• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Janneke Jobsis Brown

Following Shadows

  • Home
  • About
  • Books
  • WW II Heritage
  • Events
  • Intergenerational Trauma
  • Video
  • Blog
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Trauma-Healing / Indonesia, "Indie" August 11, 1945: Liberaton Nears

August 12, 2011 By Janneke

Indonesia, "Indie" August 11, 1945: Liberaton Nears

Australian and Dutch prisoners of war at Tarsa...
Image via Wikipedia

Liberation

Nears

Sixty-six years ago, World War II lingered on in the Pacific.

Millions of native peoples had died, many thousands of civilians and POWs had died in Japanese Labor/Concentration Camps. Many more surviving in these same camps now neared death from starvation, disease, and brutality. Deaths increased exponentially. Death shadowed every civilian and POW in the camps. To read history, journal accounts, and view photographs from this time is to wonder how anyone lived through 1944, much less clung to life in 1945. It is both terrifying and inspiring to see how soldiers and civilians still scrabbled for life amidst deprivation and attacks in 1945.

Japan‘s eventual surrender on August 15, 1945,  led to the slow liberation of many, including my father — Adrianus Cornelis “Kees” Jobsis and his family.

His father, Gerrit Jobsis and many others had died.. My Opa (grandpa) Gerrit Jobsis was among those whose fragile life ended in those final months, Spring 1945.

Hear is the daily countdown to that final August 15th liberation:

August 6, 1945  the American bomber Enola Gay dropped the first atom bomb on Hiroshima. The ground and all life was flattened, over 100,00o were dead or dying.

 Prior to the dropping of the first Atom bomb, the allies had learned, by decoding secret transmissions that the Japanese planned to kill all imprisoned in Japanese Concentration/Labor Camps. This information influenced the American decision to drop the atom bomb. The decoded documents themselves were held classified for generations after World War II.

Historian Linda Goetz Holmes was among the first to obtain and publish this information. She repsonded to my questions as follows:

 In my book Unjust Enrichment and again in my 2010 book Guests of the Emperor I do display the document which ordered the execution of all POWs and civilian internees. The chilling thing is that the Japanese military aimed that no white people would survive to resettle in Asia.
Linda Goetz Holmes

August 7, 1945 Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo of Japan sent a coded telegram to his ambassador in Moscow. Japan had proposed peace to to the Soviet Union, and wanted an answer (Haseqawa, 2006).

August 7-8, 1945  The Soviet Union declared war on Japan, attacking Japanese forces in Manchuria (Haseqawa, 2006).

August 9, 1945 U.S. B-29 bomber Bock’s Car*  dropped the next  atom bomb on Nagasaki. This caused and led to the death of 80,000 Japanese civilians. (*named after its pilot, Fred Bock)

Tell me about your family and survivors in 1945.

I would like to know your story.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

General and President, Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Share this post:

Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Email

Filed Under: Trauma-Healing, War's Family Tagged With: Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Guests of the Emperor, Linda Guetz Holmes, Nuclear weapon, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Previous Post: « Put Your Whole Self In
Next Post: Cynicism & Hope: No Help Generations after WWII »

Primary Sidebar

Signup for Updates

Sign-up and read the first two chapters of Following Shadows FREE. You will receive updates in your inbox whenever new articles are posted.



Connect with Janneke

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Survivor Psalm
  • Paratrooper "Angels" of WWII
  • Trauma and Truth
  • Do we really recall WWII lessons AND recall WWII history?
  • Open Door

Topics:

  • Grace Stories
  • Homesick-Heimwee
  • Thirty Days of Light
  • Trauma-Healing
  • Uncategorized
  • War's Family

Footer

Meet Janneke

Janneke Jobsis Brown
Following Shadows is inspired by my own story. As a survivor of an international childhood with parents who were World War II survivors, I know the generational after-effects of starvation and slave labor in Japanese concentration camps for my father, and the terror of Nazi occupation for my mother. I know the challenges of struggling to feel at home across three countries: The Netherlands, Iran and America.

Read More…

Recent Blogs

  • Survivor Psalm
  • Paratrooper "Angels" of WWII
  • Trauma and Truth
  • Do we really recall WWII lessons AND recall WWII history?
  • Open Door

Connect with Janneke

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Read Two Free Chapters

Sign-up and read the first two chapters of Following Shadows FREE.



Copyright © 2021 · Janneke Jobsis-Brown, All Rights Reserved