Indische Tafel, jongens van de Japanse Kampen

A group of men in their nineties gather weekly for an Indonesian lunch. They look back on their Indonesian childhood, something they’ve never spoken about. Several of them were imprisoned in Japanese internment camps in Indonesia during World War II, and they share their memories and their parents’ diary entries. After the stories of women in Japanese camps in Als ik mijn ogen sluit, the men’s stories became unavoidable for director Pieter van Huystee.

Using never-before-seen footage from Japanese propaganda films, the men return to their youth in the Japanese camps during the Second World War. Born in colonial Dutch East Indies before the war, they reflect on the Japanese occupation, their lives in the camps, the liberation brought by the atomic bomb, and the struggle of young Indonesian freedom fighters.

They have told their children very little. ‘Remarkable,’ one of them says, ‘I’ve now told you more than I’ve ever told my own son.’ What stands out in their stories is that the men rarely speak about what the Japanese did to them. With diaries as a recurring thread, they talk about missing their fathers and how those fathers were forced into labour, for example on the Burma Railway. They speak about hunger, about how their mothers were beaten, and how bodies were carried out of the camp. De Indische tafel is the twin brother of Als ik mijn ogen sluit (2024), and just as impressive.