My grandfather was being held in a Japanese PoW camp at the end of WWII and said he saw a nuclear explosion. Can anyone tell me where he could've been held and how he might've gotten there?

by enolan

He died in the early 2000s, so I can't ask him questions. I know this:

  • He was Dutch-Indonesian and would've been in Indonesia at the start of the war
  • His name was Rudolph Philip Houthuysen
  • My mother vaguely remembers hearing he was in the cavalry and being injured falling off something. Maybe a motorcycle, maybe a horse.

I know that's not a lot to go on, and finding him specifically might be a lot of effort or impossible, so I'd be interested in hearing the broad possibilities.

When_Ducks_Attack

It's almost a certainty that your Grandfather saw the bomb at Nagasaki. Between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Dutch POWs were almost entirely kept in the various Fukuoka regional camps, in and around Nagasaki.

According to the POW Research Network Japan, some 500 or so Dutch prisoners were kept in camps near Hiroshima at the end of the war. Meanwhile, approximately 3700 were in the Fukuoka camps at the same time.

THIS WEBSITE has camp rosters dating back to the end of the war, for all prisoners in each camp, broken out by nationality. I went through the first two camp rosters for Fukuoka with no luck, but that only leaves ~20 or so more.

If he was in or around either city, he should be listed there.

EDIT: FOUND HIM! He was in Fukuoka Camp 23, and is listed on page 20 of this document. (pdf warning)

Here's an aerial photo of the camp itself.

SECOND EDIT: I couldn't get Googlemaps to behave, so here's a screenshot of the area instead. According to the aerial photo linked above, the camp was located at the red four-pointed star, to the west of Kurume. Straightline distance from Kurume to Nagasaki is 87km/54miles according to this website.

THIRD EDIT: Almost directly in line with Fukuoka 23 and Nagasaki is Mt Tara, which is 1076m tall. The bomb at Nagasaki detonated at around 500m. So, assuming your Grandfather was actually in the camp that day in August, he probably didn't see the bomb flash directly. He surely would have seen the smoke cloud, and probably would have heard the explosion.

FOURTH EDIT: Thanks, OP, that was a fun bit of research!

FIFTH EDIT: /u/LaoBa found a listing for Rudolph Houthuysen at Fukuoka #14, which was located less than 2km from the ground zero. There's no conflict however, as he isn't listed on the end of war roster for that camp. It's pretty clear that he had been moved to Fukuoka 23 before the bomb was dropped. This report does give us a better history of Grandpa Houtuysen time in Japan though, as it appears that most of the Dutch POWs in Camp 14 were brought to Japan in April 1943 on the Hawaii Maru, one of the so-called "hellships".