My father, M. N. was witness from the following drama.
He stood on the quay of the harbour from Tandjoen Priok, waiting to be transported to Japan.
( For that matter are two other ships from this transport, under which the Juno Maru, later on torpedoed. The third ship, where my father was on, was saved and headed for Sumatra. That is where he ( my father) survived the Pakan Baru ( Railway) camp during the war.

After continues insisting (from my side) and questions about his war experiences came this horrible scene as the information and answer to your question.
He told me that he saw pig baskets on board and in each basket were two POWs caught,
they were all been thrown into the sea.
The baskets (with the men) fired up on, in front of our eyes, until they were all drowned.

While my father saw this scene he lost all hope of surviving. He and the others thought that this terrible fate would overcome each of them while they stood there waiting.

My father died in 1980, but I think that I act in his spirit when I consign his story to you.

Meneer Batavia

Seen and heard in the mountains above Malang.
It was in the beginning of October 1942 when my father and I walked over the main road near the coffee and rubber plantation Sumber Sewu, laying on the ridge of the mount Semeru, when we heard trucks from a distance,coming our way. We quickly hided behind the coffee bushes laying higher up than the road, so (alas) we could see everything quite well.
We saw 5 open trucks, they were loaded with bamboo baskets with therein laying white men. We heard the men screaming and crying for water and for help in English and Dutch. The baskets were piled up on the open trucks, they were driving direction Banyuwangi.
I was 15 years old and so I could fully understand what was happening there in front of my eyes, but what touched me so much deeper were the voices of the desperate men begging for help and water.
I was hiding behind my father and I heard him softly saying; “Oh my God”.

We slowly walked home but over an other road, neither of us said a word. Their were no words for what we both had seen and heard
After the war I often wanted to talk with my father about that drama we had seen together. Had the Indonesians from Sumber Sewu seen those trucks? I shall never know.
On the 25th of March 1945 the Kempeitai killed my father.

Noni Malang

My name is R.P I was born in Indonesia from Dutch parents in 1931, so I was 11 years of age at that time and lived in Surabaya, Java, during the Japanese invasion. I remember the Japanese were particularly mad at the Australian troops, because they had fought the hardest, and were partly responsible for destroying the oil refineries before the Japanese could reach those. Also because the Japanese were frustrated since they could not overrun Australia as quickly as they had overrun Java. Hence they focused their hatred on the few brave Australian troops that tried to help us to stop the Japanese invasion.
It took a while before all Dutch people could be interned, so we could stay in our own houses for a time and as a small boy (schools being closed) we played in the streets. Our house was near the old Army barracks in the “Darmo” quarter of Surabaya, near the then called Darmo Boulevard. Every morning Dutch soldiers were transported from their temporary concentration camp (their own Army barracks, before they were transported all over Asia to forced labour camps) to the place were they had to work for the Japanese, mostly destroyed airfields and harbours. In the evening they came back, sitting on Army trucks and as soon as they reached the Dutch neighbourhood they started singing, which was allowed by the Japanese guards, sitting between them, bayonets on their rifles. This singing was meant for their wives, who came to catch a glimpse of their husbands, to let them know that they were not downhearted.

One day, however, around noon,, the hottest time of the day, a convoy of about four or five Army trucks passed the street where we were playing, loaded with so-called “pig baskets”, which were normally used to stack pigs during transport to the slaughterhouse or the market. Indonesia being a Moslem country, pigs were only for European and Chinese customers in the market. Moslems (Javanese) were not allowed to eat them and considered pigs (same as dogs) as “dirty animals”, from which contact should be avoided. In other words: any connection with pigs and dogs was shameful. To our astonishment the pig baskets were crammed with Australian soldiers, some of them still wearing parts of their uniform, a few even their special hat.They were tied in pairs, two to each other, facing each other, and stacked, like pigs, in the baskets, lying down. Some were in a terrible state, crying for water, I saw one of the Japanese guards opening his fly and urinate on them. I remember being terrified and I can never forget this picture in my mind. Later my father told me the trucks were driven through the town as a show to the Indonesians for utter humiliation of the white race, finally being dumped into the harbour to drown.

Right after the occupation, after the Japanese started their propaganda against anything European. In the cinemas pictures were shown of Dutch, English, Americans, Australians in a shameful position. Japanese Army officers were shown wiping their feet on the Dutch flag. Kneeling Dutch officers for Japanese officers, grovelling in the dirt for Japanese, Indonesians burning the Dutch flag, Indonesians being served at table by the Dutch, and so forth and so on. They made quite a nasty impression on a Dutch boy aged 11 years, so they must have had quite an impact on the Javanese population.

This “Pig Basket Atrocity” was part of that policy. I think maybe they chose Australian Prisoners of War for this inhuman cruelty because Australians were not part of the Dutch society and probably at that early time in the occupation they were not too sure of the public hate against the Dutch. Hence they did not strip the soldiers, as was their custom before execution, so they would be recognisable as Australians. Also, as they still focussed their propaganda on conquering Australia as well, as a token of their superiority and power, and being unconquerable.

Surabaya