Veteran of the Royal Dutch Navy in the Netherlands East Indies. His experiences as a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese during World War II. Fall of Java and capture; Bicycle Camp, Batavia, 1942; Changi Prison Camp, Singapore, 1942; building the Burma-Thailand Death Railway, 1942-44; Tamarkan, Thailand, 1944; Chungkai and Bampong, Thailand, 1944-45; liberation.