Leaving in good weather at the end of summer (maybe August or September), we set sail in the SS Singkep from Halifax, Newfoundland, Canada to Liverpool, England. We were transporting Indian rubber. This may not seem to be a precious cargo, until you consider all the uses for it in wartime: it’s used in the manufacture of boats, cars and aeroplanes.

We crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a convoy of 68 ships, accompanied by a few corvettes. The communication between the ships was conducted purely with flags. That was my new job on the SS Singkep. Every day around noon we all had to signal our position. One day, a joker signalled to me that he was in the Sahara, near Timbuktu. The commander of the convoy did not appreciate this joke at all. The guy was punished and was told in no uncertain terms not to do that again. We were sailing in wartime and tensions were very high as prior crossings had been very deadly. It wasn’t the right time for jokes.

We had to travel at the speed of the slowest vessel in our convoy and there were steam-powered boats with us travelling at only 10 knots per hour. There were over 260 German U-boats in the seas at that time, and any could fire torpedoes at our convoy. We were, quite literally, sitting ducks, as we were travelling so slowly.

We had English destroyer corvettes racing around us. I’m grateful to the corvettes for their service and attempts to keep us safe. Every time the submarine alarm went off, the corvettes rushed through the convoy at high-speed, trying to listen out for and identify the location of German U-boats. We maintained radio silence during the convoy, so that we had a better chance of not being hunted down.

Eerily, I was told we would see the flash of light signalling a torpedo impact before we heard the roar of the explosion, just as you see lightning before you hear the thunder. I didn’t see any explosions, as our convoy was not targeted. However, the German U-boats had obviously attacked previous convoys, as I saw hundreds of bodies in the water. Most of the people floating in the water had died, but sometimes the people were still alive.

Regretfully, in these crossing there were no rescue boats. All boats were instructed not to veer from their own course, not even to pick up survivors. Any ship, which went to help rescue sailors, would probably be torpedoed too, as it would maneuver itself into the firing line. Rescue efforts were strictly forbidden and weren’t attempted. If you survived the blast, you would drown at sea.

Even so, I learnt from the horrific tales of boats being torpedoed. I mulled over who had a better chance of surviving a direct hit. I thought how important it was to choose where you should jump overboard. I knew that you ideally needed to jump overboard at the back, as the torpedoed boat would keep its forward momentum for a while and would crush anyone who tried escaping at the front. I checked and double-checked where the flotation devices were during that trip. I felt safest at the back of the ship near our quarters.

Struiswijk prison was designed and built by the Dutch. It was a kind of fortress. On the perimeter was a wall, approximately 10 meters high, with a lookout post where two Japanese armed guards kept watch. Inside the wall was a fire corridor, about 20 meters wide.

Behind the fire corridor was a solid wall without windows; that was the back of the actual prison. To get into the prison you first went through high steel doors in the first wall, and then there were two doors in the inner wall. If you can imagine it, the entrance doors were connected to each other by a kind of tunnel.

Once inside the inner walls there were offices, a warehouse and the watch. The centre of the prison was an open area with some trees. It was about the size of a football pitch.

Around this field were barracks converted to lodgings and cells. The inner wall of the prision formed the rear wall of the barracks and the cells were groupsed into blocks. Leen and I were locked in a single cell, in Block J. 

In the original Dutch design one cell was intended for just one local prisoner. The dimensions were two and a half meters long, one and a half meters wide and 2 meters high.

The lighting in our cell was an electrical bicycle lamp on the ceiling. We made improvements by using the silver paper from a cigarette packet to reflect the light back into the room. With this we could both play solitaire with a deck of cards in the evening.

During the time that we were in that block we were allowed out three times a day. We could wash and shave at the well. The well was in the middle of the courtyard that belonged to our block. It was an opportunity to go to the toilet and get something to eat. Those excursions took about two hours. Talking to other prisoners from another block was strictly prohibited so we were completely devoid of any news. It was difficult being completely isolated from everything outside our block. This isolation lasted about six months.

It appeared that the Japanese interrogated the inmates for any details or knowledge, which they could use for their war efforts. I saw several inmates taken from our block and they were badly beaten before coming back. Some I never saw again… 

In September 1944 a large number of us had to pack up again to leave, taking our few possessions with us. We were told to travel light, as we would need to walk a few kilometres. We went on foot from the camp in the direction of the station. Several people took too much with them and had to abandon them on the way. An armoured train was already waiting for us. About 2,500 men were roughly crammed into that train. There were too many of us to fit inside, so we were hit with rifles butts to get us to squeeze in.

The train left and went towards town. And when it changed tracks I knew exactly here we were going. As a sailor I’d often gone by train to the harbour to town. The train stopped again after half an hour and we had to get out. We all realised where we were: the Tanjung Priok train station at the port of Batavia. By then, I wasn’t the only one to have strong suspicions that we would carry on our journey by ship, as we walked a kilometer or two towards the port.

Whilst walking, I started to think about the logistics of what was going to happen. I said to my friend Leen Sloot, “Watch out, we are going on board.”

I thought about what this would mean to transport so many people in one ship. It seemed so dangerous to me. I wanted to stay as safe as possible and protect my friend Leen. I’m a thinker and tried to take in what was going on around me. I said to Leen “Let’s try to get to the back of the crowd. We need to walk slower than the rest, in order to board last. If the ship is blown up, we must be on deck and not trapped in the hull.”

Although everything was very disciplined the Japanese still found it necessary to act as slave drivers. They were yelling and hitting people to speed them up. Most people were (rightly) afraid of getting a beating and were panicking with fear, so they naturally hurried along.

Despite the Japanese’s sharp control, Leen and I prudently managed to work our way towards the tail of the procession. We pretended to do up our shoelaces and made it look like we were hurrying, but we took smaller steps.

We were led to a quay where the Junyo Maru was anchored. It was a rusty old wreck. At that time, it was considered a huge freighter, I guess around 6,000 register tonnes. We could see the people at the front already boarding the vessel via a wide wooden staircase that was placed against the ship. On board they were literally kicked into the holds, to chase them to the depths of the hull. We discovered that the rear half of the ship was reserved for us.

The front of the ship was loaded with indigenous people, who had been recruited or captured by the Japanese to work for them. The Japanese visited villages and paid the village chief for the men to be used as labourers. If the chiefs refused, the men were taken anyway, and the chiefs weren’t paid. Later, the Japanese also started taking their boys saying they would be given a Japanese education. These people were the cheapest of their labourers and seen as most expendable. They were slave labourers, or romushas. They were all kept far away from us whites and were treated much more harshly than us. The Japanese ensured we made no contact with them.

There were approximately 4,000 Indonesians located in the front section of the ship. In the rear part there were around 2,300 allied POWs (mainly Dutch).

The Japanese guards were in the midship area (on the bridge) and on the quarterdeck/poopdeck (at the rear of the ship). I think there were around 200 well-armed soldiers. Both the midship and the poopdeck areas were prohibited for the non-Japanese. […]

The holds were normally divided by two metal platforms, creating horizontal spaces: the top, middle and bottom hold. The bottom hold was sealed as there was probably cargo in it. The mid and top areas were for people.

These two holds were further split into a number of horizontal layers, constructed from wooden buttresses with shelves. The Japanese divided each of these decks into another three layers and thus obtained six layers of people above each other. Each man had to crouch, almost crawling, to get in.

We were housed in the stern, where there were still three vertical holds. In total there were three times six i.e. 18 compartments in the rear part of the ship for the POWs.