When clearing up my mother's belongings after her death (1984) in
Switzerland, my fatherfound her camp diary and letters in a wooden box. This
led him to document their experiences during and after the Japanese camps in
the dutch colony from 1942 to 1946.
Father,
Oscar, transcribing my mother's diary and letters from the camp, found in the
wooden box; 1984.
But who was my father, who broke up his study of civil engineering
in Delft to study the chemistry of oil and soap in Groningen and Berlin and who
brought his Swiss wife in 1933 to Keboemen in the Dutch East Indies? Was he
longing for the land of his childhood or was he sent by his rich father,
director general of the "Nederlands-Indische Handelsbank" (NIHB) in
Amsterdam?
Thirty years later (2013), my Swiss cousin, Catherine Marchand,
transcribed the letters sent by my mother to her parents in Switzerland, as
described in my previous blog, written in dutch: http://woldringh-naarden.blogspot.nl/2015/07/op-reis-naar-wo-ii.html
The weekly letters of my mother are written in french. The
"Blog posthume" starts with a letter written on November 14th, 1932 from
Laren (Holland) describing how she had to convince one of the directors (G.A.Dunlop)
to let them go together to the Netherlands-Indies:
http://java1933.blogspot.nl/2015/06/larenhollande-14-novembre-1932-comment.html
In October 1933 they settle in their house in Keboemen:
http://java1933.blogspot.nl/2015/07/15-octobre-1933-keboemenkebumen-hotel.html
On December 11th, 1933 she writes to her father in Switzerland:
"The next day Mr and Mrs Röhwer
absolutely wanted to lead us to a large underground cave, a curiosity in the
country. So starting at 7 am in the morning, we visited the cave and had
breakfast at 9 am. Then, on the way back, we went to the coast. My dear! such a
spectacle, no, I could not believe my eyes and could not realize that it was me
who had the chance to see such a sight, coming from fairy tales. Heat at least
45°C, true, but what does that matter. First we walked through rice fields
separated by bamboo forests, Papali, bamboo forests, so beautiful, so
beautiful, then sand dunes from where we saw the sea at our feet.
Blue
sea, blue sky, in the horizon mountains in a purple haze, almost out of sight a
grey sand bank on which tidal waves of 2 meters high come to die, making clouds
of white foam while flowing back. The tidal waves are very strong on the south
coast and do not allow swimming. Throughout this landscape were natives fishing
for crabs, shrimps and women with large, brightly colored jars for making salt.
Oscar took pictures, but they are not yet ready."
Father's
photograph of the south coast of Java.
On December 15th, 1933 she writes to her mother that for the
first time she felt homesickness: "...a
longing for the cold, the rain, the snow, the wet streets shining in the glow
of street lamps, the shops in town decorated and illuminated. But it only
lasted a short moment...."
Note:
"Oh...Keboemen" refers to a sighing of my mother when she remembered
the first happy years in the Netherlands-Indies.
The
copra factory "Mexolie"
Copra is the dried meat of the coconut harvested from the
coconut palm. These trees were in every kampong; the coconuts were collected
and transported (by the Chineses) to the factory, where they were first split
and dried before pressing out and extracting the oil.
The
drying field of the Mexolie factory in Keboemen in 1933.
In the 1910's and1920's there were many oil factories combined into
the "OFI" (N.V. Oliefabrieken Insulinde in Nederlands-Indië). In that
period dr. Albert Jan Kluyver spent several years (1916-1919) on Java as scientific
consultant; later he became head of the laboratory of OFI in Bandung. He then
heavily critisized the manifacturing of by-products. (Back in Holland Kluyver became the
3rd professor - after Beijerinck and G. van Iterson - of the "Delft School
of Microbiology", and famous for his contention about the "unity in
biochemistry". During the war Kluyver offered a job to Mrs. Woutera van
Iterson in Delft. She met there Jan B. le Poole, who had just built the first
electron microscope in the Netherlands, the "EM100". Later, in 1952,
she became head of the Laboratory of Electron Microscopy) at the University of
Amsterdam, where she was my promotor in 1974.)
Cover
of a book by dr. R.N.J. Kamerling, a study describing the decline of the
"OFI".
On the level of management, the OFI was critisized in 1918 by a
principal agent of the NIHB ("Nederlands-Indische Handelsbank) in Batavia,
Conradus Woldringh (my grandfather). He warned that the administrators of OFI were
incompetent and too autocratic (p.74 of the book of R.N.J. Kamerling about the
OFI; T. Wever bv, Francker, 1982). Although the directors in Amsterdam were
annoyed and told him to mind his own business, it appeared that he was right: In
1923 the OFI had to be liquidated which resulted in the foundation by the NIHB
of "Mexolie" (Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Oliefabrieken).
Conradus Woldringh went to Amsterdam where he became director from 1921 to 1935
(documented in the book of W.L. Korthals Altes, "Tussen cultures en kredieten", Amsterdam 2004). But he must
have known how difficult the future of Mexolie in the dutch colony would be.
Why then did he allow his eldest son, my father, to go to the factory in
Keboemen? And what became of the factory in present-day Kebumen?
