An autobiographical short story written by TINE & HENNIE SMITH, Dutch Indonesian-American immigrants who prove that love endures all. It is the miraculous story that circumvents the globe from surviving Japanese concentration camps, a journey around the world with five kids and founding a legacy of faith and love for generations in their beloved new homeland.
TINE & HENNIE SMITH
OUR JOURNEY OF FAITH
AUGUST 1993
It was in the thirties in the former Dutch East Indies, now called Indonesia, when Tine and I were high school sweethearts, that we started our journey of faith by joining a membership class of the Dutch Reformed Church. We were only 17 at the end of the one year course, while you have to be 18 or older to become a member. The minister knew this and said that he had to bring it up at a board meeting. Lucky for us that the decision was in our favor. So we became members. It was in this same church that 7 years later on July 3, 1941, Tine and I got married. The text that the minister used at the ceremony was from Matthew 19, verse 6: “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder”. This text appeared to be very important for both of us, in particular during World War II. Five months after our wedding on December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor was attacked. Holland, at that time occupied by the Germans, had a government in England – so we were in a state of war and the Dutch declared war on Japan. As a result of this, 3 days after Pearl Harbor’s attack, I was mobilized in the Dutch army with a war destination about 400 miles from home. That meant that I had to leave Tine.
When the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies in March 1942 I was taken as prisoner of war while Tine was still able to stay out of a concentration camp for a few months. Not having any income, Tine had to sell some of our possessions so she could buy food. During these few months, they were able to have church at the people’s homes, because the churches were used for storage by the Japanese. Because of the civil function I had before the war, we were kind of known with the Indonesian authorities and when occasionally a food distribution took place, this happened at our home with a Japanese and Indonesian police witnessing.
One day Tine was picked up by Japanese soldiers and put in jail because a certain “Smith” escaped from camp and they thought it was me. Every day a Japanese with an Indonesian policeman asked Tine where I was hiding. Finally after a week an Indonesian authority (could be compared with a Mayor) who knew us personally was able to convince the Japanese that the escapee was not Tine’s husband, so they finally released Tine. A few months later, Tine was picked up by the Japanese and taken to a concentration camp, locally, with only a few belongings. The Japanese gathered about 200 and some Dutch for that camp and they voted a Catholic priest to be camp leader. It was strange that the Japanese allowed church services in camp. Regardless of denomination, the people went to a Catholic Mass. The Japanese insisted that when you pass a guard, you stop, make front to him and bow for him. One day Tine didn’t do that and was called back. She had to stand still, make front to him and he slapped her in her face, after which she could continue.
After a few months, the Japanese gathered all males between 16 and 50 and took them away to another camp, including the Catholic priest, the camp leader. Then came the time to find another camp leader. The people selected Tine to be it, but she declined on account of her age. She was only 25 then, while there were so many older women with more experience. The people talked and talked with Tine and after a few days, Tine gave in. Then came a very hard time for Tine to take all the responsibilities of the camp. It was then that the Japanese occasionally allowed an Indonesian or Chinese minister to lead church services in camp, while several times it was Tine who led the services. Tine went every other week with 3 Japanese guards to an open market to buy food for the whole camp. Now and then the Japanese allowed the prisoners to have visitors. We had a very loyal female servant who came to see Tine and brought clothes and money from a sale. Tine gave her the key to our home. So it stayed until the Japanese surrendered. During the occupation both Tine and I were allowed 3 times to write a postcard, but neither of us had ever received one. After the Japanese surrendered, the Indonesians fought for their independence and the whole camp just changed hands from Japanese to Indonesians. This was in August 1945.
I was put in a concentration camp with about 2000 fellow POWs, many of whom were Officers. The Japanese wanted us to sign a paper whereby we declared our loyalty to the emperor of Japan and that we not try to escape. It took a lot of deliberations between our camp leader and Officers whether to sign it or not. They finally decided to do it, because it would not have any value under pressure. After a year, our conquerors decided to ship us to Thailand, while POWs from other camps were shipped to Burma in order to work on a railroad that would connect Bangkok in Thailand with Rangoon in Burma. I was with the contingent to go to Thailand. They put us all in the cargo space of a ship. When we opened some shelves at the bottom of the ship, we found out that it was not only transporting POWs, but also ammunition and powder. We heard that during that time, other transport ships were torpedoed by allied war ships and bombed by planes. Our ship didn’t carry a Red Cross flag as ruled by the Geneva Convention. You can be sure that hundreds of prayers went up to God to save our ship. We were transported like sardines in a can. We could hardly stretch our legs. We sailed in a convoy of 7 ships. Can you imagine our fear one day when we heard airplanes approaching. Lucky for us that we were not bombed. We thanked God when after a week, we arrived in Singapore. After a 3 week stay, the Japanese transported several hundred POWs by cargo train to Thailand. I was among them. They put 40 of us with the little luggage we had in a small cargo wagon without any facilities. We had to sit with our legs pulled up. When we arrived in Thailand we were put in barracks next to a railroad station which was a storage place of all the material to build the railroad. We were there not even a month when at 3:00 o’clock in the morning we heard airplanes approaching. We all ran out to see what was going on. We expected American bombers when suddenly we heard an explosion and an oil tanker was aflame. When t hat first bomb hit that well, hell broke loose with bombs exploding all around us. The pilots didn’t know that next to that huge storage place was a POW camp. Our camp had no trenches to hide in. As a result, 97 of us were killed. We put all the bodies in the open, some of them covered with English, Australian, American and Dutch flags, knowing that after an air attack, reconnaissance planes will fly over to take pictures of the damage. Our purpose with those flags was to let the allies know that we were there. Indeed they must have noticed it, because a few weeks later at daylight, another air raid came and we saw 27 bombers in formation approaching. It was a mighty sight, but scary. We could see the bombs in the bomb bay of the planes and finally we saw them falling, big and small bombs like confetti in the air. But we also noticed that the formation suddenly changed direction in order not to hit our camp. We still lost 7 POWs.
The Japanese put me in a work party of 100 Dutch, 100 English and 100 Australians with the task to nail the rails that another party before us had laid out to the railroad ties. The party that laid out the rails nailed only 1 spike on each end of the rail and our party nailed all the in-between. This meant that our party had to move every so often as the lay-out progressed. We had about 270 miles to cover till we met our fellow POWs who worked up from the Burma side. This is why I also worked on the bridge over the river Kwai, the movie of which some of you may have seen. Believe me, reality was far worse than the movie showed!
We also had to fight serious diseases like cholera, malaria and dysentery, the latter of which was the least. Worst of all, I found, was cholera. The railway was laid as much as possible close to the river, because that was the only water we could use. The Japanese also used thousands of Tamils, people from India. Those people were really dirty. You could smell their camp from miles away and when cholera broke out, we saw hundreds of these people die. It was not uncommon that when we had to get water from the river for cooking, we saw a body floating upstream, a victim of cholera, and we still had to use that water. We had to take strict sanitary precautions like cook our utensils before we ate. Another bad disease was malaria – I fell victim of it. The bad part of being sick is that we had no medication. The little of it we had was saved for the most serious cases. When I had a malaria attack and fell unconscious, I was not aware of an air raid that took place. When I came out of it, I found a bomb shrapnel on my bamboo bed. A bomb exploded about 100 feet away. Some people told me that they were lifted from their bed by the pressure of the explosion. I experienced 13 bombings and machine-gunnings by Americans, but we didn’t mind, because we knew that they were doing something to free us. My malaria worsened and turned into black water fever, an illness whereby you urinate black blood. 90% of these cases end in death. As I said before, the doctors kept the medicine for the real bad cases. They decided that my case was bad enough to give me one quinine shot. Oh, that was painful! I could hardly walk for 3 days, but it pulled me out of the danger and I recovered very slowly.
The Japanese allowed us to celebrate Christmas. Each time we said to each other: “Next year at home”. One time we just started one of these celebrations in Thailand when we heard the sound of coming bombers. This spoiled our Christmas because we were not allowed to continue. We thought it was a little rude to bomb on Christmas Day and not observe it. During the last few months of the war our camp was on an island in the river where we were tasked to bring over Japanese supplies from one side of the river to the other because the bridge over the river was bombed and could not be used. It was on this island that I experienced a cremation of Thai people. They did it very primitively. They put the body on a metal plate over a bunch of wood and burned it. It was strange to see that all of a sudden, the body sat up and then collapsed again. The smell was awful!
When the war was over and we were brought over to a large camp, we couldn’t help but get tears in our eyes when we saw the American, British, Dutch and Australian flags flying high on poles. It was not until March 1946 that I was transported back to the island of Java where I came from. It just so happened that I was stationed, still as a draftee, in the city where Tine’s Mother lived. Her Father passed away during the war. Coming home I found out that Tine was still in camp under the Indonesians who fought their independence against the Dutch. I made several visits to the Red Cross to report this, but nothing helped. Slowly the Indonesians started to free Dutch women and children and I met some people who were in the same camp where Tine was camp leader. When I heard for sure in which camp Tine was, I reported this again to the Red Cross but to no avail. After the women and children were evacuated, Tine ended up with only men in her camp. The Indonesians still didn’t want to free Tine because she was camp leader, until she became ill with malaria and only then was she released. That was in December 1946 that Tine and I met again … after 5 long years. Neither Tine nor I had ever doubted that we would see each other again. “Therefore what God has joined together, let no man put asunder”.
After my demobilization, I was still employed by the State Railway and since Indonesia got their Independence and took it over and I didn’t want to become an Indonesian citizen, I was forced to quit that job and worked after that for 5 years for Shell Oil Co. Our 3 boys were born in Indonesia and it became harder and harder to live there as Dutch citizens. It was even dangerous for us to stay there because Tine’s brother who was a M.P. in the Dutch army was on the Indonesian black list. So his whole family was also in danger. We decided to go back to Holland and left Indonesia in 1954 with only a few belongings. So we had to start in Holland all over again. It was not easy, but with God’s help we rebuilt a new household. Our 2 girls were born in Rotterdam, Holland.
As you may know, Holland is very damp and our 2 older boys became very asthmatic. They sometimes could hardly breathe and one of them, Guido, became so sick that he almost developed T.B. The doctor advised us to go to a warmer climate. Oh sure, easy to say but where to go? In the meantime, we heard of a possibility of immigration to the U.S.A. through the Church World Service. Tine’s brother applied for this but had been waiting for more than 2 years without any result. We had been discussing this very thoroughly. The problem was that our family was very close and all the family gatherings took place at our house. I had a very good job with a pension plan. I was at that time, very active in the parochial schools in the Dutch Reformed Church where I was treasurer for 3 schools.
We finally decided to give it a try and I put in my application on the very last day possible. We prayed: “God, if it is good for us to go, let it be.” There were still many obstacles to overcome, among others that we all had to take a physical and to be screened by the secret service. When our whole family had to appear before the American Consul and arrived in the waiting room, the whole room was full of applicants. We were there not even 10 minutes when to our surprise, my name was called. What we had not expected was that the consul spoke Dutch, which put us at ease. We had to answer many questions and coming home we said “What will be, will be.” And then we came to the big surprise. After 3 months we received a letter that our family was accepted for immigration to the United States and our sponsor was the Methodist Church in Corona. We were perplexed to hear that and we were not even ready to go. We didn’t even have enough money to pay for our share of the trip over. I had to make a government loan to pay for it. We received letters, newspapers and a Corona Chamber of Commerce book from the lay leader of this church to get us a little bit familiar with Corona. The Sunday before we left Holland we attended church service whereby they all prayed for our well-being. They gave us a Bible in English as well as Dutch to remember everyone by. The same day that we left Holland an article with our picture was in the Corona Daily Independent. We came over by ship but that was not a fun trip. we experienced a violent storm and were not allowed on deck because the waves were so high that they broke a window on the second deck. That was in January 1961. On our way from Halifax, Canada to Hoboken [New Jersey, USA] where we were to debark, we were in a heavy snowstorm so that certain areas aboard were out of bounds for the passengers because of the snow accumulation. Arriving in Hoboken we found out that a longshoreman strike was going on so we had to handle our own luggage. We boarded the train to Chicago where we had to change trains. We were in such a deep freeze on the way to Chicago that the water in the restrooms wa s frozen. Because the train could not run his normal speed, we missed our connection. We managed to stay overnight at the YMCA with the 3 youngest children, while we left our luggage under the supervision of the 2 older boys, then 12 and 10 years old, at the station. We won’t dare to do that now. When we continued our journey we noticed armed cowboys in the train and thought “Is it so unsafe that we need armed escort?” We later found out that they were on their way home from President Kennedy’s inauguration. As a last obstacle, we had to wait a long time somewhere in New Mexico because there was a big derailment. We then finally arrived in San Bernardino [California] about 11:00 p.m. We noticed so many people at the station, more than 100. We surprisingly found out that they all were there to welcome us. And so we arrived Friday about midnight at 907 Howard Street in Corona on January 23, 1961. We were interviewed the next day by the Daily Independent [the Corona local newspaper]. Although our children didn’t speak English then, we sent them to school the following Monday. The first few days some of them came home crying because they didn’t understand the others, but after 3 or 4 months they had an “A” in English. One of our boys, Hans, even skipped 2d grade. The first years were very rough.
After a few months on a job I experienced my first lay-off ever. We were not familiar with this kind of system. The whole family did everything to keep our heads above water. I worked as a dishwasher, mowed lawns, and cleaned houses with Tine. Tine baked cakes that were sold by John Collins, Doris’ husband at his work. She did ironing till 3:00 o’clock in the morning. Guido sold newspapers in front of Alpha Beta [a supermarket], which is now Honey’s Restaurant. Some days we had to wait until Guido came home with some money so we could buy some food. We knew that we could have asked our sponsor, the United Methodist Church, for help, but we were too proud to hold out our hands. After a few months, with the help of our lay leader, I became employed at Corona Clipper Company in Corona. The owner of the house we lived in wanted to sell the house and nobody wanted to rent a house to a family with 5 children. We found an opportunity to buy a house in foreclosure, but I didn’t qualify with my $1.75 per hour earnings unless somebody would co-sign. Our lay leader offered to do that and we bought the house we still live in. We became American Citizens in 1967. Our boys who had asthma, the cause of our move to America, are doing well healthwise. As a matter of fact, all our children are well off. Edwin served this country for 3 years, one year of which in Vietnam and one year in Germany. He made good use of the G.I. Bill and got his degree in Psychology. He has his own business as a Counselor in Rehabilitation, is doing real well and is studying to get his PhD. Not that he needs it, but it’s for his ego. Guido, while at U.C.R. went for a year as an exchange student to Germany. He is a lawyer having his own business. Hans is a computer programmer for the Navy in Norco. Guido and Hans were youth counselors at our church. Barbara is Personnel Director of Doctors’ Hospital of Montclair and Ontario Community Hospital in Ontario. Gaby, our youngest girl was an escrow officer and is married to a lawyer. They all bought their own houses. We now have eight beautiful grandchildren.
When Rev. Hubbell asked me if I wanted to take care of the church, how could I refuse? I took care of the church for 13 years and the whole family helped with the cleaning until I had to give it up because of my heart attack. All the children sang in the youth choir. Sometimes only the children of both Smith families showed up to sing and for a while they called it “The Smith Choir”. Now all the children have left the house, but we are lucky that they all live close by.
It happened that during the first year here in America, Tine wanted to go back to Holland. Now that we have been back in Holland several times, we don’t ever want to live there anymore. Circumstances there have changed and we have changed too!
Do you believe in miracles? Tine and I do. I’ll tell you why. It’s remarkable that it concerns the wedding rings of both of us. I lost mine 3 times and I got it back 3 times. The first time was when our forces capitulated and we were waiting for the Japanese to take us to our concentration camp. We were bathing in a mountain stream with a swift current and lots of rocks and I discovered that my wedding ring was gone. My friends and I have been looking for it for more that 2 1/2 hours when I said, “I give up”, but my friends insisted to keep looking and all of a sudden, one of my friends said “I found It!”. The second time was in Thailand. As usual, our work party left early in the morning when at the end of the day our guards said that we are not returning to the camp. You must know that the Japanese were always after jewelry and fountain pens. I had hidden my wedding ring in a hole of a bamboo where I slept. The following day I recognized a friend in a passing work party from the camp I didn’t come back to. I told him about my ring and to get it for me. A few days later I met that friend again with my ring. The third time was here in Circle City Hospital after my heart attack in 1980. They took me to the x-ray room and I didn’t think of my watch and ring. In the meantime, the person who came in my old room was discharged with my watch and ring. The day that I was discharged I asked the nurse about my ring and watch. They couldn’t find them and told me that they would check it out. Miraculously, the person who got my belongings turned them in to the hospital and the hospital called me to let me know that I could pick them up.
Stronger yet is the disappearing of Tine’s wedding ring. It was a few years ago that Tine told me very upset that she lost her wedding ring. She could have lost it while doing dishes or whatever. We looked for it for days every place in the house, but no ring was found and we gave up. A few months later when we were sitting in our living room, Tine very surprised said to me “Look Hen”, pointing to her finger, “my ring”. We both got goose bumps. You can call this what you want, but to us these were miracles that God showed us.
This is our “JOURNEY OF FAITH”.
