My Grandfather

Written June 21,2011

It’s a cloudy moonless night as we creep along at just over 3 knots, our sails deliberately shortened to slow our progress.  We will arrive at the Banda Islands in the morning, and must enter the narrow, current-prone channel at slack low tide, which comes at noon at so.  Tides and currents run strong in these waters, and facing – or following – a 5+ knot current is a recipe for uncontrolled disaster.  Best to go slow through a pitch-black sea – if that’s indeed what lies beyond our lifelines … it’s so dark, we can only hear the water slide past our hulls.

We’re approaching our first Indonesian landfall, and I am reminded of the Jimmy Buffett song,” Son of a Son of a Sailor.”  My father spent a few weeks of his teen years as crew on large ocean ships – courtesy of a nepotistic placement by his mariner father, Johan.  I have Johan’s – my namesake and grandfather – autobiography on board ile de Grace, courtesy of my now-deceased Uncle Wim’s loving translation into English from the original Dutch.  I did not know my grandfather well – he was an ocean away from our American émigré family, and his several visits, touchingly and meticulously recorded in his memoirs, came when I was quite young.  A visit in my late twenties found him frail, and, apparently true to character, reticent, albeit with a quick smile. By family reputation, he was a stern man of inward focus – in many respects the prototypical Dutchman.

Johan spent most of his professional career in Indonesia, first as a mate on ships traveling to and from these waters, but then, for the bulk of his time, as an officer in charge of port operations in several of Indonesia’s largest ports.  It’s hard to overstate the importance of Indonesian exports during the 20s and 30s and early 40s, before the war broke out.  By the 1930s, the then-Dutch East Indies was producing – thus shipping – most of the world’s pepper and quinine, one-third of its rubber, and almost one-fifth of its tea, sugar, coffee, and oil.

Small wonder that Indonesia became a prime target for the Japanese as they embarked on their expansionist aims in the early 1940s.  As the Japanese spread east and south, they invaded Indonesia in 1942, and quickly rounded up the Europeans into concentration camps.  My father spent his teenage years in such a camp near Jakarta (then known as Batavia), an experience he neither shielded from us nor especially elaborated upon.  Johan too spent the war years in a separate camp (for all of the war, he and his wife were kept in separate camps, and their three kids – my father and his two older brothers – were kept in yet another camp). 

Johan’s memoir goes into heartbreaking detail about the privations he and his family suffered during these years. Family lore – and there is no reason to doubt this – recounts that Johan’s lifelong anger at the Japanese and Germans for their behavior in the war led him to refuse to own or be a passenger in any Japanese or German car for as long as he lived. 

As Jennifer and I return to the waters of my seafaring provenance, I want to capture a bit of the man I knew as Opa and pay tribute to his strength, his character, and his genetic gift of my love for the sea and adventure.  So on a dark night, with a gentle slush and hiss of water along our two bows, my thoughts turn inward, and I recall the words Johan wrote, just a few years before his death in 1991, of his days in school as a young boy of 15 preparing for a life at sea.  The year is 1914 – World War I is just breaking out:

“The Marine Academy was a boarding school.  I could go home every Saturday afternoon until Sunday evening.  We were taught, among other things, mathematics, navigation, astronomy, maritime meteorology, cosmology, theory of tides, compasses, oceanography, ship stability, rules of the road at sea, steam engines, geography, and foreign languages such as French, English, and German.

The days started at 5:45 am, and there was study hall from 6:15 am until 8:00 am. The lessons went from 9:00 to noon, from 2:00pm to 4:00pm, from 5pm to 7pm, and then from 8pm to 9pm.  The school was cleaned on Saturday morning after lessons, and then we had our weekly shower.  It was all in all a Spartan education.

In April 1916, we had to declare our preferences for which of Holland’s shipping companies we would like to work for.  On the 29^th of June, 1916, as a 17-year old apprentice, I was informed that I was to set sail for New York City on the SMN ship “Batja” the next day.”

With that short summary, Johan told the story of his education, after which began his career with SMN, a career that would last until his eventual retirement from the same company on June 30, 1960, after 44 years of service.  

Those were different times, as they say, when a boy of 15 was expected to chart his life's course, and at 17, commit fully to a career.  As things turned out, I was 15 when I first went to sea ... but I had no sense of needing to make life decisions at that age.  All I knew was that I wanted to sail the oceans.

Johan’s first years as a mariner were spent on ships making voyages to the Philippines, China, Japan, Korea, and Eastern Russia, but Holland’s colonial interests in Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies) proved a frequent destination.  As the global economic trends ebbed and surged, shipping followed suit, and after a time, promotional opportunities seemed more available on a land-based posting.  In June 1928, Johan accepted a position in Jakarta/Batavia in the stevedoring department, whose function was to off- and on-load ships in the traditional method – using hundreds of strong, in this case, local native, men. 

In a number of these ports, reliable labor was difficult to muster for the irregular shipping schedules, so SMN would create camps for the workers, where they and their families would live.  This typical colonialist approach to addressing labor needs was arguably both enlightened and self-serving.  In his account, there was a mosque and cinema, and food was prepared in a central kitchen for bachelors, with families having their own kitchens.  There were an astounding 3500-4000 laborers in these “Unie kampongs,” and “even when there was not enough work, these people were paid and fed.”

Over the ensuing years, his family and professional responsibilities expanded, and by the time the Japanese invaded Indonesia, Johan had three teen-aged kids, my Dad among them, as well as the job of overseeing final pre-invasion preparations, which included disabling port facilities (despite the lack of dynamite), and overseeing final loadings and departures:  “The last company ship I handled was the motorship “Java,” which left February 19 with, among other things, all of the gold of the Java Bank, which eventually arrived safely in the United States...”

Soon, the Japanese arrived in his town. 

“On Sunday, June 14, 1942, I celebrated my birthday with my family, and I was picked up (by the Japanese) on June 25.  Piet and Wim (my Dad’s brothers) followed us on their bicycles to the police station.  We were to register there but we had no idea where we were going.  When we were registered, we were loaded into lorries and brought to the so-called ADEK building, which was turned into a concentration camp. Fortunately, Piet and Wim were able to follow the lorries, so they knew where I was.  Being interned in Batavia (modern day Jakarta) gave me some hope that we would be able to see each other once in a while, but fate changed all this shortly afterward.”

Imagine the spirit of a father watching his children follow him to a concentration camp, and imagine the feelings of my two uncles as they watched their father disappear.  It breaks my heart just thinking about it.


He next saw his children on September 5, 1945, and his wife, on October 4, 1945 -- a full three years after being taken by the Japanese.

Next:  The war years and beyond