In 1942 my great-grandfather, Dirk Huisken was captured by the Japanese in Sumatra. As a prisoner of war he became part of what has come to be known as the Pekanbaru Death Railway – 220kms of rail through the most impossibly rugged and mountainous terrain. Dirk, along with 1000’s of Allied soldiers and civilians and well over 100,000 press-ganged Javanese labourers died while building the railway line, which ironically, was completed on the day Japan surrendered and and was never used.
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