Charles Gesner van der Voort (1916-1991) worked in Shanghai for Holland-China Trading Company, from 1939. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941, the Japanese entered the International Concession of Shanghai. Life changed considerably for nationals of countries which the Japanese considered enemies. Radios, cameras, cars had to be handed in. It became forbidden to visit cinemas. People had to wear armbands to be easier to recognise. A letter indicated the country: A=American, B=British, N=Netherlands, X=other nationalities.
In March 1943, Charles Gesner van der Voort was interned in Chapei (now: Zhabei) Civil Assembly Centre, along with about a hundred other Dutch nationals.
15 August 1945, the internment camp was liberated. The final months, especially knowing that the war in the Netherlands had ended in May 1945 and when the food rations had reduced considerably, had lasted very long for the people interned.
Several people who were interned in Chapei shared their drawings and stories with me.
This photo is from Bob Hekking's (1923-2003) memoirs, kindly shared with me by his daughter:
"When I had fully recovered from my appendectomy there was a need for an extra pair of hands in the kitchen serving room; this was where vegetables were cut up or otherwise prepared to go into the cauldrons or "kongs" as they were called.
Prior to this, however, vegetables in particular as well as fish, had to be cleaned and trimmed in the scullery. This scullery duty applied to everybody, no matter what other work or duties one had to fulfill, and it meant that when your day came you reported to the scullery at 6:00 a.m. for work. After cleaning and preparing the raw food it was taken to the kitchen for further handling and preparation. The entire kitchen staff, after cooking the breakfast cereal and cleaning up afterwards, would pitch in and work on the raw food like chopping up vegetables for the usual "stew". The kitchen staff had two crews and worked their shifts every other day.
After a few months, I was promoted to be a rice cook. Since there were over a thousand people in camp by this time, we were issued somewhat more than 250 pounds of rice per day. This brown, unpolished rice was also full of dirt, particles
of soil and black rice bugs (whatever they were). The rice had to be washed over and over again before it could be dumped into two cauldrons with boiling water, 125 pounds in each "kong". As soon as the rice went into the boiling water, our stoker, a Scotsman named Stevenson, would come by and stir up the coal fires to their highest heating capacity and flame to bring the water back to a boil as soon as possible. When that point was reached and the rice gently stirred a few times, a large wooden lid covered the top of the kong and Stevenson would cover the fire below with a layer of coal and the rice would be allowed to simmer on low flame for an hour and a half, making sure that the lowest part of the rice would not scorch with too much heat. The perfect rice would have a thin, caramel colored crust and nice, fluffy rice, in the rest of the container. Only once in all those years in camp and thousands of pounds of rice, did we fail, my father and I, when right after we poured the rice into the kongs, and Stevenson stoked up his fires, the whole pile of flaming coals disintegrated and fell in the ash pits below. The reason was bad, dirty, ground up coal which fell apart when Stevenson tried to bring his fires to maximum heat at the crucial point. The rice that resulted was a mixture of raw rice kernels and soggy paste. One thousand people went hungry that day, until we were able to cook up another batch which was served at the evening meal. When I first met my wife and she inquired what I did during my period of internment and I replied that I was a rice cook, she doubled over with laughter. A rice cook - that was the funniest thing she had ever heard! It wasn't until I went into more detail, the circumstances in which I had to work and the catastrophic results of failure, did she appreciate the importance of my lowly job."
The Hekking family had lived in Shanghai from 1912 (Dutch National Archives, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China, Consulate General (Shanghai) (1852) 1877-1945, inventory number 00228). The father, Louis Adriaan Hekking was born in the Netherlands East Indies, Surabaya, in 1891. He was an insurance broker. The mother, Johanna Maria Hekking-Hildebrandt, was born in 1902 in St. Thomas, Alabama. Bob Hekking [Bobbie in newspaper articles at the time] was born in Shanghai in 1923 and his sister Liesje was also born in Shanghai, in 1926. Liesje and Bob won swimming contests in Shanghai.
Greg Leck, Captives of Empire: The Japanese Internment of Allied Civilians in China, 1941-1945, Shandy Press, 2006, p. 439: "Originally planned as an American Camp, the American Relief Association oversaw the organization and equipment supply for Chapei. It was located about seven miles from the Bund, on Chung Shan Road, one of the principal highways encircling Shanghai. Comprised of nineteen acres, the premises were originally those of the Great China University, which had been endowed by the Chinese Overseas Merchants guild in 1930."
In March 2017, Greg Leck wrote to me: ” Chapei is still standing – the East Building was knocked down but the West Building is in use as classrooms. Now known as East China Normal University, 3663 Zhongshan N Rd, HuaShiDa, Putuo Qu, Shanghai Shi, China, 200062. It was also known as Zhongshan Road before WW2, but it was at the very edge of the city then, with fields all around. Now it is surrounded by skyscrapers.”
This photo is also shown in Greg Leck's "Captives of Empire".
Courtesy Hekking family archives
