Ondaatje-kamp

prisoners of war

3.000

In March 1942, naval and other military personnel from Soerabaja and elsewhere in eastern Java were interned in barracks encircled by barbed wire on Ondaatjeweg. At the beginning of May an unknown number of prisoners of war were set free. From mid-May, Moluccan, Menadonese and other native KNIL military personnel were interned in part of the encampment. Several hundred of them, believed to have come from Bandoeng at the beginning of July, broke out of the camp on July 4th. They were captured and re-interned shortly thereafter. In reaction to a weapons-smuggling affair at the end of July, approximately 300 Moluccan and other native prisoners of war were transferred to a camp in Batavia. The “European” prisoners of war were taken in the autumn of 1942 to the 10th Battalion in Batavia and the Jaarmarkt Camp in Soerabaja. At the end of 1942 and in the beginning of 1943 a large number of British-Indies prisoners of war arrived at the camp. In May 1943, the majority of the prisoners of war left as heihos on transports to, among other destinations, the Palau Islands, where a great many of them perished. The last group of heihos were sent in October via Tandjoeng Perak to Bougainville.

Matsuzaki Minoru; Kurashima Hideichi

Mori; Nakanishi; Omi; Okada Eigaku; Taguchi

Japanese military personnel, Koreans

ltz. Best

• Inventory 400, Inv.nr. 454
• Inventory 400, Inv.nr. 438
• Dairy 13
• Dairy 306