敵国人の抑留 : ジャワのオランダ人

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This article examines the Japanese army's policies on the internment of enemy civilians in Asia during the Pacific War by focusing on the internment of Dutch civilians in Java. Nearly 100,000 Dutch civilians were living in Dutch-ruled East Indies when the Japanese army advanced into its territory in March 1942. In order to control this population, in November 1943 the Japanese army established three internment camps on the island of Java that had the largest concentration of Dutch civilian population (69,779). But these camps were understaffed and failed to secure adequate provisions including food and medicine. As a result, 6,353 internees died from malnutrition and other forms of disease. The Japanese army did not treat its military prisoners of war with due respect, and it paid even less attention to the condition of enemy civilians who consisted of women, children, and the elderiy. The supervision of civilian internees was sidestepped as an additional "burden" by the commanding officers of the Japanese army. Such an attitude hindered the efforts of the accountants and other officers at the camps to secure enough food for the internees. One exinternee commented, and probably without exaggeration, that "we would have all died of starvation had the war lasted two months longer than it did." Those who survived the internment suffered from terrible physical and psychological damages during the three and half years under the Japanese occupation, and particularly from the end of 1943 when they were forced to live in internment. These ex-internees were driven out from the now independent Indonesia after the war and returned "home" to the Netherlands by 1949. The Dutch government insisted on seeking justice for the maltreatment of its civilians by the Japanese army during the war. During the trials at the Dutch War Crime Tribunal which began in 1946 in Batavia (present Jakarta), the head officers of the internment camps and other personnel were prosecuted as war criminals. The Dutch government likewise demanded monetary reparation for its POWs and civilian internees when Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty in September 1951. As a result of the negotiations between the Japanese prime minister and the Dutch minister of foreign affairs Japan eventually agreed to pay $10,000,000 as reparation in December 1955. This sum however amounted to only $91 per person. Contesting this amount as unacceptable, the ex-internees filed a legal suit against the Japanese government in 1994. This article analyzes the Japanese army's internment polices in Java, which provide historical background to this ongoing trial. The sources for this article come from surviving documents on the internment camps that escaped burning by the Japanese army after the war and now housed at the Dutch National Archives in The Hague.
上智大学の論文
2001-12-27

著者

内海愛子
恵泉女学園大学人文学部

敵国人の抑留 : ジャワのオランダ人

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