We All Came Through

How to survive? This is a story of grit, determination and faith between my father and mother. Despite being separated from my Dutch father for three long years of both being prisoners under the Japanese in the 2nd World War in Indonesia they managed to find each other and lived a fulfilling life. My English mum in her story describes her hardship in camp amongst mostly Dutch women with her baby daughter. My dad’s version writes about moving from camp to camp, the labour they had to endure and his efforts to find my mum after peace had been declared. They both held onto their belief that there would be a time that they would be reunited once this nightmare was over.

Constance (Connie) Ruth Visser-Wood was born in Frome, UK on 31 May 1917. She grew up in Bournemouth and attended Bournemouth High School. Her dad died of the Spanish flu while he was serving as a chaplain in the British Army in France. She was three months old at the time. Her mother never remarried but ran a boarding house to make ends meet. Connie studied at St Christopher’s College to become a children’s nurse. While employed by the McDougalls to look after their three children, she sailed to South Africa on 22nd Oct 1937. They settled in Johannesburg where she met Roelof Jan Visser, her future Dutch husband. They started their married life in Rhodesia, where her husband, my dad, was a miner. War broke out and he was called up by the Dutch Royal Navy to serve in Indonesia. They both sailed there, my mom being pregnant with my elder sister. My parents were interned in separate camps during the war by the Japanese. After three years my dad found my mom and sister in a hospital. From there they returned to Europe. They decided to immigrate to South Africa where they spent the rest of their lives. Mom died of Parkinson’s Disease in 1993 and my dad a year later of bone cancer.

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Professor Michael Balls

I ordered We All Came Through from Amazon within minutes of opening the envelope, and it arrived the next day. I have about 100 books on WWI, WWII and the Holocaust, and I am delighted to have been able to add this one to my collection. Your Mother's account is a truly remarkable, and very readable, story of her own fortitude, and of the amazing resilience of the human body and the human spirit. I felt that I got to know her better and better as she described all the various challenges she had to overcome along the way, and my admiration for her grew, page by page. [I hope I can be forgiven for being amused and charmed by the revelation about your own immaculate conception!] I think it was very fortunate that she had Pat to care for. Deeply stressful and worrying though that undoubtedly was, she had somebody else to focus on and fight for, day by day — and she succeeded. Your Father's account is no less important, and it also reveals a determination not to be beaten, but to make the most of even the most demanding challenges and dreadful circumstances. Having suffered so much under the Japanese, it must have been awful to have to face the Indonesian nationalists. Like your Father, I can't understand why we still resort to war, and yes, the combination of greed and the search for power is a very dangerous one. But most of all, I can't understand why civilians, young and old, can be treated so badly. In WWI, POWs were treated with far more respect than in WWII. By the way, two of my cousins were Japanese POWs, and died on the Burma Railway. We can say that the Japanese had a different philosophical basis from our own, though that is a feeble excuse, but there is no excuse for what the Germans did, especially in the Holocaust. But then there was the bombing of Dresden, and of Hiroshima and Nagasaki —how should we think of that? You and your family deserve to be congratulated on seeking to get We All Came Through published — you can be justly proud of that, as well as of your parents. With best wishes to you and Mike

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Professor Michael Balls

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