“Around three o’clock in the afternoon, the camp leader got onto a table and said: ‘Ladies, ladies, the war is over. Peace has come.’ Everyone just kept on doing what they were doing, because they thought she’d gone crazy. But slowly we began to realise that it was true. We wanted to go home right away, but were advised not to. Some wanted to fly the Dutch flag. That too was discouraged, because it was too dangerous. This was not how I had expected peace to be. It was a huge disappointment.”
Tineke Meelhuysen was near the fence of Camp Banjoebiroe when she heard the news about the liberation.

Be prepared
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the American dropped two devastating atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on 15 August. Two days later, Indonesian nationalists declared independence: the Republik Indonesia.

The joy of liberation lasted only a short while for the Dutch and Dutch East Indians. Indonesian youngsters (pemuda) attacked their former rulers with machetes, bamboo spears and the battle cry ‘Bersiap’ (Be prepared). They flew the red-and-white Indonesian flags and wrote anti-Dutch slogans on walls.

Protected by the Japanese and the British
There were bloody fights between the allied liberators and the nationalists. The British only protected a small area around the cities. The majority of the country was controlled by Indonesian nationalists. Most detainees therefore remained in the camps, where they were protected by the Japanese and the British.
Outside the protected areas, tens of thousands of Dutch East Indians were arrested by Indonesians and detained in Republican camps. Thousands of Dutch and Dutch East Indian people were killed during this ‘Bersiap’ period.