april 2002
CHILDHOOD INTERRUPTED BY A WAR - by L.D.Pritchard
(Eduard Kerkhoven in the The Expositor – Brant County – Ont./Canada - 11 november 1999)
Eduard Kerkhoven recalled what has happened in the early days and later in the period of his imprisonment and the
cruelty of the Japanese soldiers.
His age was then 5½ years and his brother 7, when playing in the living room on an early Sunday morning in 1942, while
their parents slept, two Japanese high officials came to their house and at gunpoint first demanded the watch of his
father and then were given one hour’s notice to leave the home.
This frightening event marked the turning point that irrevocably altered Eduard Kerkhoven’s life.
As has happened to so many families the Kerkhovens moved from one camp to another, his fourth camp was Ambarawa. He
estimated that four people died each day in this camp, taken away by a cart pulled by a water buffalo; this sight filled
him with fear.
Although Kerkhoven believes that the Japanese guards had “a soft spot” for the children, they used the little boys to
steal food from the local natives. The Japanese were spreading propaganda among the natives, telling them white people
were their enemy. Having white boys steal from them served to propagate that idea.
Kerkhoven remembered with sadness the treatment of women by the Japanese. “Have you ever heard of ‘comfort women’?” he
asked. ”That’s how they were treated. That’s why I’m so fanatic about this point. As a kid you will never forget the
screaming.”
He described how the Japanese would “put you in a little three-by-three steel shack, close the door and let the sun
shine on you. You know what the sun does on a car? In the tropics the sun is right above you. So they’d put somebody in
there and let the person die.”
Another favourite was to bind a woman to a chair, put a funnel in her mouth and pour water in the funnel until she
drowned. They would force the other prisoners to watch.
One day five Dutch men, with Japanese soldiers behind them, hitting them with a whip, had to run through the women camp.
This was just intended to say to the women ‘Don’t think too much of your men’. Intimidation once more.
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Eduard Kerkhoven is a survivor of war, quietly carrying the emotional burden of those early years as a Japanese
prisoner.
Frits C.Holthuis
Support Group
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