"After we finished this long flight of 3,000 miles, we were sent to Topeka, Kansas. Topeka had an airfield, and it served as a staging area. There, we were equipped with all of our overseas gear. We still didn't know our final destination. They…

“It was our final training preparation in Pyote, Texas. We were to take a long flight across the States. What we did was board the plane around mid-afternoon. It would be a 3,000-mile flight, equivalent to the flight to Japan. And we still didn't…

“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…

"In WWII, my father’s two brothers, Henry and John B, also served in the Army. My mother’s three brothers served in the Army, Navy, and the Marines. They were Perry Hugh, Elmer, and Emmet Joe who was in Iwo Jima."

"My dad entered the war in President Roosevelt’s first peacetime military draft. The family appealed to the draft board because he was the breadwinner of a family he cared for since age ten, but he shipped out. Dan was gone for…

"I am not sure how Mother was recruited.  She may have seen a poster or heard an advertisement on the radio. The WAVES primarily used newspapers, radio, and personal contact to recruit. Mother wanted to be a flight attendant, but…