddhist temple at Borobudur.

Ambarawa was once an important connecting rail link providing a cog railiway locomotive into the central mountain range. The Semarang-Ambarawa-Magelang line was fully operational until 1977. It is the site of the Museum Kereta Api Ambarawa ('Ambarawa Railway Museum').

The museum was established in the 1970s primarily to preserve a wide selection of the steam locomotives which were then coming to the end of their useful lives on the 3ft 6in (1067mm) gauge railways of the Indonesian State Railway (the then Perusahaan Negara Kereta-Api, PNKA). These are parked in the open air next to the original station, originally a transhipment point between the 4ft 8½in gauge branch from Kedungjati to the north-east and the 3ft 6in gauge line onward towards Yogyakarta via Magelang to the south. It is still possible to see that the two sides of the station were built to accommodate different size trains. It was there in the World War II time also.

Hence the museum is well situated and its development into a world class site is not only desirable but feasible with the right kind of backing. Currently it is still part of the State Railway who has supported it to the best of its ability since formation although funding has never been generous. Now the provincial Government of Central Java is increasingly taking an interest from the point of view of its heritage significance and its potential as a tourist attraction. Non-Governmental bodies like the Semarang Heritage Society are also acting to assist and there is also an unofficial overseas group The Friends of Ambarawa Railway Museum'.

Ambarawa was the site of Japanese interment camps where up to 15,000 Europeans had been held during the Japanese occupation during World War II. Few death camps were there and comfort women camp too. And thus this place had sleepless nights. And next blog explains about this ‘sleepless’ nights in the comfort slave camps. Following Japanese surrender and the subsequent proclamation of Indonesian independence, fighting broke out in the Ambarawa area on 20 November 1945 between British troops evacuating European internees and Indonesian Republicans. A kid’s view on WWII by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink explain them well.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

The Horrible life in Indonesian death camps

The book of World War II mentions about the atrocities towards the death camp slaves. Life in Indonesian death camps was a deathly combination of hard work, malnutrition and harsh punishments all taking place in the intense tropical heat of the region. In Japan itself, there were approximately 130 camps but it was not just western prisoners who suffered. An estimated 100,000 Asian labourers died in the construction of the Death Railway. The camps created by the Japanese were mostly ad-hoc work camps designed to cope with the overwhelming numbers of prisoners. James Taylor, of the Imperial War Museum in London, said: "As well as the military significance, the railway and other projects also helped to solve what to do with all these people that had been captured."

The Japanese death camps were normally surrounded by barbed wire and high wooden fences and anyone trying to escape would be executed in front of other prisoners, meaning very few attempts were ever made. The Japanese did not sign up to the Geneva Convention, which governs the rights of PoWs, and prisoners were forced to learn Japanese to understand commands. It is said that failure to comply with instructions, often made up on the whim of the camp commander, would lead to serious beatings during this WWII story.


At the beginning of the day a daily roll-call, known as the Tenko, was held each day and prisoners had to call out their number in Japanese. Most prisoners were put to work in mines, fields and factories and would be given a meager diet of 600 calories a day on which they had to carry out 12 hours of hard labour. A typical meal consisted of Soya beans and seaweed, with meat or fish only served once a month. Many of the deaths among POWs were caused by starvation and disease as well as overwork and punishments and those who survived left malnourished and several stones lighter than when they arrived. All about these bitter camp experiences were explained clearly through a kid’s view on WWII.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

The cruelties in Japanese death camps

The WW II story which is explained in the book of World War II is mostly filled with lot of suffering aspects, but we should take it as inspiring ones. The Japanese death camps in Ambarawa were horrible. The death camp slaves suffered a lot in the Japanese death camps.


The prisoners of World War II in the Japanese death camps were held in appalling conditions, the brutality of their captors caused many deaths along with a lack of food and medicine for diseases such as cholera, dysentery and malaria. Punishments were randomly dispensed and without justification. One of the smaller punishments among death camp slaves was to stand holding a 20lb boulder above head until it was dropped, and then they were beaten. One man was seen to be tied to the ground by a barbed wire collar until he died. The Japanese, faced with so many fit young men at their mercy, saw prisoners as expendable labour for their war effort – the infamous Burma-Siam railway, the 'Death Railway' costing the lives of thousands of POWs.

A historian named Terry Charman at the Imperial War Museum in London, explained: "There was also this feeling among the Japanese that it was a disgrace to become a prisoner under their military code, the Japanese felt a lot of our men had sacrificed their honour in the Indonesian death camps. There was a lot of ill-treatment, beatings, mutilations. The Japanese officers even beat their own men." Indeed the brutality came down the Japanese ranks and the frustrations of junior officers were taken out on the helpless captives. Equally, Korean conscripts press ganged into Japanese service were as cruel as their masters. The pathetic situation in World War II is explained beautifully by Ralph and Kathy Brink in their Brink’s publication.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Book of World War II

Book of World War II was an historic event that touched nearly every person alive during that time. What was it like to be one of the millions of soldiers who fought the battles? Or a civilian worker making the tanks and bombs? Or a child your age, either in Japanese death camps, Ambarawa Camp Seven? You can find out. There are still thousands of people alive today who were soldiers, civilians, or children during the Second World War, and who remember what they did and how they felt. Locate someone to interview about this extraordinary time. Then use the Writing Workshop to write and publish that person's oral history of WWI story in the Book of World War II.

WWII was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The war involved the mobilisation of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their complete economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Over 70 million people, the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.

The beginning of the war is generally held to be in September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland and subsequent declarations of war on Nazi Germany by the United Kingdom, France and the British Dominions. Amongst these main events are the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the start of Operation Barbarossa, and the attack on Pearl Harbor and British and Dutch colonies in South East Asia. Many belligerents entered the war before or after this date, during a period which spanned from 1937 to 1941, as a result of other events.

The United States and the Soviet Union emerged from the war as the world's leading powers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The self-determination spawned by the war accelerated decolonization movements in Asia and Africa, while Western Europe itself began moving toward integration. The detailed original account of a war victim is explained in the Book of World War II is explained through a Kids view WW II.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

A reunion with my mother

It was a miracle and unexpected meeting with my mom after a long time gap in the WW II story tribulation. Against all odds my Mom found me among the thousand or so confused kids and old men shuffling and stumbling excitedly around. I was laying on my ‘cot’ the 4”x10” boards on the saw horses. I was sick as a dog, and simply too weak and miserable to move. All I had been able to do, when I first heard the loud commotion and some talk of surrender, was to drag myself in the direction of the front gate. I remember vaguely hearing some mention of a “really big bomb.” Honestly, I was too exhausted to care. All I wanted to just lie down and be left alone! Looking back, I frankly believe I had reached the end ; I had ‘run out of gas,‘ and it was time for me to give up.’

Yes, I believe I can say that I have some idea of how Anne Frank must have felt as a death camp slave. I believe I know how that dear young girl must have suffered in her final hours… Utterly, hopelessly alone… no one to care for her… no one to stroke her hair… without a touch of comfort… completely forsaken in a brutal World War II!

And this a heart melting tragic experience in the WWI story. Do words exist that can adequately describe how a ten-year-old kid feels, after having been separated for almost a year, to have his loving Mother gently hug him... of your dear, sweet mother’s tears drenching your face after such a long, bitter, hopeless, seemingly endless experience? I believe not… at least, I have not been able to find the words. When Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink explain this uncomfortable tragic book of World War II of course it should an inspiration for the youngsters to thirst and do something for universal peace and harmony even in the midst of diversity of caste, creed, culture and language.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Torrents of suffering in the Ambarawa Camp Seven

The book of World War II still remains as an unforgettable partially cured wound even in the next generations thereafter. No one, in his wildest dreams, would have anticipated what was next in store for the death camp slaves. One must remember that with the dropping of the atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, WWII had come to a screeching halt. The Japanese soldiers capitulated and simply laid down their weapons. However, this immediately created a power vacuum in the far-flung islands. There were no Allied forces of any kind on the ground to stabilize the situation in Indonesia especially in the Indonesian death camps like Ambarawa Camp Seven etc; no governmental control, no organized police force; no system of justice. As could have been predicted, the situation quickly turned into deadly chaos.

This was the environment that the some 28,000 women, children, old men and the very sick in the
Japanese death camps in Mid-Java faced. They were totally defenseless in camps of WW II that were surrounded by flimsy bamboo fencing, in an environment that quickly developed into total anarchy.

How did this come about? There were different entities that had their own ideas of what has to happen next, and as the saying goes: each group “had a different log in the fight.” This is what is explained from the heart by Mr.
Ralph and Cathy Brink in the WWII story .

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Japanese death camps, the boiling centers of cruelty

The WW II story which is explained in the book of World War II is mostly filled with lot of suffering aspects. We found in the last blog that many used to die every day in the Japanese death camps dues to various reasons. And the kids were the watchers of these corpses. The survivors had by then been reduced to mere walking corpses. Few of them were aware by this time that the Japanese military was under orders of Emperor Hirohito to annihilate all the European prisoners especially those who are in Indonesian death camps like Ambarawa Camp Seven etc. He intended to follow the Nazi example of simply exterminating unwanted human beings.

When we think about
World War II, is it any wonder that the news of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ghastly weapons as they were ever-so-welcome? The Allies had finally won this awfully cruel, bloody war! The prisoners in the Japanese concentration camps made a collective sigh of relief. Unless one has lived through their experiences, it is impossible to imagine what 3½ years of concentration-camp life was like. The Japanese death camps tore families apart, separated ten-year old kids from their mothers, whipped and tortured prisoners such as my sister Hortense, starved them en masse, and used their young daughters as ‘comfort women’ for their troops. The barbarous, unbridled cruelty was finally to come to a stop.

The cruelties towards the prisoners were so horrible. A great number of those interned had lost loved ones--husbands, wives, parents and children – in the
World War II. They all had lost their homes, possessions, jobs, security... but finally, finally, they were safe … or so they thought. This WWII story is explained through a kid’s view on WWII by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Slave Kids, the ‘death watchers’!

Although we were just real young kids, we were put to work in the tropical sun in the death camps of the World War II. We weeded around the death camp, or were put to work breaking clumps of hard dried dirt with our bare hands so as to prepare beds of soil for some foodstuffs to grow.

Some years after the
World War, as a teenager, I made a drawing showing the dirt beds, the bilik fence, and a watchtower which was manned by an armed guard. A hole on the bilik symbolized the intense desire for life outside the camps; the desire to see the horizon rather than the hated fence.

There was another utterly disgusting job for which kids were used: the ‘death watching’ in the
death camps. They had to do it with the dying old men whose bodies were usually terribly swollen, and from which as a result of the tropical heat fluids dripped.

After any one of the old men died, the kids had to close the eyelids and call the orderly. They then had to help prepare the body for burial. Basically that amounted to old watches, rings or other valuables being swiped, to be used for smuggling. The kids then had to place the cadavers on simple gurneys made out of boards, which were then often placed outside, in the tropical sun. There was no room anywhere else. Some 10-15 old men died each day. And thus our story in the death camps were horrible with lot of suffering aspects. The
Japanese death camps in Ambarawa were more horrible. This WWII story is explained through a kid’s view on WWII by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

The sacrifice of a mother

The WW II story is continued in the book of World War II filled with lot of suffering aspects, but we should take it as inspiring ones.

In the mid-September of the year 1944, I turned 10. We were still interned in Banjoe Biroe as death camp slaves. About that time, an announcement was made that all boys 10 years and older would get a free pair of socks; and to present themselves at a particular date and time by the front gate. My Mother was apprehensive. I thought it was a great idea the first present I would be getting in years!

As the 10-year old boys assembled at the right time, our names were carefully noted. Subsequently the Mothers were told to pack some necessities and changes of clothing, because the next day we were to be taken to a special boys’ camp. That camp turned out to be the infamous death camp 7 in Ambarawa; a death camp with a very miserable reputation.

Now my dear Mother had to say goodbye to her youngest her already scrawny 10-year-old flesh-and-blood. Imagine: For years she had not heard anything from or about her own elderly parents in Nazi-occupied Holland at the time of World War II. Her husband, the oldest stepson, and her now 2-year old son Fred had already been taken away. This time she had to say good-bye to her ‘baby.’

As I mentioned before: during all those war years I never ever heard my mother complain. When the Japanese death camps army truck with its cargo of dearly beloved 10-year old boys drove away, my Mom waved and did not even visibly cry. She made things easier on me, for sure!

It was decades later that my oldest sister Vanda told me how, after the military truck had driven off with its precious cargo and vanished out of sight, my Mother collapsed and completely broke down. What a vicious assault to the human psyche, to have a Mother experience one horrendous blow after another. This WWII story is explained through a kid’s view on WWII by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Wicked leaders

The cruelty of the World War is mainly due to the inhuman and selfish mentality of the leaders who ruled over those days. Many suffered in death camps like Japanese death camps, Ambarawa Camp Seven, Indonesia death camps etc. What does make me sad, however, is to observe even today the use of mesmerizing power of clearly wicked leaders, führers and dictators usually backed by their religious, political, and military sycophants.

These leaders of the World War had an mysterious ability to brainwash entire population and create a cruel and fanatical mob mentality. And it is continued even today. That mentality justifies and even rewards mindless atrocities more often than not with the wholehearted blessing of their religious clergy something that has been the case in both Christendom as well as in atheist and Communist countries. That is what is absolutely terrifying.

Mankind apparently refuses to benefit from the lessons of its recent history. World War II is past; but do not for a moment believe that the cycle of violence and brutality of man’s inhumanity to man has abated. Witness Korea, Vietnam, Malawi, Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Iran, and too many other places to mention. The WW II story narrates everything from the life incidents of some soldiers and victims.

How privileged we are to be alive, even with the various problems we have to contend with, such as old age, sickness, and what-have-you. Let us never take our many blessings for granted, or lose our joy in the worship of our Heavenly creator because He is the one who leads us with hope. This hope and joy aroused from the sufferings of the World War is our inspiration to go forward.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Any personal animosity towards the Japanese or German people?

The bitter memories of the World War II, which were haunting me for certain period of my life became enriching and energizing ones. To be in Pearl Harbor, the place where the U.S.A. first became involved in that awful World War, and to stand in the exact spot on the Missouri where the surrender document was signed, made me deeply meditate on how precious life, along with our present blessings associated with freedom, really is. Our lives have been changed from indescribable tragedy to boundless joy!

I found myself spending time in heartfelt prayer, whether sitting in Waikiki Beach enjoying God’s delightful creation, or lying in bed at night next to the love of my life, my precious, faithful wife Cathy.

How privileged we are to be alive, even with the various problems we have to contend with, such as old age, sickness, and what-have-you. Let us never take our many blessings for granted, or lose our joy in the worship of our Heavenly creator.

Regarding the sufferings in the World War along with Japanese death camps and German the death camp slaves some have asked me whether I still have any personal animosity towards the Japanese or German people. My simple, emphatic answer is: No, I do not. I have come to appreciate that in every nation there is good, and there is evil. The Bible book of Acts says it well:

“For a certainty I perceive that God is not partial, but in

every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness

is acceptable to Him.”

Cathy and I have wholeheartedly accepted the significance of those words. It is a simple indication that a spiritual outlook in life can help one gain peace, as well as hope, comfort and joy.

The WW II story which is explained in the book of World War II is mostly filled with lot of suffering aspects, but we should take it as inspiring ones. The Japanese death camps in Ambarawa were horrible. This WWII story is explained through a kid’s view on WWII by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink.