Over the past few years I have researched my personal history. I had planned to record it for family purposes only. But what I discovered about my family's predicament in some World War II events was so dreadful, that those events needed wider exposure. Hence the links in the following sections.

I was born in Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) just before WWII started. My mother, sister and I spend nearly 4 years - my formative years - in Japanese internment camps in Batavia called Kramat and Tjideng.

My father, a civilian, was a member of the Stadswacht (city guards) and was imprisoned in Camp Struiswijk. We never saw him again. He died when the Japanese transport ship, the MV Junyo Maru, was torpedoed, ironically, by a British submarine just off the west coast of Sumatra with the loss of 5600 lives! He and his mates were on the way to work on the Sumatra railway - not as famous as the Burmese one but just as deadly!