Chapter 8: The war comes to Celebes

During the weeks of anxiety before the invasion came, I had been ordered by the Dutch military authorities to oversee the health of the wives and children of the indigenous military. We were also advised to keep tins of medical supplies ready so that we could all leave at a moment’s notice. A double-decker bus was kept in readiness, day and night and a watch was also kept by the telephone.

When the enemy finally landed in central Celebes at the port of Donggala they met with little resistance. All the indigenous soldiers refused to fight under the Dutch, so the military had to surrender. Dutch soldiers and civilians were taken prisoner and some taken to concentration camps away from the island. Previous to this we had sheltered families from other small islands, but now we had orders to surrender everything belonging to the Dutch; for example, military equipment that had been brought to the colony for safety. The two English officer families were taken into custody and finally to a camp in Makassar. It was a bitter day for Brigadier and Mrs Woodward to be taken away on the 25^th anniversary of their coming to central Celebes. As the lorry left the house our valiant Brigadier let out a tremendous shout of agony and the whole village (the people had come to wish him an affectionate farewell) wept for him.

Now there was no reason why our children should not return home, so my husband set off one morning to bring them back. What a welcome he received! They, of course, had no means of knowing he was on his way. Ann would not leave his side until they all set off for Kalawara. Francis and Ann took turns on the pony while their Daddy and Ngatina walked all the way. What a re-union that was! We were not left in peace for long. One morning we heard cars rushing along the road, and rough voices shouting orders. The soldiers stopped first at the Divisional Headquarters, where the Juűtilianens were living and then came to our house. It was midday, and we were all ordered to stand out in the road in the blazing sun, though the children had fled into the garden. Questions were hurled at us in ‘pigeon’ Malay, as to where we were born, when we had come to Celebes, and what was our work etc. – the same questions again and again. I shall always be thankful that in answer to the question of Nationality, I answered Danish – my husband’s nationality. (A friend who was married to a Norwegian said she was British at such an interrogation, and was separated from her husband for the duration of the war and sent to a camp.) We were left standing in the sun when Niels was suddenly called to the office for fresh questioning, in regard to an old pistol that was hanging on the wall. This had been there since the colony had sheltered boy criminals from Java, and my husband had never given it a thought. The interrogators would not believe him and slapped his face and shouted at him. Imagine how I felt standing in the road and hearing all this! He was then marched off to the school where the pupils were assembled in the playground and the teacher told to hoist the Japanese flag. This had already taken place in the morning but then the officers said it was the wrong size, although it had been measured, so there was more shouting. I thought it would never end. However, that was the last of the ordeal and we were permitted to return to the house. After some consultation, permission was given for us to carry on our usual work. The men, however, would have to wear armbands to show the enemy Commandant had given them authority to go as far as Palu and no further. Everyone had to alight from bicycles (there were no cars now) five metres before the Post, make a low bow – then five metres beyond they were allowed to continue their journey. We had many a laugh at this behaviour, and Niels would mimic the soldiers to the delight of the children. Our usual life carried on for a while and all the time I was slowly gathering together all the things necessary for our departure – we were sure things would not remain calm for long. We could no longer buy anything in Palu – there were no ships entering the harbour. No flour, sugar, paraffin oil, nor any tinned foods, so we knew things were not going too well with the war. Then, one day, the Japanese came again to tell us that we would have to leave our home and go to Donggala. We were not allowed to take anything away that belonged to the Salvation Army, not even the children’s beds or medicines. Well, it was not unexpected, and we had time to get our things together. One of the military wives had left behind a very large mattress, complete with mosquito net, and this I had already bundled up with the children’s bedding. I had no crockery of my own (all my personal china had been sold as we had not been paid for a year). The lack of cooking utensils was even more worrying, but we trusted in the Lord to help us as He had so often done in the past.

The day was fixed for our departure. Niels had made a complete inventory of all colony property and handed it over the Commandant. One after another the rooms of our bungalow were locked and the keys handed over. It was evening; the children were already in the ox wagon, the boxes and bedding were loaded on together with all the stores I could find. All our dear folks crowded round – many had brought gifts of rice, corn, and chickens and even seed. This last came in very useful later on. We had prayers together before the wagon moved off. Ann’s little friend, Marie, was quite overcome, and ran after us all along the village road, calling Ann’s name. It was a dismal departure.

We were able to stop for a day in Palu. Before we left, Niels knocked on the door of the wholesaler whose customer we had been, and praise be! he quickly gave my husband all the cooking utensils on my list without the soldiers’ knowledge. The next morning we set off for Donggala where we lodged in a filthy native prison. At first there was no guard, so Mrs Juűtilianen and I set off to find a shop where we could buy a broom of some kind to sweep the walls and floors. Before night fell we had a somewhat cleaner place to set down our mattresses. I remembered a small cloth I had in a case, and this I took out and put on a box for a table. We had cooked rice and vegetables on the primitive charcoal fireplace and soon we had the children ready for bed; but where would they wash? The river was not far away, so there we went, carrying our dirty clothes. The children played while we washed the clothes, and then they had their bathe in the river, which was not clean by any means. Ugh! How we loathed it all, and I began to grumble, but Mrs Juűtilianen suddenly stood still and remarked “Remember, the Lord Jesus suffered far more than this for our sins”. I looked at the crowd, jeering from the bridge at the white ladies having to endure such indignities, and thought of the jeering mobs at our Lord’s Crucifixion, and I was silent…Her words helped me through many a dark moment in the next two years. We only had to stay in that place a few days and were then taken to Ganti, just 15km south of Donggala. Here our three families had to stay in a large bamboo house. This we divided into three compartments, and the next few weeks passed quite peacefully. I believe it was the intention of the Japanese to send us to North Celebes, but the Straits of Borneo had been mined by the Allies, and no ships were allowed out of the harbour. Our destination changed to Watatu, another 70 km away. One afternoon we set off in a small outrigger^[1] boat with all our luggage. When night fell there was a beautiful moon and the children enjoyed such a novel journey as we moved along slowly, hugging the coast. We grown-ups were a little more apprehensive, but nothing untoward happened and we arrived in the morning to find a crowd awaiting us. They were full of curiosity, for white people were almost unknown in those parts. The Japanese were also there and spoke to us quite roughly as usual, but we were getting used to them by now. Our luggage could all fit onto a bullock wagon, but we ourselves had to walk the 5 km over marshy, uneven ground. This wasn’t easy after a sleepless night, but we reached the little village soon after noon.

The village Head seemed quite friendly. (We learned afterwards that he had been a Salvation Army schoolteacher, and he was a great help in many ways, but the Japanese never knew this!) He introduced us to a Buganese who was willing to rent his bamboo bungalow for a reasonable sum, so we moved into yet another local house. Once again our beds were made up on the floor, but we had some chairs to sit on and there was a kitchen we could use. The other two families had been blown off course, and had been without food and water all day. They were very tired and sunburnt when they arrived at Watatu, but with our help, Mrs Frederiksen was soon busy with their first meal of the day. Our friendly village Head found small bungalows for them and soon after dark we were all settled in. The Japanese told the men to be ready at six o’clock the next morning, when they would show them the ground they could cultivate for our food. At that early hour two Japanese soldiers on horseback rode up, yelling to the men to follow them on foot through the village, across a river, onto a wide expanse of sparse trees and undergrowth. They were given no tools, only a native ‘parang’ with which the people usually worked the ground as well as built their houses, or rather huts. The three boys who had come with the Frederiksens were, of course, used to this implement and kind of work. They at once started to work to make a clearing, and my husband joined in. He also planted some vegetable seed. Our life at Watatu had begun.

Disaster soon struck, however. My husband fell very ill. I guessed it was malaria and wanted to dose him from my limited supply of Quinine pills, but he would not take them as he said the children might need them (the Japanese had taken my reserve of pills before we left the colony and I was only able to save a few in my bag). Watatu was notorious for malaria – we learnt that 75% of the children born there died of the disease before they were one year old! My husband got much worse until he did not know what I was giving him. So I tried a powerful drug (Pyrmidon) to bring down the fever. It worked! On my birthday, 5^th August, for the first time the temperature was a little lower. A few days before this, I had awakened in the night to feel my husband’s pulse, and there was nothing. In my anguish I knelt and cried out to the Lord to spare him, for we could not go on without him. You can imagine what it meant to me that morning when his temperature began to fall. My friends came along, and we rejoiced together that he was a little better.

All this time, the children were marvellous in helping me. They would go down to our grounds to look for vegetables (seeds came up very quickly in that temperature) and Ann cooked the rice while Francis went out to the forest looking for wood. The whole time Niels was ill, I had dysentery and ended up with kidney trouble. It was a long time before Niels was really strong again. By this time I had used up all my store of pills – but the children never caught malaria.

At last my husband was strong enough to begin building our hut, and not long after we all moved in and life became more pleasant. I resumed lessons with the children, and we all helped in the vegetable garden when possible. The greatest enemies there were wild pigs and monkeys. Around the maize patch my husband made a fence of pointed bamboo sticks, in three rows of different sizes, but even this could not keep them out. They would dig deep enough to get their snouts in. Then when the maize was ripening, the monkeys would sit on the tree branches waiting for a moment when we had all going in to eat for instance, then they would make a great rush for all the cobs they could pick and carry off. It was a very amusing sight, if only it wasn’t so disastrous, for we depended on the maize for our food. The rice was long ago finished. It was no better with the sweet potato which the pigs enjoyed digging out. So it was, that every night when the maize was ripening, my husband slept on a bamboo platform in the middle of the field. He had one eye open of course!

The river running along the edge of our land gave great pleasure to the five children (three Juűtilianens, and our two) and they all learned to swim there. They would splash about every afternoon before they each went about their small tasks. Ann helped me in the house or ‘gardened’ with her Daddy. Francis went looking for wood dry enough to burn in my primitive cooking stove – he kept the rack above the fireplace always filled with suitable wood. He would watch where the men were burning a plot of ground, ready for planting. He knew that the wood left burning was good as charcoal and the best for my purposes. He would take a piece of rope, bind the wood together, and drag it along. Of course it was very dirty. One day I was amazed to see his pale, quite naked body, as he dragged the wood along after him – his shirt and shorts being carried on his shoulders. I asked him why on earth he had taken off his clothes? “To save you work,” he said. “They would have got so dirty.” By that time we had no soap and could only get some kind of lather for the clothes by soaking leaves of the Papaya tree (paw-paw) in water over night. This was a daily chore, as all our clothes had to be washed every day. Our white clothes were gradually being exchanged for rice and the children’s clothes had to be made from our ‘cut-downs’; Niel’s shirts were more darns and patches than the original material. It was a daily task for me to see that, at least, he went to work in a neat shirt!

We started at 6 o’clock every morning with a song, bible reading, (mostly from the Psalms, for we felt very akin to David when he was fleeing from Saul) and a prayer. Then we had coffee, made from soya beans roasted and ground, or rather pounded, to powder. It wasn’t bad, when mixed with molasses, which the children begged from the men in the forest when they were boiling the thick syrup obtained from the sugar palm. If any rice had been left from the night before we ate that. And so to work. We were fortunate to have sago palms in the vicinity, and the villagers would sell it to us very cheaply. When we had a supply, breakfast was assured for a few days. How we enjoyed it, mixed first with a little salt, grated coconut and brown ‘sugar’ – it was really delicious!

All this time the children were progressing well at our ‘school’. They could read and write, were good at arithmetic and dictation, and I began to feel that, after all, they were not missing formal education as much as I thought they would have done. Niels helped in the evening with talking about Geography and History. We were not allowed to use any other language but Malay in our lessons, but Niels thought of a way to begin to teach them Danish: by copy writing. I still had books from the correspondence course and Niels would write one line (in Danish) and the children would copy this three times. Then they would repeat the words after him. The three girls also had sewing classes with Mrs Frederiksen which they enjoyed very much. Then, Captain Kärcher taught them music on my little fold-up organ.

Sundays we kept as rest days. We dressed the children in their ‘best’ clothes before they went into Sunday school. We had brought with us large bible pictures, and that helped immensely with the stories. Underneath our house (built on stilts) many local children would gather to hear the stories and enjoy the singing. After their little service, we grown-ups would also have our meeting, and it proved a great blessing to us all as we took it in turn to lead. One morning, we had just finished when a Japanese soldier suddenly appeared in the doorway of the hut and asked if he might join us. We were happy to invite him in, and asked if there was any particular hymn he would like us to sing. After a pause, he began to hum the tune of ‘What a Friend we have in Jesus’ and we all quietly joined in. What a moment that was! Singing together were two Finnish officers, three Danish, a German and an Englishwoman, with our Japanese friend. The Lord was drawing us near to Himself – the war and all else was forgotten.

A somewhat similar occasion, I remember, happened one Christmas. We had celebrated Christmas Day together, and the others had all gone home. Just as we were settling down for the night, we heard shouting from across the river. Not long after, a Japanese officer burst in to say he had brought some beer for us with which to celebrate Christmas. My husband went out to him, and explained it was past midnight, and anyway, we didn’t drink – but he was welcome to stay for a while. The young man got very drunk and thankfully sank on to the bamboo chair. There was silence for a time, then he began to tell his story. He had had to leave University to enlist, and had not been home for three years, and felt so lonely on Christmas night. He had been to a Christian school as a boy, and was sick to death of the war. Niels got him some ‘coffee’ and cookies (made from sugar and coconut) and he stayed an hour or more. Before he left, he asked if we needed any medicine, so we were able to get some much needed quinine pills.

Not long after, my husband began to have trouble with his teeth, and the pain was so bad that, when he heard from our friendly village Head that a Japanese dentist had come to Dunggala, he asked for permission to go there. This was granted, and he set off on the long two-day walk. He slept on the beach at night, and arrived the next evening barefoot, clothed in shorts and a T-shirt, carrying his attaché case. Of course, the Japanese did not believe he had only come to have his tooth out; they thought he was a spy. We heard later, that the Allies had been dropping bombs over Donggala – no wonder they were suspicious! That night he had to sleep on the cold cement floor of the Police Station. The whole of the next day was spent in interrogation. All his papers and the last of his guilders were confiscated. He told me afterwards that his chief anxiety was that the Japanese would come and take us prisoners. Eventually, when no valid reason could be found for detaining him, they let him go. They also gave him safe conduct papers for the journey home. The tooth pain had miraculously vanished in the night, so it was with a lightened heart he went on his way. As it was getting dark, he came to a village where he ventured to ask shelter for the night. He was lucky - not only did he get a bed, but the friendly villagers also gave him a good meal. On the last lap of the journey he managed to pick some mangoes, a fruit that we all loved and had not seen for a long time. What a welcome he got from his anxious family! Once again, our reliance on the promises of our heavenly Father to protect us was justified and our hope of future deliverance strengthened. Every time the Japanese spoke with us they assured us that the war would drag on for years, and the children would be grown up before we left the jungle. Nevertheless, we believed that at the end of two years we should be on our way back to Kalawara; and so it proved.

A week or two after this, Niels was taken ill while he was keeping watch on his ‘platform’ in the vegetable garden. He began to shake all over, so much so, that he felt the whole structure would fall to pieces (he told me this much later, so I know it was quite true). While lying there he called on the Lord to make him better, saying he could not endure another bad attack of malaria. While he was praying, the shaking ceased. He was soon thanking God for His answer to prayer, and he realised, more than ever, our dependence on God in all circumstances.

[1] Small native fishing boat with sails and outriggers to keep boats upright