The Housewife and The Captain
Sok’s Story
Before the Japanese occupation in 1942, my grandparents lived on Tegalsari 78, a home with open verandas and a large garden in a wealthy neighborhood of Soerabaja. My grandfather had been promoted to the head superintendent of Public Works and earned “a very good salary.” By 1941, after Pearl Harbor, the Dutch were anticipating attacks on Indonesia. Oom (Uncle) Os and Opa (Grandpa) Berg were called up for military service with the KNIL, and my father had been flying missions. Oma (Grandma) Sok volunteered as a telephone operator at the headquarters at the Air Defense Service (ADS) opposite their house.
During the first months of relative quiet in Soerabaja, no one anticipated or expected that in only two months the Dutch would capitulate to the Japanese. Once the Japanese were in Soerabaja, the ADS became the Poesat Keibodan (PK) (Vigilance Corps), which was an auxiliary police force run by the Japanese intended to help maintain order and security and watch out for spies and saboteurs. Staff of the original ADS was now working for the Japanese. Closely watched, the head commander of the ADS was arrested and accused of listening to news broadcasts from Allied radio stations. Other European and Dutch-Indonesian staff was arrested as well. Oma Sok was not arrested, most likely because of her friendly ties with the royal house of Soerakarta. This may also be the reason she was able to remain in their home during Japanese occupation. However, she became involved in communications with prisoners of war and was soon asked to join the resistance. She didn’t want to take the risk because her daughter, Maggie, and much younger brother, Bob, lived with her. After witnessing arrests, humiliations, and general bad treatment of internees, and seeing what the Kenpeitai (Japanese military police) had done to her husband, Sok was convinced to do something. Hence, she became a messenger for those working in the resistance.
Sok worked closely with a Captain Meelhuysen, who had gone undercover after his plane crashed on a mission. Meelhuysen used the pseudonym Tahir, and was a master of disguises. After meeting Sok Berg, he became her ‘gardener.’ The two clicked, a close friendship arose, and it appears that she was his most important confidant and advisor.
The Dutch, Indisch, Moluccans, Minahassers, Madurees and Chinese, within the internment camps or elsewhere, wanted to continue the fight. Some collected weapons and distributed news reports, and others provided civilians and ex-military personnel with weapons inside and outside the camps. The organization led by Meelhuysen under the code name Corsica was preparing for the Allied invasion that he expected would be soon. The organization obstructed strategic positions such as bridges, railroads, barracks, police stations, and logistics centers.
Meelhuysen also worked on building an espionage network because military and general information about the occupying forces were of great importance for the success of the Allied campaign. Members of Corsica improved the overall condition of those occupied by smuggling food, money, and clothes to internment camps, financially and materially supporting families of prisoners of war, and providing the groups of soldiers in the mountains around Malang with weapons and other goods in the hope of keeping the guerrilla struggle going. They gathered weapons that were left by soldiers and others who had ignored the Japanese command to surrender all weapons. These had been buried, hidden, or thrown into the kali (river).
The organization grew quickly, some say to 750. The organization’s ‘foot soldiers’ consisted mostly of Moluccans and Minahassian KNIL soldiers loyal to the Dutch Queen Juliana. Many women joined and were used mainly for courier services. Sok had the function of contact person and was involved in the recruitment of new members for the organization, and her house became a center of clandestine activities. Various resistance fighters also found a safe shelter in her home. Reluctantly, Bob and Maggie participated in subterfuge at the house, mainly by not telling anyone. The movement was comprehensive.
Despite disguises and due caution, their activities were known to many. Too many, as there were those who did not sympathize with the Dutch colonists that secretly worked against the Japanese. The Kenpeitai waited to go after the group when they were certain they had identified key players in the resistance and the repository of firearms. Meelhuysen, along with many others, were arrested, and eventually through torture, my grandmother’s name came up. She tried to save herself by declaring that she did not know the captain, instead admitting that she knew Tahir (one of his disguises) with whom she had a supposed amorous relationship. Months of painful interrogations followed.
The story I heard growing up was that she was questioned about her involvement in the resistance and despite the water boarding torture, she denied all accusations and did not give up anything that her interrogators did not already know.
When the message that Sok had been arrested reached Meelhuysen, who was not yet identified, he realized that the game was up. He gave himself up in hope of freeing Sok and the others. He and my grandmother were transported together by car from the Keibodan to prison and were able to exchange a few words. Meelhuysen told her he had taken cyanide tablets. The poison, however, had lost its effect because of water boarding done to him. On that same day the guards had found him dead; he had hanged himself from the bars of his cell.
My Aunt Maggie, who at the time lived in her parent’s house, wrote about her version of her mother’s experience:
At the outbreak of the war, Moes (mother) had offered her services as a telephone operator. Coincidentally the Luchtbeschermingsdienst (LBD) (Air Protection Service) station was down the street from us. Hence, Moes became a telephone operator at the main LBD station. After the capitulation she was retained, probably because she knew Indonesian languages very well—high and low Javanese, Malay, and also Madurees. Van Hutten brought her into contact with the underground work. He was called Paatje (Pops) van Hutten.
From the beginning I told her, “Stop that craziness, it will not go well.” And, unfortunately, I was right. I myself never participated. I have a sacred respect for authority. If something is not allowed, I will not do it. In addition, I am no hero. I had seen enough of the Japs to know that there was no playing around with them.
When the people from the underground came to gather, I locked myself up in my bedroom; hence, I did not know anything about what was going on in the underground. Unfortunately, I was right about my fears. All the men who were involved in this conspiracy were beheaded, except Captain Meelhuysen, who committed suicide. The interrogations took place in the third section at Boeboetan where Moes was temporarily locked up. I could bring her clean clothes once a week. The Sumatran commissioner, who was the head of the third section, let slip, “Miss Berg, that mother of yours is 'bani mati' (she dares to face death).”
On the birthday of Tenno Heika, the Japanese Emperor, my mother’s death sentence was converted into life because she was a woman. But before this verdict was pronounced, both the Ken Pei Tai (her spelling) and the Politieke Inlichting Dienst (PID) (Political Intelligence Service) tortured my mother severely. When she came out of prison after two and a half years, she was completely gray, all her beautiful teeth were loose, and she had two strange black-and-blue spots on her back that remained until her death. (They had hung her by the arms.) When she later mentally deteriorated, she had an explanation for that: “Those Japs have played soccer with my head.”
She confided to us how she prepared herself for these interrogations: “You have to look at them right in the eyes (which she learned as a child when summoned by her father), and then you say ferociously: ‘Kon asu, akoe matjan.’ (You are a dog, and I am a tiger.)”
Corsica continued for another three months under another leader, and, by early March 1943, about two hundred people were arrested. Six leaders were then sentenced to death and beheaded by the Japanese court in Batavia. The other men and women got off with long prison sentences.
From Chapter 19 - Prisoners and Spies in Mixed Blood