When World War II breaks out in Europe and the Nazis occupy their homeland, two Dutch families living in South Africa move to the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) to contribute to the defence of the colony. But two years later, they are caught up in the Pacific war, when the Japanese occupy Java, and the two men become prisoners of war. The story follows the two women, a child and a grandmother through almost four years of increasingly hellish internment in Bandoeng and Batavia. The young women have no idea of the fate of their husbands. Miraculously, both families survive and are reunited, returning to South Africa as refugeesÑonly to find that their bitter experience on Java is to give them new insight into the developments in that country. Tjideng Reunion is told against the backdrop of the dramatic political and military events that unfolded around the two families and changed the course of their lives. For more information about the book and the discussion it has created among former interees, refer to www.BoudewynvanOort.com. The website also includes additional graphic and historical information.

1. MAY 10, 1940 When my father, Boudewyn A. J. van Oort, stepped out of the Chevrolet on Friday night, my mother, Wilhelmina, immediately knew something serious was amiss: he was earlier than usual. He strode up the gravel path to the veranda steps waving a newspaper in an agitated fashion; he was almost unable to express himself coherently. “Wil, Wil, call Juf—did you not hear the news? Holland has been attacked by the moffen,” he shouted. As he stumbled up the steps of our veranda, he unfolded the special late edition of the Rand Daily Mail, the paper he usually bought on his way from work in Roodepoort. Its headline screamed, “HOLLAND AND BELGIUM, NAZIS’ NEW VICTIMS—SUDDEN INVASION.” An entire page was devoted to the shocking news and the reactions from various world capitals. My mother had only shortly before driven home to Lombardy East from an afternoon’s game of tennis and had not bothered to turn the radio on. She hurried to the back of the house to call Juf, and returned to my father saying in an overwrought voice, “We must contact my family—must send a telegram.” Just then Juf appeared. She was an old-fashioned soul who preferred not to listen to the radio at all and in any case understood no English and only the little Afrikaans that she could relate to Dutch. Besides, we had to be careful with our electricity consumption: the batteries did not have unlimited capacity. When Juf heard the awful news she shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, oh, oh,” she wailed. “It can’t be true. How could the Germans have done that to us?” “We’d better go right away into town before the post office closes!” my father urged. “Let’s see, Wil, we need to send one to Zwolle, and I must get one to Jurrema, and perhaps we should also send one to Bets.” After a search for the address book, my parents had a short discussion on what should be said in the telegram to Jurrema, the accountant who managed Juf’s pension; my father wondered whether there was time to safeguard those investments. “What can we say to your parents,” he thought out loud. “Let’s think about that on the way to town.” They hurried out to the car and left in a cloud of dust, as my father raced to cover the five-mile trip to Germiston before closing time. When they returned an hour and a half later they could reassure Juf that they had succeeded, but only just, because of the huge lineup at the telegram counter. My father was spluttering about “uncooperative post office workers, who refused to stay on after six.” “There was a scene when some who had come after us were unable to get their telegram off,” he recounted to Juf. “I authorized Jurrema to do whatever he thought best for the family.” As if struck by a bolt of lightning, our peaceful life on the Transvaal veld had been shattered by events over five thousand miles to the north. That’s how our adventure began, a story I heard over and over again, years later, when my father and mother reflected on our troubled past.

Boudewyn van Oort was born in South Africa, and after the war was educated in South Africa and Canada (Carleton University, Geology). A Rhodes Scholar, he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, subsequently pursuing an engineering career in the oil and gas industry. Now retired, he lives in Victoria with his wife and daughter. “Boudewyn van Oort’s story offers a remarkably detailed evocation of war’s effect on an innocent child and his indomitable parents. This is a tale of daily life at its most unflinching and humane, a vivid and moving memoir that recovers a lost childhood and manages to give meaning to the distortions of war.” —John Allemang