Inevitable as this course of action was, it filled me with misgivings because we had already suffered severely in the past from the indiscretions of our fellow prisoners born and bred in the island, and their congenital incapacity for holding their tongues. Worse still, I knew that there were many informers and Japanese spies among the Eurasians who, incidentally, for many understandable reasons too long and complex to relate here, were among the most bitter and resentful men of mixed blood I have ever encountered on a wide beat around the world – a complete and surprising contrast to the warm, lovable, gay, intelligent, sensitive and responsive Cape-coloured people of my native South Africa.
I had already pin-pointed some twelve of these Eurasian spies and informers. Of the twelve, there were two who made no secret even of the fact that they longed for a Japanese victory and who would do anything in prison to cultivate the favour of our captors and injure the Dutch. So dangerous were they that I, who spoke their language, made it my duty to try and break through their cold vengeful dispositions, and to keep some sort of human contact with them, as a form of insurance against the harm they tried to do. It was slow, hard and often distasteful work, but in the end some glow of fellow-feeling seemed to be stirring in them. On several occasions they deliberately shared with me information which they were about to pass on to the Japanese, and so enabled me to take preventive measures against the kind of reaction most likely from the latter.
So notorious and hated did the two become among the Dutch prisoners and their Ambonese and Menadonese soldiers in prison that, within a few days of our liberation, a Dutch officer came to my headquarters and confided to me that they had marched the two men out into the night and without trial of any kind shot them in the back. With such men about it was obvious how grave a security risk I would run in taking the Dutch command into my confidence and getting them to select the men we needed for our purpose.
I was certain that among the thousands of men in the Dutch part of our prison there were many persons as brave, reliable and true as any in our part of the camp, but the problem was how to find them; and once found, to get them to keep their own counsel. In this predicament I decided to consult my closest friend among the Dutch. I had many Dutch friends, because I was drawn to them not only for personal and historical reasons and spoke their language, but also because from the beginning Nichols had asked me to make the task of maintaining the closest liaison with them a special responsibility. Much of this work of course had to be done through the senior Dutch officers, and though there were many among them whom I respected, and with whom I had close personal bonds, the friendships that meant most to me were among the privates, junior officers and younger doctors under their command.
Indeed the person who meant most to me personally was a young Dutch lieutenant who the Japanese had insisted should be the principal interpreter in all our dealings with them. His name was Jongejans. He spoke fluent Japanese and, what was far more important, understood the Japanese better than most because his knowledge of them and their language was not a product of a mere cerebral study or academic curiosity but came out of a natural love of the Far East and its peoples. I think much of this was due to the fact that his own father had been a distinguished and imaginative Dutch administrator in Atjeh, a far northern province of Sumatra, the most difficult corner of the vast Dutch Empire, an area inhabited by a brave, fanatical and turbulent people, in constant revolt almost until the outbreak of war. Jongejans seemed to me to have inherited not only all his father’s intelligence and interests but all his courage. He looked not unlike the young Van Gogh, had the same red hair, complexion and blue eyes charged with a sense of personal mission; though unlike Van Gogh his expression had a rounded proportion that betokened an unfailing sense of humour. Happily all his exceptional qualities were recognized after the war and he rose to, and still works in, the highest echelons of the Dutch Diplomatic Service. One of his last posts was that of ambassador to Peking, where he once more proved his courage and independence by refusing to give way to Red Guard pressures although confined to his embassy and cut off from the world for close on a year.
Like Nichols, he was constantly in touch with the Japanese command and always on hand as a convenient scapegoat for anything that went wrong; but neither his courage nor his sense of humour ever deserted him, so much so that he was one of the few Dutch officers in our prison to be honoured with a nickname by the British and Australian privates, erks and matelots. They called him ‘Zimmerzans’ and to this day I encounter all over the world men who were in prison with me and ask me for news of ‘Zimmerzans’.
I soon discovered that he and I saw the Japanese very much in the same light, and that in the difficult task of interpreting their actions and trying to anticipate the future he was the one man in prison whom I could consult with the certainty that nothing destructive would come out of the process and that my own thinking would invariably be the clearer for it.
I could not share my own secret burdens with him, because his own situation was only too vulnerable and his responsibilities heavy enough. For he was the strained link between the Japanese, who in the manner of the Oriental monarch who once cut off the head of the messenger who brought him bad news, always had an impulse to punish him for anything disagreeable which he had to impart, and the thousands of starving prisoners who, magnificent as they were, could not at times when things went wrong from their point of view resist a tendency to blame the system of our own command in which Jongejans played so vital a part.
He and I had already concluded that the end of the war was approaching fast. I knew too that, like me, he had no certainty as to the way it would end for us, although I deliberately abstained from going deeply into the matter. It was quite natural therefore for me to say to him that, in the confusion which we had to expect at the end, it would be as well to plan to have some men who could escape, in order to establish the earliest possible contact with the invading forces. I told him I believed that these messengers would have to be either indigenous persons or Eurasians. I was reassured that he not only welcomed the plan warmly but agreed that only Eurasians or indigenous men could carry out such a task with any prospect of success. For him too the most difficult aspect of the matter was how to pick four absolutely reliable men of this kind. He suggested that I should consult, not the Dutch Commanding Officer, but a Dutch colonel, a military engineer or sapper as we would have called him in the British army.
I was reassured by the fact that the officer Jongejans suggested I should consult was the person I had already provisionally in mind. He had come to us from another camp in the reconcentration of prisoners earlier in the year. I had not known him nearly as long as the senior Dutch officer in command, a warm, lovable person whom I liked as much as I feared his indiscretion, but I had taken to this Dutch sapper immediately and seen him regularly.
With this officer’s help we selected one Menadonese, one Ambonese and two Dutch Eurasians, so dark that they could have passed for Javanese. I left him to instruct them in their mission on a warning from me, which I was determined to delay as long as was safe because of the security risk I have mentioned. I did not see the men myself and I did not tell the sapper colonel any more. I just helped him to accumulate a supply of civilian clothes and money for them. I left it entirely to the colonel to establish and maintain a special relationship with the chosen men from then on.
I cannot describe how much better I felt once the plan was complete, or how much the fact that we had some means of fighting back if necessary raised my spirits. I then had some of the best days and nights I can remember in prison until the last ten days of July 1945, when three things happened in quick succession. They showed that the final climax was very near, and that some of the vital aids on which I depended for a forewarning of Japanese reactions might fail me when most needed.