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Hasekawa, brought a platform out and stood on it and told us that the Americans had dropped a terrible bomb on Japan and that they lost the war but that they were ready to get ready for the next one that they were going to win. I tell you we were absolutely appalled by that kind of an attitude. Then the Japanese disappeared and we never saw them again. The next morning the gate was open and the Japanese had left. Our barbed wire around our camp was 60 feet high and filled with woven bamboo. That meant that it was always gloomy and dark. People on the outside gave us a form of an orange. Some Chinese people came and gave us pig feet from a pig. Well I tell you we cooked it and for our emaciated condition, that was a disaster. Just about all of us got the runs. My brother by that time was semi-comatose and all I was getting down into him was some liquids. I don't think he remembered too much from our liberation. After a few days I felt confident that one of the other boys was going to help him so I left camp and walked down the road to my mother's camp not knowing if she was still alive. Entering that camp was horrifying. The situation had deteriorated so badly. I entered the little home that my mother and her two girlfriends were in. Those girlfriends had three little kids and they were by that time 4, 5 and 6 years old. If you see kids that age nowadays they're spunky, they move around and they're full of life. Those three were sitting on the floor against the wall completely listless. One was not even able to walk. I met my mom and I
asked her how she was and she said, "Okay, okay." She was crying. Then she said, "Where is Anton?" That was the name of my younger brother. I said, "He's in camp. He's sick but I'll take care of him. Eventually I'm planning to bring him over." After about a half hour had passed she looked at me and she said, "Where is Anton?" So then it dawned on me that mentally she had deteriorated terribly. Then the other women told me
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with John Stutterheim. Stutterheim was born 14 June 1928 in Indonesia. He speaks fondly of growing up on the island of Java. Stutterheim was 13 years old in December of 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked. With the surrender of Java to the Japanese in 1942, Stutterheim and his younger brother and mother were taken to one prison camp and his father to another, where they all remained until their liberation in 1945. Their camps were located around Batavia and Jakarta. He recounts his experiences during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, sharing the brutal conditions in a Japanese labor camp and collapse of Dutch colonial rule.
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Stutterheim, John.Oral History Interview with John Stutterheim, February 28, 2006,
text,
February 28, 2006;
Fredericksburg, Texas.
(https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1604951/m1/30/:
accessed July 17, 2024),
University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.;
crediting National Museum of the Pacific War/Admiral Nimitz Foundation.