Son Learns About Father's Experiences in WWII Japan Prison Camp
By Ryan Schlehuber

Rudy Hennekes of St. Ignace emigrated to America from Indonesia when he was five years old. His father, Johannes Hennekes, a retired soldier in the Royal Netherlands Indonesian Army, made a new life for his family in North Carolina, arriving at New York in 1957.

Many Americans on Veterans Day, Sunday, November 11, will reflect on friends and loved ones who served, and some who died while serving, their country. An American holiday, Veterans Day coincides with Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, celebrated in the same spirit in other parts of the world.

For Rudy Hennekes of St. Ignace, the day is a time to remember and honor his father, Johannes Hennekes, who served in the Royal Netherlands Indonesian Army and was a Japanese prisoner of war during World War II.

What Mr. Hennekes knows of his father's military past is only what he was told by his father shortly before he died at age 69 in 1981, of skin cancer. Mr. Hennekes also obtained service records from Holland's defense ministry, giving him more details of his father's service.

Johannes Hennekes with his wife, Nellie, their first born child, Anneka, and their pet dog in 1939. The couple was reunited after World War II after each thought the other had died during the war.

As Veterans Day approaches, Mr. Hennekes is reminded how much sacrifice was given by not only Americans during World War II, but by everyone in the world.

"It seems we may have forgotten that other countries lost so many people, as well," said Mr. Hennekes. "Russia alone lost 23 million people, for example.

"What should we learn from this?" he added. "That there was a lot of personal sacrifice all over the world."

The story of Mr. Hennekes' father during World War II resembles stories of many American veterans.

At age 17, Johannes Hennekes, the youngest of 18 children, decided he wanted to see the world. Joining the military seemed the best way to travel and serve his country at the same time.

In 1929, he joined the Royal Dutch Navy, but served only three months owing to a near collision between the small gun boat he served on in Singapore, and a British steamer during a foggy night.

Johannes Hennekes as a young naval officer for the Royal Dutch Navy prior to World War II. He served on a small gun boat in Singapore before volunteering for the Royal Netherlands Indonesian Army. (Photographs from Rudy Hennekes)

"That made him so nervous that he got out of that," said Mr. Hennekes.

After being honorably discharged from the Navy, Mr. Hennekes' father volunteered to serve in the Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger, also known as the Royal Netherlands Indonesian Army, from 1934 to 1950.

After five years of training, he was transferred to Indonesia, then called the Dutch East Indies, and was made Gunner Brigadier First Class (equivalent to a sergeant major), and was assigned to the Coastal and Anti-Aircraft Artillery in Surabaya on the island of Sumatra.

"When he was assigned to the big guns, the army knew the Japanese had their eyes on this island because of its rubber and oil," said Mr. Hennekes.

In September 1941, a few months before Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, catapulting the United States into the war, Mr. Hennekes was transferred to Pekalongan, as the Dutch army prepared to defend Indonesia's oil reserves, which the Japanese were targeting, not only in Indonesia, but in China and the Philippines, as well.

On January 11, 1942, Japan declared war on the Netherlands, and an invasion of the East Indies began, leading to the Battle of Java Sea in February. By March, the Dutch, British, and American soldiers attempted to evacuate their troops from the Indonesian islands, knowing Japanese occupation of Indonesia was inevitable after the Dutch naval power was defeated.

Mr. Hennekes, stationed in Magelang at the time, was not fortunate enough to be evacuated in time, and was taken as a prisoner by Japanese troops March 8, 1942.

"He would barely talk about this at first," said the younger Mr. Hennekes of his father's time as a Japanese prisoner of war (POW). "But it was a very nasty situation that happened there. There were a lot of mass killings."

Mr. Hennekes, along with many other POWs that included nurses from local hospitals, was transferred to Padang, a small village on the east side of Sumatra, where his wife of eight years, Nellie Weichelt, was living, in her hometown.

"When she heard that my father was captured, she burned the house down and all the records, because they knew from stories in other countries that the Japanese would search you out through your records," said Mr. Hennekes. "She fled, and eventually ended up with some Chinese nationals and stayed there until the end of the war."

Mr. Hennekes said all contact between his parents was lost, and Mrs. Hennekes presumed her husband was dead after a couple of years.

Being transferred from camp to camp in Singapore and Indo-China, Mr. Hennekes and other POWs were forced into labor work, building military infrastructure, such as docks and air strips, for the Japanese.

"When they were in Singapore, they were rounded up one time, and they didn't know if they were going to be transferred again, or shot," said Mr. Hennekes, "so when they questioned my father, he told them he was going blind. That was a big risk, because the Japanese would execute you on the spot."

Mr. Hennekes' bluff worked, as he and another POW from New Zealand, who had used the same excuse, were kept behind while the others were taken aboard a Japanese troop carrier boat that was to transfer them across the Straits of Moloka to another work camp.

As the boat was crossing the water, it was hit by a torpedo and sunk.

"My father watched it from the dock," said Mr. Hennekes. "It was a loss of all on board."

The rigors of POW camp took their toll on the elder Hennekes, slimming him from 190 pounds to 98 pounds. His son remembers the scars his father had on his legs, a result of barbed wire being wrapped around them to prevent him from escaping.

"After the war was over, he never spoke of the atrocities, at first," said Mr. Hennekes. "He saw many, many friends executed. It was such an emotional scar for him. It took him a long time to actually begin to tell me about it."

As the father began to open up to his son, he told him the story of when he was finally liberated from the POW camp.

It was in August 1945 when Mr. Hennekes and other POWs noticed a difference in the Japanese troops, as they became more merciful and more accommodating to the prisoners' needs, with fewer beatings, and more rice to eat and cleaner water to drink.

"One morning, they woke up to find that there were no troops around," said Mr. Hennekes. "They had no idea what to think."

After a long moment of wondering what to do, prisoners stirred up enough courage to find out where the Japanese troops had gone. To their delighted surprise, they met British troops, who were there to free them. On August 15, more than three years since his capture, Mr. Hennekes was free.

Believing his wife and his daughter, Anneka, who was born in 1939, were dead, Mr. Hennekes began to settle into a new life. He re-engaged into the Dutch army in 1947, and resided in Singapore, meeting a European woman, and making a new home.

Meanwhile, although she thought her husband was dead, Mrs. Hennekes continued to seek information about what had happened to him.

When Mrs. Hennekes visited Sumatra, she ran into a friend who was a nurse. To her astonishment, the woman told her that Mr. Hennekes was alive and living in Singapore.

"So my mother went to Singapore and found out where he lived, went to the house, and knocked on the door," said Mr. Hennekes. "The woman answered the door, and my mother saw my father in the background. All she said was, 'Johannes, it's time to go home,' and he packed up his bags and left, and never said anything more about that until just prior to his death.

"That was war time," he added. "Nobody knew if each other was alive, or not."

After the war, Indonesia civil war began in 1949 as countrymen called for sovereignty from the Dutch. In June 1950, Indonesia was freed from Dutch colonial control by the United Nations after more than 360 years.

With the Dutch military abandoning its Indonesian posts, Mr. Hennekes took his family to Europe. He then re-engaged as a sergeant major with an antiaircraft unit known as the Frederick Regiment in the Dutch army. He retired as a chief warrant officer in 1955.

The rebuilding of Europe after the war left little opportunity for Mr. Hennekes to live a fruitful life after retiring.

"He, like many others in his situation, didn't know what to do after retiring from the military," said Mr. Hennekes. "He had, since 1929, been engaged as a professional military soldier. It was an identity crisis. What do you do?"

He decided to take the advice of his fellow POW friends, who encouraged him to move his family to America, the "land of opportunity."

The Hennekes, with their two daughters, Anneka and Ria, and two sons, Rudy, who was five years old at the time, and John, arrived in the New York harbor February 13, 1957.

Yet again, the former soldier immersed himself into another new life, this time in North Carolina, living on a farm. He worked as a carpenter. He later would establish himself as head supervisor of an inner city redevelopment company before retiring in the mid-1970s.

The Hennekes' children, who knew how to speak fluently in Dutch and Malaysian, went to public school, where they learned English.

"We would come home and teach our parents how to speak English," said Mr. Hennekes. "My father spoke broken English that he picked up during his POW days. It was a real culture shock for the whole family."

Having only the stories his parents told him and a copy of their father's military documents, both Rudy Hennekes and his brother, a bridge architect living in Raleigh, North Carolina, continue to seek information about their late father.

John Hennekes has established a Web site for people to find others who may know more about Dutch veterans. It contains military information and photographs of a few veterans, including Johannes Hennekes.

Rudy Hennekes is a chief mechanic and a reserve captain for Arnold Transit Company in St. Ignace. His sisters both live in Norfolk, Virginia.

Both his mother, who died in 1987, and his father are buried in the military section of Witchduck Cemetery in Norfolk.