Belanda Tjampur

After the Japanese surrender the unimaginable difficult times were not over for most (Indo) Dutch people living in the Dutch East Indies. The prospect of Dutch rule coming back to the already proclaimed independent Republic Indonesia caused fury among many Indonesian youngsters and for many month’s anybody suspect of being Dutch or having anything to do with Dutch rule was a primary target. My father’s elder brother Rudy was one of the many thousand slaughtered during the bersiap period. Soon 150 thousand Dutch troops were sent to restore Pax Hollandia in the old colony and the main motive was to restore the exploitation of the “wingewest” (area for profit) as soon as possible. The Dutch elite had the opinion that the Japanese rule over the Dutch Indies was merely a short interruption and that Dutch colonial rule would be reinstated for generations to come. This fatally wrong perception of reality led to the Indonesian war of independence lasting from 1945 to end 1949 causing hundreds of thousands casualties.

Max van der Werff in Belanda Tjampur (7mei.nl)