>> Today is Thursday,
February 23rd, 2023.
My name is Adina Langer.
I'm the curator of the Museum of History and
Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University.
And I'm here with Marchiena Davis,
who will be recording a Legacy Series interview
in memory of her mother, Anna Boon.
Can you start by stating your full name?
>> Yes.
It's Marchiena Harmina Boon,
and then my married name is Davis.
>> So Marchiena?
>> Marchiena.
Not too many people can say ch,
so I made it a k sound,
Americanized it a little bit.
>> I see.
>> Being raised with
Hebrew school, I can do that full ch.
I don't know if that's too much.
>> No, it's fine.
My family usually calls me Marchien,
and that sounds abrupt, but It's fine.
>> Great.
>> And do you agree to this interview?
>> I do.
>> Wonderful.
So can you start by telling me when
and where you were born?
>> I was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
That's all I know.
I don't know what part of it,
just that's where I was born.
>> And when?
>> April 10th, 1953.
>> And before we talk about your childhood,
I'd like to go back and start with your mother's family.
Can you please tell me your mother's full name?
>> Her full name is Anna Petronella van de Steenoven,
and her married name, Boon.
We Americanized Boon to
be Boon when we came to the States.
So I slipped back and forth between Bo:n and Boon.
>> And when and where was she born?
>> She was born in Jakarta, Indonesia,
and her birth date is October 11th, 1923.
>> And what were her parents' names?
>> Her mother's name was
Fenna Gesina de Bruin van de Steenoven,
and her father's name was Johan Hendrick van de Steenoven.
>> And do you know how they came to meet each other?
>> I don't, I never asked.
I have no story for that.
>> Did your mother have any siblings?
>> She had a younger brother five years younger,
and his name was Hans.
Now, I think he's probably a Johan,
and I'm not sure about that.
I didn't check before I came,
but we called him Oom Hans.
>> And what was your grandfather's profession?
>> My grandfather started off
working on the sugar plantations in Indonesia,
but then he was hired by
the Dutch Shell Oil Company to be an engineer.
I think he was an oil expert engineer,
and the machinery on the plantations
needed some expert engineering regarding oil.
>> Did they use a lot of machinery on
the plantations at this point in time?
>> They must have if he was
going from plantation to plantation.
>> What was life like for them in Indonesia?
>> Well, it would be the life.
If you know a little bit about Indonesia, actually,
the Europeans exploited the Indonesians
because they had rubber,
oil, sugar, and generally,
they became a colony of some European nation,
and it was Holland at the time, the Netherlands.
And so the foreigners,
the people that were not Indonesian lived in
very nice houses, had servants.
They didn't have to do too much housework for themselves.
Everything was taken care of for
them, cooks, maids, childcare.
And also whenever they had their meals,
they were very formal with tablecloths and
China and all those layers of China and goblets.
So that was the life.
>> Did your mother share
any early childhood memories with you?
>> A little bit.
She said she really enjoyed going to
the plantations with her father.
She liked to explore and meet the people,
and she was very friendly and
enjoyed meeting people from all backgrounds.
She played tennis.
She was a swimmer.
She showed off one time,
when I was in high school,
how she could do a backflip, I had no idea.
She took classical voice lessons,
and so she had a nice life,
but she wasn't happy all the time,
I think because of her mom.
>> And what was their relationship like?
>> Well, my mother was born with red hair and freckles,
and that was a little bit of
a shock to my grandmother who was fair,
blond hair, and it was a problem.
For some reason, she would make
my mother wear her at all the time in the sun,
but then I remember
my mother telling me that one time she read
about a movie star that had freckles,
and so she just threw her hat away.
She just wasn't going to be obedient about that.
I think her feeling was, you need to
just take me as I am and accept me,
and I think that most mothers would.
But then when Hans came
along and he was blonde and blue eyed,
then you he was the favorite, I think.
>> Do the religion play a role in the family at all?
>> Well, I don't know about the early days,
but there was a time when
my grandmother had a tropical disease,
and it was supposed to be incurable.
And I think she even went back to
the Netherlands to get taken care of,
get rest or whatever the remedy would be for that,
or to help her over it anyway.
Now back in the 1920s,
there was a religion that was fairly new,
called Christian Science, and it was a healing religion.
So a friend of hers suggested that she go and
visit what we call Christian Science practitioner for healing.
And she was amazed that she was healed of this disease,
but she didn't want to go to church.
So she sent my mother and my uncle to Sunday school,
which is Sunday school until they're about 19.
And that's where my mother pretty much
learned most of her basic religious tenets,
but after that and
once going into prisoner war camp and after,
I don't believe she followed a religion,
but she did hold onto many of
the spiritual truths that are
pretty common to many religions.
>> What was your mother's family's relationship
like with other Dutch families?
>> Well, there was a lot of bridge playing and
parties and going to the club and all that stuff,
which my mother didn't care for.
She would rather just go on her own and visit.
My aunt called her the hi-bye girl.
She would come and go on her own terms.
And so I think my mother was a little
rebellious about all of this extravagance,
and she would rather keep company with the servants and
their children than with the other crowd.
>> So she had relationships with
Indonesian people, Indonesian families?
>> She did.
She had an uncle that married an Indonesian woman.
And so she was the type of person just accepted anyone,
everyone, as long as they were good people.
>> And what was her education like?
You mentioned some of the extracurriculars that she did?
What was her basic education like?
>> Well, it seemed like they were going back and
forth between Indonesia and the Netherlands,
she and her brother,
because my grandmother and
grandfather felt that they needed
what they called a proper education.
I would think that the education that
they had in Indonesia would be fine.
I've seen pictures of her with her class,
so it was a lot of back and forth.
And so when she got to be 16,
her mother said she didn't have the head for learning,
so she should take a secretarial course,
which was very disappointing to
my mother because in actuality,
she was extremely intelligent,
and she did put herself
through some college when she was an adult,
but that was the time.
And in fact, that was very helpful for her to have
a secretarial course because
during the early years, well,
when they were back in Indonesia at 1939,
she took that class and she worked
for a military personnel,
and that gave her
some compensation many years later
because she worked for the military.
>> So then in 1939,
she started that year in the Netherlands?
>> She was in the Netherlands.
I think she was about 15, 16.
>> And how was
the decision made for her to come back to Indonesia?
>> Well, since my grandfather worked
for Dutch Shell Oil Company,
they made arrangements for
the children of the personnel to be,
if they were in the Netherlands,
which was within months of Hitler
or the Germans occupying Holland.
They left about six months before that time.
Dutch Shell Oil made
arrangements for this children's flight.
And I think there were 13 or 14 children and
then a few adults and a newspaper reporter.
So they made the arrangements with KLM,
which is the Dutch Royal Airline, and took them.
Well, they had to take a train from Holland
to Naples because the airspace was closed.
And then they were able to fly,
took about four or five days to fly from Naples to Java.
>> And before I ask you a little
bit more about the flight,
how did news travel back and forth
between Europe and Indonesia?
Did they have radio?
How did they learn about what was going on?
>> Well, I don't know personally,
but I would assume a lot of radio communication.
They probably had of course the newspapers,
and probably telegraphs, mail, all that stuff.
Whatever it took to get the news out in a hurry.
I believe that's what I would think.
>> And so what did your mother tell you about
her experience on the KLM children's flight?
>> Well, it was frightening at first
because Poland had been invaded,
and it was pretty imminent that Holland would be next.
And Holland didn't have the army to fight this,
and so they surrendered after just a few days.
And so they knew this would happen to Holland.
And so on one hand they were glad to get out,
but at the same time she was
only 16 and her brother was 10,
to make this flight,
under the circumstances, was
probably a little scary for her.
But he looked upon it as a big adventure.
>> And they were together on the flight?
>> They were.
He's five years younger.
>> So what was life like for her
when she came back to live with her family?
>> Well, it was pretty normal,
because they were out of the European theater by then,
and Japan had not entered the war,
probably for another couple of years.
And so that's when she took her secretarial course,
and she worked for the military.
And I think Hans was just in school.
And the bridge games kept on going,
the parties kept going.
But then when Pearl Harbor happened,
then things changed pretty quickly.
>> Which military was she working for?
The Dutch military?
>> Yes.
Because the Dutch were the,
Indonesia was the colony belonging to the Netherlands.
>> And even after Germany occupied the Netherlands,
the Dutch remained in control in Indonesia?
Yes.
>> I'm just curious what she
liked to do for fun at that time.
Did she have any free time
to hang out with other young people?
>> Well, I've seen pictures of
her looking like she's
having a fun time with other young people.
They wore dresses a lot there.
They weren't dressed up in blue jeans and stuff.
They looked like they were always dressed
nicely and having a good time.
And a picture of her holding her dress out,
like, she's very dramatic.
And oh, and her singing was
a big thing, almost operatic.
But she just seemed to enjoy what she could.
>> Did your mother and her family have
any warning of the coming Japanese invasion?
>> Well, they did in a way,
because Japan made their way across the Indies,
and then they could
see that they were going to be coming into Indonesia,
for the very same reasons that
the Dutch wanted Indonesia.
The Japanese wanted the oil
and the rubber, and the sugar too.
>> And once the Japanese were there,
did they have a sense that they were in danger?
Well, they didn't know what to expect,
but what they did see were
the Japanese soldiers appearing on trucks,
and then all this a lot of
shouting and ordering people around.
And they would find the very nicest homes
and take those for
their own headquarters or for their officers or whoever.
And then that meant that people that
lived in those homes that were used to
that luxurious life suddenly had to take a bag.
They were given some time to pack
a bag and grab a mattress,
and be put on a truck and move to another house.
And then more and more people coming
from the mountains and other areas
were just funneled into that larger city,
and had to share houses
just in every little corner of the house.
>> And this was March of 1942,
when the Japanese invaded?
>> Yes.
Well, let's see.
I think it was about six months after
October, November, was that May?
I think it's around May,
when all this happened.
>> And did they witness any fighting?
>> I don't know.
She never mentioned that.
>> So how did the Japanese soldiers
notify your family that they had to leave their home?
>> I don't know if they had any
Japanese that spoke Dutch,
that would seem kind of strange.
But maybe they had some Dutch people
that spoke Japanese,
that would give out the warning that be ready.
And then I believe they could
hear coming down the street the truck and all the noise,
and people shoving their suitcases and
mattresses up in a truck and then being moved elsewhere.
That's my impression, but we didn't hear much
from her until maybe 20 years ago.
And that's when she started sharing her.
Because we didn't we just knew not to ask.
They didn't want to talk about that.
>> Once she did share some stores with you,
did she talk at all about them trying
to save any of their valuables or anything like that?
>> Yes, they did have plans worked out with neighbors.
Some neighbors they didn't have to move
because they weren't considered the enemy,
perhaps a Swiss family,
or a half Indonesian,
or Indonesian family,
that was still living in the same level of income,
but they were able to stay.
And so generally they made arrangements with
neighbors to throw stuff over their walls.
They had a very high, I don't know if it was concrete.
I think they were concrete walls plastered over,
and they would just throw stuff over,
and then the people knew to keep it
safe for them until they came back,
and they had no idea it would be
so long before they'd come back.
>> So what did your mother tell you about
the first camp where she was incarcerated?
>> Well, it wasn't what we would
see on the TV about prisoner boar camp.
It was more an area or
a district that was wired off with barbed wire.
And they had to stay in that area.
And there were guards that would watch their movements.
They were allowed to leave to go get food,
but maybe once a week or something like that.
So it was sort of containing them in one area,
and more and more people would be added to
that district from other outlying areas.
>> And was she separated from
her father and her brother right away?
>> Not at that point.
It wasn't until they took them to
the actual prison in Bona Bureau.
>> And once that happened,
were the women able to communicate with the men at all?
>> A little bit at first.
They were able to walk down to
the area that the men's prison was.
Once a child or a boy was 10,
they had to go to the men's prison.
Sometimes the mums,
since their children were so small,
would hide the fact that they had reached 10.
And also they didn't
grow that much because they didn't have much food.
So they tried to hang
on to their boys as long as possible.
So yes, they were able to go down,
walk down to the men's prison,
and see their servants that they had left behind,
and their pets and stuff,
but that didn't last very long.
>> And in some of your mother's writing,
she talked about Dewick,
as the first place where they were
located, being called Dewick.
Do you know if they were given any warning that they
were going to be transferred to a different camp?
>> Well, that was actually,
Dewick means district.
And I had looked that up.
So I'm glad I did cause that
made sense that that was the area
that was the district that was
barb wired off where they were contained.
So yes, they were considered prisoners of war,
but it wasn't like what we think
of prisoners of war area.
It was like the first stage, I suppose.
>> Almost like a ghetto.
>> Yeah.
>> So then once they were transferred to Banyubiru,
what were your mother's first impressions?
>> When they got to Banyubiru?
Well, she said that was a real prison with
thick walls and different stories and cells.
Not that they were locked in the cells,
but they were assigned different cells,
and the cells were small, somewhere a little bit bigger,
but I think the first cell
that she was in was for a two person cell.
>> And was she with her mother?
>> Yes.
They stayed together.
>> What work did your mother do in the prison camp?
>> Well, she did about everything she
could to get another morsel of food,
and she was one of the stronger workers.
Also, she was one of
those that just, well, yeah, I'll do it.
She just did what she had to do.
And she supervised the two and three-year-old children
while their mothers were out working in
the fields or cleaning out the sewers or
whatever the Japanese wanted them to do for work.
She washed dishes in the hospital.
And of course, the patients weren't very hungry,
so she ate whatever was leftover on the plate.
She wasn't afraid of whatever disease they had.
There was tuberculosis.
There was diphtheria.
There was very many contagious diseases.
That didn't bother her.
She was going to eat.
She and some children minded some pigs
that were the Japanese because
the Indonesians were mostly
Muslim and they didn't eat pork,
but the Japanese did.
And so they gave that job to the prisoners and my mom,
and her mother and some children looked after the pigs,
but the food first came from the prisoners,
and of course, the pigs were as
hungry as the prisoners because
there was no food left over.
So then the Japanese soldiers told them,
well come get our leftovers and give those to the pigs.
So my mother and the children,
whoever was around taking care of
those pig took advantage
of the leftovers and ate their leftovers too.
And there was a very unpleasant thing that
happened was that when
the soldiers found out they were doing that,
they urinated into their food,
but that didn't stop my mother from eating it.
They just put it out in the sun and let it dry out,
and she thinks the sun
is the grand sanitizer, as we all know it is.
And so it didn't affect her health.
That's why she was strong enough.
Also, she carried out the dead.
And she carried out the waste product
from the hospital patients,
carried them out in barrels that had holes in them where
a bamboo stick was thrust through it,
and then two girls had to carry it out like that.
And that gave her some opportunity to do some smuggling.
>> And how did she smuggle using those barrels?
>> Well, that is interesting.
I didn't even know that until maybe just a few years ago,
what they did, because it never occurred to me to ask,
now, wait a minute, what did you do?
Well, the Indonesian Natives needed fabric.
I'm not sure why it had to be particularly fabric,
but that's what they were looking for mostly.
And the Indonesian Natives
had something in turn they could
swap some food or some fruit
or a cake of brown sugar, something like that.
So they came up with,
somehow I don't know how it evolved because
I don't think they were talking to each other,
but somehow they arrange for when
the two women or the women that brought out the pupton,
is what they called it, they would dump it.
Sometimes they had a guard that would look the other way.
Then they would quickly put some grass
into the bottom of it,
and then she would throw the towel or
the fabric that she had wrapped around
her head into the grass,
and then the Indonesia Native
would throw whatever they had back at them
and then she would quickly put it in the pupton
that had been emptied
and then covered with a little more grass,
but if you got caught,
then you were in trouble.
>> And your mother
told you about the time that she was caught.
What happened when she was caught?
>> Well, at the time, her mother was second in command.
They had some hierarchy there so
that the communication would be to the person in command,
and my grandmother was the second in command.
When my mother was caught smuggling,
she and three other girls.
I guess they were 19 young ladies.
They were made an example to the rest of the camp.
This is what happens to you if you try to smuggle.
Their hands were tied behind their backs
and they were hung by their hands and wrists and
high enough were just their toes touched the ground,
and they were then whacked
and beaten till they were bleeding.
And then they were just left out there to hang
and then finally cut down.
And my mom said, when they were cut down,
they had no feeling in their arms, legs, feet.
It was pretty bad.
And then my grandmother got demoted.
So then they had to move into a worse living situation.
They were doing okay,
and now they had to be in an even smaller cell,
where there was just one bed
and my mom slept on the floor.
>> Was there a camp doctor who took
care of people after these inflictions?
>> There were nuns and doctors in the hospital,
but if you weren't unconscious
or whatever wounds you got you wouldn't die from,
you just had to take care of yourself,
and they would just hope that the wounds would heal up.
>> Did the women in this camp fear abuse from the guards?
>> There were some mean guards,
but generally, my mom said that their camp was
fortunate that the guards
they didn't take advantage of the women.
They didn't make any sex slaves.
They had heard about that, I guess.
I don't know how they would have heard about it,
but somehow they heard about
these other issues at other camps where they had really
mean commanders and whoever was in charge.
So she felt they were pretty fortunate,
if you can be fortunate in that situation,
that they didn't have
all that horrible malicious stuff going on.
They were just starved, is all.
>> And were the guards only men or were there women, too?
>> No, there were men and they
were Indonesian and Japanese.
>> And how did they communicate with the guards,
both Japanese and Indonesian?
Did they learn Japanese?
>> The only thing Japanese
my mother knew was to count off.
And then there was something they had to say when
they were approached by a Japanese soldier,
where they had to stop what they were doing and lean over
and put their hands by their side out of respect.
And they had some phrase they had to say,
I don't know what the phrase meant,
and I don't know that she did either.
They just memorized it.
I don't know how they communicated other than
body language or just gestures
or the tone of their voice.
I think you can get what the message is by that.
>> So, how was it that your mother and
grandmother came to take care of two little girls?
>> Well, their mother died.
And so when these children were left motherless,
then someone fostered them,
and they were offered to my mother and my grandmother.
And so my grandmother said, well, sure,
we'll take them because that means they'll be
two more mouths that we get food for.
And my mother was horrified that her mother even
suggested that she would take food
out of the mouths of these children.
So my mother stood up to her mother and said,
I'm going to take care of the children,
and you just stay out of it.
And then my mother kept care of Tonka and Monica
the whole time and even at the end of
the war escorted them home on the ship.
>> And, you also told me a story
about a little boy who later died in the camp.
What was your mother's experience with him?
>> Well, he was a young cousin of my mother,
and she adored him
and she pretended that was her little boy,
blonde hair, blue eye,
adorable little boy,
but he got sick of diphtheria,
and so he was taken to the hospital,
and it just devastated her when he died,
not too long after that but the children,
they didn't have the nutrition they
needed and they were more vulnerable.
And I remember her telling me,
which explained a lot.
She said, after Dicky died,
I vowed that I would not get close
to even my own children.
So I don't blame her,
and we accepted that.
We just knew as we were growing up.
>> And she spent so much time with these kids.
Was there something that they did to try to
ease the children's experience, games or?
>> Yes, I just read about that in one of
her communications with somebody.
I decided to look over things a little more carefully.
Things that I didn't even know about until this project.
I remember her telling me they would
draw in the dirt with sticks.
They would collect leaves,
they would find little objects and just look at nature.
She knew a lot of children's songs and little games
that she would play as best she could
with them to keep them occupied.
So pretty much she tried to keep them in the shade,
but she also told me that there was no bug or
leaf safe because they would eat them.
They were given their rice that
was more like glue than rice,
and if there were bugs in it,
they said, okay, protein.
So if they were under a shady tree,
it was because it was a tall one,
but they didn't get ahold of those leaves.
I think they even may have made
tea out of leaves or something.
>> Anything to fill their stomachs?
>> Yeah.
>> Was there any attempt made to
educate the kids during this time?
>> That I don't know,
but I think she was
mostly with the very young young ones.
The mothers were not available to educate them.
But that was one of the things that my uncle said was he
got compensation because he said that
his education was disrupted.
So I think they
didn't learn anything but survival skills.
>> So what were your mother's memories
at the end of the war?
>> Well, it was interesting
because towards the end of the war,
she was not as strong.
They kept more and more food away from them.
The Japanese the thought was, let's starve them,
and there's less people to be worried about and actually,
there was even a plan to kill all of the prisoners.
The date was about two weeks after Hiroshima.
And she said that she had a dream that there was
an Australian soldier that
came and told them that the war was
over and then there was
another girl that woke
up from a dream saying she smelled bacon.
And it was the day that was
close to the time that the end of the war was from Japan.
>> It's quite an experience to have
that vision of what was to come.
>> Yeah, nobody believed her,
but she felt like that was an omen.
>> So how did she find out about
the dropping of the atomic bomb?
They didn't know for a couple of more weeks.
What they did notice was there weren't as many guards.
They were more relaxed.
And so then the prisoners got a little more bold about
congregating and outwardly smuggling.
So they just tried the boundaries there.
And that was there and then airplanes would drop
leaflets and mostly the leaf said that they were free,
but to stay put because there was
a rebellion going on amongst
the Indonesians and they were very angry
at the Europeans and to stay put that
the Japanese were to guard them and
there were messages of encouragement, too.
>> And these came from the allies?
>> Yes.
Probably Australian.
>> What did she remember ultimately about
the official liberation of the camp
or was there an official liberation of the camp?
>> I really don't know,
but I know that they were moved from Bona Bureau
to another camp that
was more like that district kind of camp.
Abawa, I think is the name of it,
that was the area that they were moved to,
and they were able
to go out and get food at their own risk.
>> And what did
your mother and grandmother do once they were liberated?
>> Well, my grandmother
actually stayed in the Bona Bureau area.
My mother was more brave to go out and took
the two little girls to the Ambolora location.
I don't know when they all got back together again,
but it was closer to the men's camp there and
then the men's camp came to that area, too.
So the family members finally,
together and most everybody survived, except for Dicky.
>> And in some of
your recollections to me in your mother's writing,
she mentioned that there was a restaurant that was owned
by a cousin who was married to an Indonesian person.
>> Yes.
Her cousin.
Who was her cousin? Some family member.
He married an Indonesian woman,
and he had to go to the prison but
his wife and children who
were their skin depending on your skin color,
whether you got to stay or go.
And they kept that bakery going.
I think it must have been a bakery kind
of restaurant place,
and that they were able to leave some of
their possessions with them too.
And because of that, my mother was able to say.
We have family in Malong,
and so she was able to move to the Malong area,
and they were put into a motel by some rich person.
I can't remember what country it was from.
I thought it was a Middle Eastern country and he paid for
their food and motel on temporary terms.
And so she said
she doesn't remember where she got money from to buy.
It might have been her Indonesian aunt
that provided some money.
It wasn't real clear to her.
>> And there was this recovery process then, I think,
somewhere in the writings,
your mother mentioned that she was only 80 pounds
when she initially left Biro.
>> Yes, she was.
When she passed on, she was 80 pounds.
So I know how thin that was.
And she was my size,
really, my height, everything.
So 80 pounds is not a lot.
So skin and bones.
>> So going back just a little bit
you were talking about the leaflets being dropped.
You told me a story about her picking up a leaflet
and then being punished by a Japanese soldier.
What happened there?
>> Yes.
They were not to pick up these leaflets
and if they were caught,
then they would be punished but she picked
up one and stuck it in the crotch of her shorts,
and the guard confronted
her and she denied that she had it.
He got so angry because he felt like she did have
it that he stabbed her in the lower leg, the shin area.
Remember where her scar was and
the indication was where she had that injury.
It was a bamboo spear.
And if you know anything
about being injured by any wood,
it becomes infected quickly.
And so her leg was very painful and it was infected but
she was friendly with the daughter
of the doctor and the daughter said,
you've got to go see my dad and
get this new medicine put on it called penicillin.
And now, this doctor
was ostracized because he cooperated with the Japanese.
But I believe he did because he was
there to save lives, no matter who.
And so my mother said, I don't care.
I'm going to go for this medicine,
and that is what saved her leg.
But she's still had
after-effects from it because remember,
when we were young and living in Massachusetts,
we would ice skate,
and it was difficult for her.
You tie your skate,
lace your skate up,
and it got to that point,
and she couldn't take the pressure.
It was painful for her all as many years later.
>> And how did
life slowly change or go back to normal?
Was there a new normal that came about after
the Japanese had left and
the Indonesians were taking control?
>> Well, what happened was
they were supposed to still stay in
a contained area because
of the revolutionary Indonesians.
You survived 41 months of starving,
and then you faced the other danger of
perhaps as your truck was
going down to the rescue ships
that you might be attacked and killed then.
So they pretty much stayed huddled
down until they were rescued.
They were not going to stay
after they were not welcome to stay anymore.
So their next challenge was
to stay alive and get down to the rescue ships.
>> And who was sending the rescue ships?
>> The Dutch Army or Navy.
It wouldn't be the Army, would it? The Navy.
>> So how did your mother then eventually come
to return to Holland on one of those ships?
>> She did.
She told her mother she was going to go ahead
and go down to the rescue ships,
take Monica and Tonka,
because their father and his name is Fritz,
could not be with the children on the ship.
So who would take care of
these two little girls
unless they had a woman to care for them.
So my mother volunteered to
return to the Netherlands on this rescue ship.
They were in, I have no idea which harbor they were.
But what happened was that at that time,
there was a strike of the crew members,
and I think they were Indonesian crew members.
And so they got the college students from
Holland to volunteer to crew these ships,
and my father was one of those college students.
But my father already knew my mother from one
of her sporadic trips back and forth for education.
He was a year behind her because when he was young,
he had tuberculosis, and he had to
stay out of school for a year to recover.
So they happened to be in the same grade,
even though he was a year older.
And he said that
she was the only one that gave him the time of day,
gave him a little attention because he was very
studious and serious and
one of those genius kind of people
that are engineers and inventors,
and they might not know how to act around other people.
So he saw her
on the ship and recognized her auburn red hair,
it wasn't that bright red hair,
and she told me she was so happy to
be on this ship that she broke out into song,
and I'm thinking, boy,
this sounds like a movie, doesn't it?
But I wouldn't be surprised if she did do that.
And that caught his attention,
and then he recognized her,
even though she'd been through all that horrible time.
And they didn't get together immediately,
but they stayed in touch,
and then eventually got married a three years later.
>> And what was his name?
>> His name was Derk,
D-E-R-K, Derk Young Bone.
>> And what year was this when she was on the ship?
>> 1945.
>> So what was
their relationship like when they got married?
>> It wasn't good.
I think my mother was very vivacious,
and he was subdued.
And I think she probably irritated him,
but they had five children within five years.
My sisters are 11 months apart,
and then my sister and brother are 11 months apart.
And then there's a year and a half between
the two brothers and the year and a half
between me and my brother.
So five kids within five years.
And we just knew to stay out of his way,
he wasn't much for kids,
and he would come and go.
So they did divorce when I was a baby,
and he moved to Denmark,
and he was hired as an engineer.
He was into chemicals and plastics and stuff.
And he left Denmark,
and then he was recruited by
quite a few companies in
different countries to come work for them.
Now, if you have an opportunity to
leave Holland after all that bombing
and still rationing of
food and very little employment there,
you take it, and he chose to go to the United States.
And I do remember living in Holland
in very small quarters
and a shared bathroom down the hall.
My mother said if sun came out,
we just dropped everything and went outside
because she missed Indonesia,
the sun and everything and the contrast
between Indonesia and Holland is great.
The mountains and the sunshine and the jungle versus the
flat and the cold, windy, rain,
green, and there was nice weather there,
too, but she was homesick for Indonesia.
>> So where do you fit into this group of five kids?
>> I'm the youngest.
>> So they divorced,
but then they got back together?
>> Well, they kind of had to get back together because
my dad lived in the United States for a year.
And if you can imagine moving from tight quarters to
a small town in Pennsylvania where you
could have your own free standing home and a yard,
lots of food, clean,
he thought that it would be best
for the kids to come over.
But my mother, since they were divorced,
she couldn't come unless she remarried him.
So they got married again in 1956,
right before we moved.
>> So what was the journey over like?
How did you go from Holland to United States?
>> We flew into,
was there an airport called Idlewild?
Yes.
I remember reading something about that.
We flew in there,
and I do remember
the stories that we were so
excited because that was in New York City,
that we had to take a taxi to a hotel.
And my brother, Rick,
who was Johan Hendrick,
was a year and a half older than I,
he was so excited.
He kept telling the taxi driver in Dutch
that they flew in an airplane,
and the taxi driver says, got you.
So my mother said to my dad,
what's got you, so my dad had to explain.
So I think he was just trying to get
the kid to stop and
saying the same thing over and over again.
That was a funny story.
>> So what were your first impressions
of the United States?
>> Well, I was only three,
but the stories I've heard
were my mother loved it because in Pennsylvania,
there were mountains not too far away.
My dad worked for Curtis Wright for
a government contract near Clearfield, Pennsylvania,
and since then, I found out that site where he
worked is contaminated with
uranium and cobalt and something else.
He done young at age 62 of leukemia.
So I'm thinking, I wonder if there's a connection.
But he was in
the plastics department that Curtis Wright was.
You think of Curtis Wright as airplanes,
but I found out since that they did these other oil
and plastics and nucleonics.
Never heard of that, but that's apparently
something to do with nuclear power.
>> And you and your family lived in a house with a yard.
What was your neighborhood like?
I think it was just sidewalks,
like Beaver Clever neighborhood.
Kids went, my sisters and brothers went right to school,
immersed and learned English very quickly.
They didn't have ESL or anything like that.
I remember first Halloween
where my mother sat down
and sewed all these costumes for us because
we were in American now and
we're going to do the same thing.
But she did not let us have
Easter baskets because she
felt like Easter was a holy day,
and we shouldn't be doing that.
So we didn't get our first Easter basket,
I don't think until I was in
third or fourth grade when a neighbor felt sorry for us.
>> Did she join a church or something like that?
>> Well, she was invited to
a lecture that was
associated with the Christian Science religion.
And then a neighbor invited her and she said,
this sounds very familiar.
And so she put two and two together,
and so she was
a lifelong after that lifelong Christian scientist,
and we were all raised in the Sunday school,
but most of us have left that.
>> And what was your relationship like with your mother?
>> Well, I was the youngest,
and I was still a silly girl or something.
I don't know what she thought of me.
I think she appreciated
me because the last three years of her life,
I moved up to Franklin,
North Carolina where she was living and was
nearby just so she
could live in her home as long as possible.
And most of the time she listened to me,
but there were times I have to call my sister who lives
in Holland to talk to Mom about this.
And so we worked it out.
We all had our role as the five kids.
We all had a different relationship with my mother.
But no, she just was very practical.
And I was able to talk to her about things coming in
the back door way so that she would
understand maybe what would be better thing to do.
I sound like I'm talking in
code because I can't give you specific things.
It's just the way I had to work around it.
>> When did you first learn about
your mother's experience in the POW campus?
>> Well, we knew about it pretty
much our whole childhood because she had
some certain strange habits, which are understandable.
We we couldn't waste food.
If there was any food,
even a crumb left on any of our plate, she would eat it.
It was like she was going back to the kitchens in camp.
If we did want to throw away our food,
we had to sneak it into the trash
and hide it underneath something.
If it was just maybe
a rotten grape or something
that we don't want to eat that.
She would hoard food if there was a sale,
like of sugar, something that wasn't perishable.
She would hoard it,
and it was embarrassing to open up hallway cabinets and
have 70 pounds of sugar in there in little £5 bags.
Those things.
I remember one of my boys threw away
a half of a pea into the trash,
and she fetched it out, washed
it off and ate the rest of it.
We understood.
We weren't going to blame her for that.
But she did say that she gained a lot of weight when she
came to the United States because
suddenly there was all this food.
In Holland, we ate stuff like red cabbage.
We didn't have meat very often,
potatoes, just real healthy root vegetables
and a little bit of fruit.
And come to the States and all this
[inaudible] of sweets and sugar and floury things.
She did gain quite a bit of weight.
>> And were there other ways that you
think her experience as a young girl
and young woman in Indonesia
affected the rest of her life?
>> Well, I'll tell you, it affected us
because there was a story
that I didn't mention where they would smuggle water.
They would take four hour shifts at nighttime
and put a piece of bamboo that was
just a half a piece where there's cupped out
along and add a little piece of fabric at
the end so that they could fill vessels with
water from the facet in the nighttime.
And then if they saw a guard coming,
they would run out and say,
everything's fine, whatever they had to say.
And then they were able to get away with that.
So water was a big thing.
If we took a shower
that was longer than she thought it should be,
she'd be pounding on the door,
saying, turn the water off.
We weren't allowed to let water run.
Anything that was left in a glass that was water,
she would water her plants.
That was a big thing, the water.
>> Did she harbor ill will toward
Japanese or anything like that from her experience?
>> She did not.
And she told me they had to do what they had to do,
and she had to do what she had to do.
And later on and if I remember in high school,
my dad had to go to
Japan because he was working on a project with
the Japanese company and he
associated with his company foam plastics at the time.
And he went to Japan,
and then they visited us and I
see pictures of my mom standing
with these Japanese businessmen,
and they would take them sightseeing or have
over for dinner, all this stuff,
and she acted like everything was just fine.
Very forgiving in that way.
>> What was your education like?
>> My education is pretty normal for an American girl.
When I got to be 18,
we all knew that we needed to leave the house,
either go to college or go out and get
a job and find our own way.
And for some reason,
this is personal, but I kept getting
this message from my parents
that college wasn't for everybody.
Well, so I went to my high school counselor, I said,
I don't know why my parents don't
think I should go to college.
This is my message.
What are you talking about?
Look at your SAT score and your grades,
you're a college material.
But I didn't want to push it.
So I had a feeling that maybe money was tight.
So at age 19,
I did leave and well, it was funny.
I think my dad told my mom, it's time for her to go.
So my mom said, well,
I heard about in Atlanta,
MARTA is $0.15 a ride.
And I could afford $0.15,
$0.30 a day for that.
And so she and I got on the Greyhound bus or
Trailways or whatever it was from Charlotte,
North Carolina, and came to Atlanta.
The bus station was downtown.
She found the Christian Science reading room,
and that lady there
offered us a place to stay with her that night,
so that was taken care of.
I went to Davidson's Department store,
which is now Macy's downtown
and went to the employment office on
a Saturday and got a job working in one of the offices.
She and I found a place in North Highland
and a boarding house for young ladies.
I got to remember, this is 1972 or something.
And I got a room there,
shared a room, and I was right on the busline.
And so that's how I been in
the Atlanta area pretty much my
whole life except for four years in Houston.
>> And what were
your impressions of Atlanta in the early 70s?
>> There was a lot of hippies around on
Ponce de Leon what's now they say Ponce de Leon here.
But it was the age of the hippies
and my sister would dress bell bottom blue jeans,
and the madras and the hair and everything,
so I had a little clue about that.
I wasn't afraid or anything,
but it was just that part of
town that I was living in and wasn't my lifestyle,
but I just got on the bus and went to work and came back.
>> Did you see a lot of Vietnam war protesters?
>> No, but I do remember
my sister protesting when she was in college,
and my dad told her that if she did that again,
she was going to be cut off.
>> Did your parents share
their political beliefs with you?
>> Pretty conservative, both of them.
They couldn't believe that Nixon could do anything wrong.
But conservative.
But I have family members that
are all over the place, even my own sons.
>> Did they have feelings about
Russia or Cold War that was going on?
>> Not that I know of.
We listened to Walter Cronkite,
that was 30 minutes a day.
That was about it.
We didn't have all this 24 hour news.
>> Did you have exposure to
the civil rights movement
that was happening before you got to Atlanta?
>> Yes.
We lived in New England,
and then my dad got a job in Morristown,
Tennessee, which is not too far from Knoxville.
It's a very small town.
And it was a culture shock.
First of all, we weren't living in
Massachusetts on 10 acres of wooded land where we
could run wild and wire you in the house, that thing.
We lived on a track home,
no trees, downtown,
we saw a lot of beggars.
The teachers called us Yankees.
They didn't treat us very nicely,
but the worst part was when I went over
to a water fountain that said colored water,
and I wanted to see what color water would come out.
And I could hear my mother gasped.
I though, what am I doing wrong?
We just didn't know that.
And so that was when it was more evident and also when I
realized Alabama was just
not too far away from where we lived.
And my impression as a very young girl,
I'm eight-years-old or so was,
if I put a toe into Alabama,
I could get killed or there would be trouble,
but I didn't know why.
Just those images on the news.
But no, my parents didn't really explain any of it to us.
>> Did you know anyone who was black?
>> Yes.
My mother was
friendly with everyone because she was
raised in a multicultural setting there.
And there were children in my third grade classroom,
and I remember just being friendly with
this one little boy that was Kelly Corner to me,
and he just didn't really want to talk to me,
but just he couldn't,
why didn't he talk to me.
So I didn't understand and
I didn't ask my mom about any of that.
Now later on, and
as an adult and then learning
about those things in school,
I could understand it much better what was going
on and how I
appreciate the movement and
this peaceful marching and the effect it had.
But at that time.
>> It was mostly impressions of the Senior.
>> Yeah.
Kind of scary to me as a child.
>> So when did
you first learn about history of World War II?
>> Just the usual stuff in high school where you
had to take US history and world history and all that.
But it focused on the European theater.
I knew about the bomb,
but I didn't know how the Japanese were involved.
I didn't know that they didn't enter to
the war until a couple of years later.
No, I didn't really know a lot.
>> Did you learn about the Holocaust at all?
>> Well, we read Anne Frank and I
visited the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam,
and that gave us
way more information than what we learned.
Seem like we just skimmed.
There was a lot of history to cover,
and we skimmed through that.
But I'm glad to see that now the studies are
more focused on certain areas.
>> And all of that, and
even if you're learning about Anne Frank,
were you ever taught about the experiences of people like
your mother being held in these civilian.
>> A lot of people don't know about it even now.
And I have done presentations to fifth grade if
the teachers have the time
are interested to hear about it.
And the letters that I got
back from fifth grade students are like, wow.
I didn't know that.
Your mother was so brave,
and I don't think I could have done that,
but thinking about her, maybe I could.
So it made an impression on
fifth graders because that's the time of their life when
they're starting to think about life
and what's coming at them and making sense of life.
>> So why do you think it's important for
students to learn about the history of World War II then?
>> Well, we have to learn
from our history and our mistakes,
and why do we keep
doing the same thing over and over again?
And also, I remember reading
somewhere that the Holocaust would not happen again?
We would not let that happen again.
But there are so many parts of the world that do
have people that are imprisoned or considered slaves.
And so that promise was not kept?
It's still going on.
But people don't know about it
or they're not interested.
They don't want to know about it.
>> So then what do you hope that students will take away
from learning about your family's history?
>> That people are more
resilient than you ever know that they could
dig deep and survive to and do what they have to do.
Just even in ordinary life
dig in and dig deep? They can do it.
>> Is there anything I haven't
asked you about that you want to share?
>> Oh, gosh.
The only thing is that
my dad worked for the Dutch underground,
and I don't know if I mentioned that to you,
and I don't even know if this is the
appropriate to talk about it.
He did not tell us much.
But there were a couple of things that he did mention.
I don't know if he was just saying it to get us
from quit asking even the smallest questions,
but he said he learned German.
He knew quite a few he knew English,
Dutch German, French and a little bit of Japanese,
because when you're in Europe,
and the countries are so close together,
you have to learn these languages.
He was just a language person, very smart.
He was always fascinated with guns and rifles.
When he was a little boy,
and he had that tuberculosis.
His parents gave him
radios to take apart, put back together.
So he knew a lot about radios,
and that came in handy,
excuse me, during his time
working for the Dutch underground.
Now, the Dutch underground had
different levels of organization.
It was as much as just trying to irritate a German or to
actually do something like
a big plan in place to thwart their efforts.
My dad said he would steal radios from the Germans and
then place them in
people's homes after because
the Germans would undo something,
maybe some tube or something that they couldn't hear BBC,
and that was very important for them to hear
the news from Great Britain.
And so he fixed those radios in that way.
Now, he said that he
learned German because eventually he got sent to
a German potato farm
because you know all the German soldiers were
sent off to war and that anybody to do the farming.
And so he did that.
I'm not sure if that's true or not
because it seemed like he was
also getting his education
at the same time in college in Holland,
so I don't know what the potato farm thing was about.
And then my brother said, Well,
Daddy told me that he would
teach people how to kill Germans quietly.
I don't know that's all I know.
That's what one of my brothers said.
I don't know the truth.
We will never know the truth.
>> And do you know anything about
that technique, what that meant?
>> I didn't.
I don't know.
[LAUGHTER] I don't know.
Maybe we should research it. [LAUGHTER]
>> That's pretty interesting.
And so he talked more to
your brother about that than he did to you.
>> Well, my brothers were into
rifles and guns and all that stuff,
too, and they would go hunting,
and I don't know what might do.
Sometimes I think my dad just said stuff for effect.
So take it with a grain of salt, everybody.
[LAUGHTER].
>> Well, thank you so much for your time and for
sharing your family story and for sharing the artifacts.
Do you want to just talk a little for
the camera about the artifacts that you shared with us?
>> Yes. Well see, there was more.
The prisoners of war when they packed their bags,
they didn't know how long they were going to be gone.
So they would throw
whatever their hobby interests were too.
They didn't know they're going to be gone for 41 months,
and they probably would have taken
other things rather than maybe paint
and charcoal or whatever it was that they had as artists.
But then at the same time,
they would take whatever tin can
or whatever materials they had
and formed them into something
artistic that they could
barter because they didn't have money.
So my mother and grandmother had a lot of
these little decorative pins
and some artists must have been
the same artist or maybe a group of them.
And they were actually on safety pins,
and you could wear them at a little decorative thing,
and they were painted, and they were carved out of wood
or shaped out of a tin can or something.
And so we had those,
and then some artists would do a little pottery.
Now, Indonesia has red clay.
And that's one of the reasons my mom loved
the South because of the red clay in the mountains,
and I didn't know there
was red clay anywhere but in Georgia.
But so some of the people in the camp would
make little dishes or whatever,
and I don't know how they fired them though.
Maybe they had their way and decorate them.
And they had scenes of camp life there of
a dog trying to get through barbed wire.
My mother said, well, the dogs would come in,
and we were sad to see them go because we wanted
to keep the dogs as a pet,
but the dogs eventually disappeared.
Who knows where they went. We can guess.
>> And one last thing on that front,
can you talk a little bit about the rug?
>> Oh, of course, the rug.
That was so important, too.
How could we have forgotten that.
I'm glad you remembered.
When they packed up their things,
they took clothes, and for some reason,
my mother and grandmother took this Persian rug,
and it had, I believe, natural dyes in it.
It's very old. And that's what they
slept on in Banyubiru particularly.
When they probably didn't have the mattresses anymore.
I think they slipped right on bamboo slats.
My mother and her mother shared this Persian rug,
and it kept the lice and the fleas off of them.
But then there were still bugs that would fall down
from the covering of the shelter.
So they felt they could get their rest
because they weren't being these fleas,
and lice were not in their hair
and on their body biting like crazy.
And of course, that gets infected, too.
So that was pretty amazing to her.
And that's one of the artifacts I and it's not very wide.
Two people on that.
>> And I know mosquitoes were still an issue, right?
>> Yeah.
>> And your mother did get malaria at some point?
>> She did.
And there's some malaria that you cannot shake,
and there's some malaria that's temporary.
I don't know what she kind she had,
but she said that she didn't have malaria for very long,
and I don't remember that she had
malaria as we were growing up.
So it must have been or she prayed a lot, could be.
Well, thank you again.
>> Sure.
>> For sharing all of these stories with us,
it's an honor to be able to preserve your families story.
>> Thank you for letting me share.