Andries J. Kroese

From the Netherlands, born in 1941. Survivor of a Japanese prison camp in Indonesia, 1942-1945. Photographed in 2006.

He was Mr Perfect.
That’s how I remember him.

Andries J. Kroese talks about his memories of the first years of his life. Sometimes he’s uncertain if these are stories he remembers, or stories he’s been told. But his memories of his father, Mr Perfect, are narrated stories, he knows that. Even so these memories are the strongest, some which will help him and his mother survive four years in a Japanese concentration camp.

Andries J. Kroese is born in 1941, the same year that the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour, the same year that the Americans enter World War II. His father is a sea captain at this time and the three members of this little Dutch family live on the Indonesian island Java, a colony of the Netherlands.

The attack on the American naval base spreads fear in the Dutch community, and the Dutch captain Kroese is ordered to leave the area. He goes to New York while mother and son remain on Java. Little Andries is now nine months old.

The fear soon proves to be very real. All Dutch inhabitants are swiftly imprisoned by the Japanese. Andries and his mother are put on a freight train with no idea of where they will end up. They soon find out that their last stop is Lampersari, a Japanese prison camp for women lying in Semarang on Java. Boys of 10 or older are sent off to a labour camp for men while younger children remain with their mothers in the women’s camp. Andries is now nearly one year old.

They hope, and believe, that they will soon be freed. They have great hopes that England, the Allies, will conquer the Japanese. But 3 and a half years are to pass before Andries and his mother are free once more.

They adapt quickly to the wretched conditions in the camp with lack of food being the worst. Three months later they have learned to eat rats, snakes, mice. Now and then they barter with the local Indonesians through the fence around the camp. If they’re lucky, they manage to get some bananas. Andries’ mother is put to work as a cook; she cooks rice and smuggles as much as she can to her son, knowing only too well that she risks discovery, and that the consequences then can be brutal. She has made a belt for her little boy holding a note about where he is to be sent if something should happen to her.

Andries is put to weeding grass for many long hours every day during these years. He tries to find words for those early memories, sorting out his experiences from what he has been told. He remembers the harshness of the camp, about not being able to walk wherever he wants. He remembers strict routines, sounds of people in pain, an image of his mother being beaten once. He remembers the punishment if they did not do as they were told. If a child misbehaves, it is the mother who is punished. But he can also remember humour, laughter and all their fantasies about food. He remembers that he keeps as close as possible to his mother when they stand for inspection.

He bears an image of her being on a stretcher; she has beriberi. A disease caused by a lack of vitamin B. She is sent to the infirmary and she is close to death. Andries remembers that his mother leaves him. It is a terrible memory; he remembers his fears of being deserted.

But he also remembers the sight of her coming back in the middle of the night. She has run away from the infirmary. Enormous relief, enormous joy. But during all this time, during all the days in the camp it is the memories of his father, Captain Kroese, that supports them.

“Just wait until your father comes home.”

Andries remembers those feelings, those hopes, of finding his father. “My mother really idealized him during the War”, says Andries today. He believes that this was vital to their survival, this confidence that the good life with his father would return when they left the camp.

Captain Kroese had already rescued the mother from captivity when he bought her free from a slave labour contract.

“A ‘Cinderella’ story”, says Andries. She feels endless love and gratitude for her husband.
But it will not be Captain Kroese who rescues them from the camp. The atomic bomb that is dropped over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 brings Japanese control in Indonesia to an abrupt end. This is a day of joyousness for Andries and the other imprisoned Dutch people.

“We celebrated the bombing of Hiroshima. We felt no pity for them”, say Andries. It is the Gurkhas, the Nepalese Special Forces in the British army who free them from the camp.

Andries describes them as heroes, tough men carrying submachine guns. He is four and a half years old and he definitely remembers this.

But now starts what may be the most dangerous period for Andries and his mother. They hide themselves for two months waiting to be evacuated to Singapore. Rebellion explodes in the country. The Indonesians have become enemies who want their independence from the colonial power, the Netherlands. One night all the prisoners are hurried into three lorries.

There’s an accident with the first lorry, it is completely burned up. Andries and his mother sit in the second one. They manage to get past the border guards. They end up in an assembly camp where they are to choose to travel on to either Australia or the Netherlands. They choose the Netherlands. It is only now that their imprisonment truly ends, that the Japanese are truly beaten, and that life in the camp is truly over. And it is only now that they learn that Captain Kroese, Father, Mr Perfect, is dead.

It turns out that he was killed as early as 1942, the year after he leaves Java to go to New York.

They never learn this while the two of them were in Lampersari concen- tration camp and longing for him. But Andries believes that this was just as well. His mother would have broken down without her husband to think about. She gains strength simply by thinking about him.

This gives her the strength to hope, to dream, to survive, a strength she transfers to Andries. In later years Andries has spent a lot of time thinking about the bond between him and his mother, and tries to discover what those first years of his have done with him. One important thing emerges from this search back in time: he realizes that his childhood until he was five years old is marked by an enormous sense of security, by a mother who is there always, who always tells him how much she loves him. This gives him selfconfidence, a sense of being loved. In the camp he is surrounded by rules and routines that are easy to conform to. As a four-year-old he knew of nothing but a life in imprisonment, nothing other than lack of food and strict surroundings.

On his sixth birthday, more than a year after the War is over, he asks for starch pudding as a treat, the poor, innutritious food they had in the camp – but he loves starch pudding. It means security and love to the little six-year-old.

Andries lives in the Netherlands for many years after the War. In 1968 he finishes his studies in medicine. On a holiday in Istanbul he meets a Norwegian woman whom he later marries.

Today he is a specialist in heart surgery at the Aker University Hospital in Oslo. He has also written several books on mastering stress based on Far Eastern principles. He thinks often about the suffering among people. He can’t stand that, he feels immense tenderness, sadness for those who suffer, concern about why there is so much cruelty in the world.

He is concerned about building peace, living in peace, firstly in his own life. Buddhism has become important to Andries. It provides answers, carries him forward in his search for meaning and inner serenity.

“I must live a peaceful life, only then can
I bring peace to others.”