Scores of terrified mothers and their young children huddled together, watching, waiting, gripped by fear of the unknown as their sons, some as young as 11, were marched out of the Japanese concentration camp they called home.
The boys — most of them children of the Dutch colonies in Indonesia, were segregated from their parents, as were the men from their families, at the Second World War camp — had only been in the camp for a month and had no idea why or where they were being taken.
Some of the mothers, understandably hysterical, broke ranks and ran over to pull their sons out of the line. They were shot, in front of their young boys.
A bewildered eight-year-old, Dora Maag, remembers vividly having a vice-like hold on her mom, also Dora, praying she, too, didn’t succumb to the temptation and reach out for Dora’s 13-year-old brother, Wim.
“I grabbed her so tight, I did not want her to be one of the ones that got shot,” said Maag.
“Some boys watched as their mothers were shot dead. I will never forget that.
“We didn’t see (Wim) again until 1945, when he was 16.”
Maag, now 81, who has called Richmond home for 55 years, was born in Malang, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), a Dutch colony at the time. It was a region proliferated by the Dutch-owned and operated plantations of rubber, tea and coffee.
Maag lived in a large, single-family home, serviced by Indonesian maids, in a predominantly Caucasian neighbourhood with her brother and parents, including her father, Karel, a major in the Dutch army (KNIL), based in Indonesia.
“There was some Chinese and English in the area as well, and lots of Dutch, obviously,” recalled Maag of the time, March 1942, almost a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
“There were Japanese, mainly photographers in the army, who were later found out were spies. They later became Japanese generals, we were told.
“We didn’t know at the time, but they were already off the coast, spying on us.”
Despite, the Second World War raging around large parts of the globe for the last three years, Maag, her brother and mother were bereft of any inclination of what was about to happen in their neighbourhood.
“My father didn’t come home for three days. He came home from his job at the army every day. We had no idea what was going on,” she said.
“On the third day, he came home in the morning. I will never forget it. He was like a beast; an animal. He burst through the door, covered in blood.
“He was screaming and screaming and screaming. We tried to calm him down and, after a little while, he managed to say, ‘war has broken out.’
“He kept saying, ‘they are animals, they are jumping out of the trees and trying to kill us.’”
Only four of her father’s battalion came home that day. He was one of them.
He rested for a little while, we cleaned him up and he went back to “work.”
On March 18, 1942 — a week after the Japanese navy and army invaded the region and swept, with ease, across the Dutch colonies — Maag’s father came home to matter-of-factly state that he was being taken as a prisoner of war when he reported back to his battalion.
“Another week later, a maid came and told us that my father was being held at a concentration camp just a few miles away.
“We jumped on the bikes, me on the back of my mother’s and my brother on his.
“We got there to find the camp surrounded by thick, bamboo fencing and barbed wire.”
Balanced on the saddle of their bikes to peer over the fence, the children spotted their father.
“He took his hat off to show us his shaved head. We spoke very quickly. I can’t remember what I said. But then he had to go before we were spotted.
“That was the last time I ever saw him.”
Two weeks later, a Japanese soldier came to the Maag’s door and told us to pack one case and to be ready to leave the next day.
“We had no idea what was happening, we were very afraid. When they came the next day, we were marched, everyone in the neighbourhood, down the road and to the concentration camp about two miles away.
“It was divided into men/women and small children/boys age 11 and up.
“We slept on planks of wood and with bed bugs and lice, it was horrible. We got less and less food and water. If someone was caught trying to smuggle in food or water from the outside, they would shut the water off for a day to punish us.”
Other, more sinister punishments included a 24-hour “hanging,” whereby someone was tied to a hook high on the wall, with rats running around.
“Oftentimes, we were made to watch,” recalled Maag, fighting back the tears.
The women and children worked in the fields and were forced to exercise, with no food or water, in the morning, said Maag.
“We had to bow every time a Japanese commander walked past and say ‘kiotskay, kiray, nowray.’ I will never forget those words.”
For the next three years, Maag and her mother were bounced from camp to camp, marched, with a bag over their heads, to the train station and then taken in cattle wagons by train to the next camp. “We were made to do the toilet standing where we stood.”
The first inclination that the POWs’ suffering was about to end was when a plane few over top of them in their camp around June 1945, dropping leaflets saying the war was over and they’d be out soon. But the Japanese were still there.
“I remember a commandant getting us together and telling us the war was over and then he ran away very quickly. I think, the same day, British troops arrived and the remaining Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner,” said Maag.
“But we had to stay in the camp until the end of 1945 because the Indonesians had been brainwashed by the Japanese, we were told, and it wasn’t safe for us to leave the camp.
“The Red Cross came in and we found out through them that my father had died in a camp in Rangoon in 1942) and they were sure my brother had, as well.
“But my mother refused to believe it and she searched from camp to camp looking for him.”
About two months later, she found Maag’s brother alive, very sick in a local hospital. Similar to his sister and mother, he had been moved around different concentration camps. Maag’s mother nursed him back to health and they were all placed on a boat back to Holland.
“He’s still alive, he’s 86 and lives in Belgium,” said Maag. “We never talked about what happened to him in those three years. I can only imagine. I have heard that he still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.”
With the war over, Maag grew up in Holland and met husband Johannes, before the pair immigrated in1958 to Canada, staying at first in Vancouver and Vanderhoof.
They settled a year later in Richmond — a city that still had, at the time, a strong Japanese community, mainly in Steveston.
“When my mother visited from Holland, I told her never to talk about it in front of the kids, I didn’t want them to grow up feeling the hate I did.
“My kids went to school with Japanese children and I’ll be honest, I hoped they didn’t come home with a Japanese girl.
“(The Japanese) were all in Steveston, so it was fine. When I went there, I just blocked it out.
“But it does makes me mad when they complain about what happened to them here (during the internment).”
Next Tuesday, Nov. 11 is Remembrance Day. But it’s just another date on the calendar as far as Maag is concerned.
“Nothing. It means nothing,” she said when asked it the date carries any significance for her.
“I don’t even want to think about it.”
She has been trying to write a book about her life since before her husband passed away in 2010.
“A friend told me, ‘why go through it all again.’ I keep changing my mind, but I think I’ll just put it away. I’m getting older now and why keep reminding myself of what happened.”
