Became an official interpreter
Suddenly I found myself an official of the Court of Justice under Mr Emanuels who was from Suriname. He was a very clever judge. Yet, in the case of the Courts-Martial against the Japanese Prisoner of Wars he acted as a prosecutor. He had especially asked me to be his secretary. It was a tough job but really suited my interest. He praised me that my intelligence was above the average of a Dutch woman! Mr Emanuel's wife was actually a Dutch woman. She was rather weak, but she was very nice to us.
Then, came the first Courts-Martial. A Japanese policeman. A young and very quiet man. He was to be prosecuted.
A few days earlier the Chief Judge summoned me to inform me that I had been appointed official interpreter for the session. I protested as I had no official certificate for the Japanese language. Yet, there was nobody else! This Courts-Martial had to be held. I just had to accept it!
"But, please, dress more richly! You are neatly dressed but too modestly for a court-martial," said the Chief Judge. I blushed! What did this man think of me? The war had just ended and I had no money for a new silk dress!
I went to the biggest shop open at that time and selected some white crepe georgette scattered here and there with brown circles. I thought that would be proper enough for the occasion. I cut a simple dress out of it and sewed it my self...all by hand! I was glad that the Chief Judge nodded at me in approval when we entered the hall of the Court.
For me, the dress was not that important. I had been praying all the time that this session might have a successful ending. It became so interesting that I was surprised by the fact that I had encountered no great difficulty in translating the whole session. But I had been tense for the whole time!
The sentence for that young man, Nakamura, was to be shot by a squad. Yet, during the night, he committed suicide by cutting his wrist with a paper clip!
Fortunately, two legal Japanese interpreters were sent to Makassar for the Prisoner of Wars (P.O.W.) But, Captain van der Hyde still asked me to assist him. So we rode to the P.O.W. camp and each of the interpreters had five Japanese to interrogate. The Captain's assistant said to me, "Your Japanese is more up to date. We don't know those new words for nurse, police, etc." Of course, I learnt Japanese from these people very recently! Alas, after the war, since there was no need for me to use Japanese, I gradually forgot it.
No comments:
Post a Comment