Jakarta a 'city of hell' during occupation

By Ida Indawati Khouw

Jakarta has a tragic history of being the center of internment camps during the Japanese occupation. The final of 85 articles on Batavia looks into the issue.

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesian students have been taught about Japanese cruelty during their occupation of the country from 1942 to 1945. But few realize that the occupying forces once made Jakarta a center for prisoners of war and civilian hostages. Therefore the capital was once called "the city of hell".

The internment camps, encircled by gedek (bamboo fences) or barbed wire, were built to confine people who were considered a threat to the occupying forces' rule.

The complexes were in poor condition, leaving all prisoners malnourished, sick and suffering from psychological disturbances.

The book Batavia/Djakarta/Jakarta Beeld van een Metamorfose (Batavia/Djakarta/Jakarta Picture of a Metamorphose) mentioned there were 16 important camps, which served as internment camps for war and civilian hostages, throughout the capital city.

They were the ADEK camp at Sluisweg, now Jl. Tambak in Central Jakarta; Boekit Doeri, in the Jatinegara area, East Jakarta; Jaga Monjet, around Jl. Suryopranoto, West Jakarta; Glodok in downtown Kota; Grogol in West Jakarta; Kampement 10de Bataljon, around Lapangan Banteng area in Central Jakarta; Kampong Kodja, in the Tandjong Priok area, North Jakarta; Kampong Makassar, in the Jatinegara area; Kotakamp or Patekoankamp, in downtown Kota; Kramat, in East Jakarta; Mater Dolorosa, now the Good Shepherd convent in Jatinegara; Sint Vincentius orphanage for girls in the Matraman area; Struyswijk, on Jl. Salemba in East Jakarta; Tjideng in Central Jakarta; Tjipinang in East Jakarta and the so- called Uniekampong Tandjong Priok in North Jakarta.

But there is no trace of the sad and bitter memories in the above areas.

A reporter of Sin Po newspaper, Nio Joe Lan, who was detained at Boekit Doeri in April 1942, wrote in his book Dalem Tawanan Djepang (In Japanese Internment Camps) that unlike Chinese Indonesians, who were arrested selectively based on their guilt, the Japanese netted Caucasians in public places.

Women and children

Unlike other camps, Tjideng specially served to accommodate European women and children as written by Jeroen Kemperman in the Indische Letteren periodical. He said that the number of internees in Tjideng, where they were kept in houses, reached 10,000, forcing one building to accommodate 100 to 150 people near the end of the occupation.

"Overpopulation had a serious effect on hygiene as there were not enough lavatories and the cesspools overflowed regularly. Household refuse should initially be burned in the field, but after the prohibition of making fires, everything had to be buried, which was impossible," Kemperman wrote.

"A terrible bad smell hung over Tjideng. Even after the Japanese surrendered, the camp's bad smell was still there for more than six months."

Other camps were in a similar condition, said John Schlechter, 78, an Indo-European who was detained at Tandjong Priok in 1942.

"Treatment at the camps was so brutal, especially at Tjideng, ADEK barrack (short for the General Deli Emigration Office), Struyswijk and Glodok," he recalled.

The bad treatment, as described by the Indonesian professor of medicine, M.A. Hanafiah S.M., in his monograph The Biggest Drama in Medicine, included several methods of torture to get information.

"Hitting the face, beating, burning the skin with lit cigarettes, putting a pencil or stick between two fingers and then squeezing the hand were common types of torture. More severe was giving electric shocks or forcing the accused to drink a pail of water after which the interrogator would stand on the victims full stomach," said Hanafiah who worked at the Eijkman Institute, which is now on Jl. Diponegoro, Central Jakarta.

The institute's authorities were arrested and imprisoned at the headquarters of the Ken Pei Tai Japanese army on Jl. Medan Merdeka Barat on the grounds of sabotage when some Romusha (forced laborers) died after they were vaccinated with the institute's serum.

"I saw and heard for myself how other prisoners had suffered from physical torture. Screams of pain and pleas for mercy were heard almost every day," he said.

Prisoners at the Tandjong Priok camp were enslaved at the harbor.

"We were forced to work at the harbor, loading Japanese ships with stolen goods or simply working in their kitchen. I also worked in the mango groves where the Dutch had hidden thousands of barrels of gasoline," said Schlechter, who was arrested in Bandung in March 1942, where he was on duty with the KNIL Dutch army.

"We had to load them on trucks and take them to Tjililitan Airport (located in East Jakarta but which no longer exists) and unload them there."

Each time Schlechter and his friends went to other camps in the city -- especially as they passed though Kramat, Salemba and Matraman -- they were hailed by young mothers and their daughters who were still free. This attitude shown by internees sometimes irritated the guards on duty.

"Once we went to the military battalion camp near Waterlooplein and I saw a man standing alone in the hot sun for a minor infraction ... he was the (last) Dutch governor general, Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer."

"I felt sorry for this gentle and courageous man who, with his wife, decided to stay and suffer like the rest of us at the hands of these brutal occupiers. I will never forget that scene, my commander-in-chief," he said emotionally.

Schlechter's father and four brothers were also imprisoned in separate places. Some of his brothers died in the camps.

"I'm still suffering from the trauma and having bad dreams. They're still following me."