The Internment of Germans in Dutch East India and the Japanese Sinking of the Van Imhoff (original) (raw)
Germans have been involved with the Dutch colonial and trading activities in Southeast Asia for centuries. Even the well-known medical doctors and Japan-scholars Caspar Schamberger (1623-1706), Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716) and Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866), actually worked for the “Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie” (VOC), better known as Dutch East India Company at its famous trading post Deshima in Nagasaki harbor, thus creating some triangle relationship between Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan. In this paper I want to briefly introduce the post-WWI activities of Germans in Dutch East India itself, focusing on their working experiences as well as on the outpost of the Tokyo-based German East Asiatic Society in Batavia (1934-40). The main part of the paper will deal with the internment of all Germans in the Dutch colony after the occupation of the Netherlands by the Third Reich in late spring 1940. While women and children were subsequently allowed to leave the colony either for Shanghai or Japan, German men remained in camps until they were transferred to Ceylon in early 1942. As this was a few months after the Pearl Harbor attacks, one of the three transport ships, the Van Imhoff, was actually sunk during this transfer by a Japanese plane, killing about 480 Germans onboard. Most likely, this was the highest number of German casualties in the Pacific theatre of war at one stroke, ironically killed by the Third Reich’s axis partner Japan. After WWII, it became clear that the Dutch crew of the Van Imhoff saved itself without providing any support to the Germans in their custody, causing some uproar in the mid-1960s when the case was discussed in West-German media. The aim of this paper is to remind the audience of the cooperation of Germans with Dutch colonialism and the fact that Japan was more than once the third party involved, by providing the working space for some German VOC-employees from the 17th to the 19th century, by accepting hundreds of German refugees from the Dutch colony in 1941 and by tragically killing 480 Germany on a Dutch transport ship in February 1942.
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ISBN: 9789085068112. Boom Publishers (Koninklijke Boom Uitgevers), Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2011