It’s hard to imagine what it feels like at the beginning of a war. On the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies in January 1942, I imagine there was a tense mix of hope that the danger might pass them by and the growing fear that it wouldn’t.

My grandfather (Opa), Johannes H.T. Gerardu, likely didn’t have the luxury of such feelings. As a sergeant in the KNIL (Royal Netherlands East Indies Army), he had a front-row seat to the brewing storm. In December 1941, the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia was well underway. The Dutch, sensing the threat to their resource-rich colony, declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. However, the Japanese needed no such declaration to act. They had their eyes set on the Indies’ rubber and oil, and by January 11, 1942, they officially declared war on the Dutch.

Opa was stationed with the 5e Vliegtuggroep (5th air group) at Semplak, a hastily assembled airbase in Buitenzorg (now Bogor). The family lived off-base in a modest house. See my last post, A Mad Scramble to Prepare for the Japanese, to get a feel for where they lived. The map below is an aerial photo of the Palais du Gouverneur-General in Buitenzorg near their home. My dad was 13 years old and attending school at Notaris de Graaf-Stichting, a private secondary school. Life carried on as normally as possible—at least outwardly. But cracks in that normalcy began to show.