Author: Willem Rudolph van Tongeren

Publisher: Jacqueline Boell

Published: 2021-07-30

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 0646843583

'INDO' is more than a war story. It's the story of three generations, a tale of love and desertion, family loyalty, a way of life gone forever, hate and forgiveness - peace and redemption. Rudy van Tongeren's life was close to perfect. The eldest son of parents of Dutch and Indonesian descent, whose father held a prestigious job with the Dutch colonial government in Java, Rudy had just qualified as a school principal in 1939. He was 22. He was looking forward to a genteel and fulfilling life as the head of a government school who would one day become a history professor at a university. Three days after he graduated, he was conscripted into the Royal Dutch Navy. It was 1939 and the threat of war darkened skies over Europe. Two and a half years later, Japan bombed the Americans at Pearl Harbor and attacked Southeast Asia. In early 1942 Japan invaded Indonesia, then known as the Dutch East Indies, and Rudy and his navy mates were captured and sent to brutal POW camps. He was sent to Japan to build enemy warships at Nagasaki and later witnessed the obliteration caused by the A-bomb. Rudy’s camp was liberated, he rejoined the navy and later migrated to Australia where he met and married a woman from Adelaide, built his own house in suburban Melbourne, became a teacher and raised nine children. In 1992 he went to Japan to find the prison guard who secretly gave him extra food during incarceration. He missed the guard by one year but found peace – and forgiveness.