“To meet Anke was to remember her. Vivacious in youth, determined and resolute in her final years, she was a force of nature."Editor's Note:This quote comes from Anna Boon's obituary in the Charlotte Observer July 26-27, 2019.

“(My father) moved to Denmark. He was an engineer. My dad worked for Curtiss Wright for a government contract near Clearfield, Pennsylvania. (Their neighborhood) was just sidewalks…(a) Beaver Cleaver kind of neighborhood. We knew about (the POW…

“They were supposed to still stay in (the) contained area because of the revolutionary Indonesians. They survived 41 months of starving and then you faced the other danger of perhaps as your truck was going down to the ships, the rescue ships, that…

“(We) were put in a sectioned off part of town with big houses called Merdekakamp. We could prepare our own food on charcoal fires. We slept on the floor…(which was) not bad because we had plenty of room. One day an airplane dropped pamphlets over…

“When we heard that we were free, the girls (Tonneke and Monica) and I went to a kind of motel in Ambarawa. I made sure that we had lots of fruit, tomatoes and liver. Tonneke was my nurse when malaria got to me. She wrapped me up, gave me things to…

“Their mother died and so, when these children (Monica and Tonneke) were left motherless then someone fostered them, and they were sort of offered to my mother and my grandmother…So my grandmother said ‘well sure we’ll take them’ because that means…

“I had different duties as (a) ‘healthy’ prisoner. I had the kindergarten in the morning while the mothers were working in the fields. If the children were tired from sitting, we would make a walk, looking for pretty stones, count the leaves on the…

“We spent our first few weeks in Banjoe Biroe in Block C. Banjo Biroe was a real prison. My mother and I slept on a little Persian carpet which kept us free from “bugs,” except when the bugs dropped from the ceiling. We had smugglers in our camp-I…

“The Japanese did invade Indonesia in 1942. They didn’t really know what to expect, but what they did see were the Japanese soldiers appearing on trucks and then all this…shouting and ordering people around and they would find the very nicest homes…

“She had a younger brother five years younger and his name was Hans. They were going back and forth between Indonesia and the Netherlands, she and her brother, because my grandmother and grandfather felt they needed what they called 'a proper…