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 .