Manuscript reveals historic tale

“I myself sit here in a camp of women-prisoners-of-war in Ambarawa, Middle Java, close to Magelang. In this camp and in other surrounding camps there are still 12,000 women and children. Women and children who here during the war with Japan have been imprisoned, robbed of house and hearth, of all goods, starved, harassed and badgered by the Japanese. Books can be written about all that has been suffered.”

A letter written by Hendrika Van Dooremolen on Nov. 15, 1945, from a prison camp in the Dutch East Indies.

Little did Van Dooremolen know her wish would eventually come true. That a book would be written about the trials and tribulations of her and her husband Adolf’s lives in the 1930s and 1940s in the former Dutch colony, now known as Indonesia.

Van Dooremolen’s granddaughter’s husband, Liberty Lake resident Dino Fanara, discovered a box of old family manuscripts that led to him writing his latest book, “Angel of the East Indies.”

“A few years ago I wanted to do writing,” said Fanara, 47. “I was rummaging around and found a family manuscript by Hendrika.”

The book is based largely on volumes of notes and letters Van Dooremolen wrote to her mother in Nazi-occupied Holland.

Fanara thought that, as a favor to the family, “I’ll scan it and retype it or something.” As he started to get the timelines, Fanara discovered, “Oh, my God, there’s a huge story here.”

“Angel of the East Indies” is the story of the rise, fall and reunion of the Van Dooremolen family. It chronicles the highs of a time when the family ascended to near-royalty status when Adolf was a member of the Dutch army. The book then follows the family’s separation following the surrender to the Japanese in early 1942 and their lives of survival in Japanese concentration camps.

Fanara points out that not only was Hendrika trying to survive herself, but also was trying to keep alive eight children, four of her own and four from a neighbor who was deemed insane. Fanara said the manually typed manuscript was hard to read for a number of reasons. “English was her (Hendrika’s) second language.”

“Angel of the East Indies” starts in the Dutch colonial period in the early 1920s. It tells of the Van Dooremolens’ courtship in the 1930s and then the war. Being stationed in the East Indies had real advantages, according to Fanara. “Time counted twice for time spent there,” Fanara said, explaining that it was a faster route to retirement from the military.

All was good until the war intervened.

The story of Hendrika’s husband, Adolf, was equally riveting. Injured in a motorcycle accident, Adolf was captured by the Japanese and shipped to Thailand aboard what became known as the “hell ship.” The ship had no markings to signify it carried only sick injured and POW’s. Of the 50,000 transported aboard such vessels, 20 percent of them died because of bombings, murder and starvation.

Adolf was taken to Burma, where he worked on the Thailand-Burma railroad. It was called the “railroad of death,” Fanara said. The railroad featured the famed Bridge on the River Kwai. Having been injured, Adolf volunteered to care for the sick people on the bridge made famous by the Hollywood movie.

Adolf finished out the war working in a coal mine in Japan.

It took nearly four years, but in the end all of the Van Dooremolens survived.

“It’s an amazing inspirational story,” Fanara said. “Each (was) near death several times. It is kind of an epic story.”

Adolf turned 97 in December. “He’s still with us,” Fanara said. “We made sure he got the first copy. We knew it would make him proud.”

Fanara dreams of someday seeing the story as a Steven Spielberg movie.

Fanara ditched a hectic California lifestyle a few years ago and wants to write for a living. “We are California transplants. We decided to get out of the rat race,” he said of his journey from being a big executive to pursuing his writing dream.

He gave up a career as western regional director of operations for a medical service company. “I was flying all over the state,” Fanara said. And when he was on the ground he was, “in gridlock” on the ” ‘Orange Crush’ freeway.”

Fanara has written a science-fiction book titled “Creators: Cracking the World.” Next on his plate is another biography titled “Mr. GPS,” the story of his father, a globe-trotting medical entomologist whom he never saw growing up.

“For me growing up, he (dad) was one of those little red, white and blue trimmed envelopes with pictures of all these native people,” Fanara said.

His dad finally ended up back in the States, and Fanara said he got to know him over the past few years when he moved to Elokia Lake. And thus was born Fanara’s next book project.