Fort de Rock — also spelled Fort de Kock, and identified in the Dutch staff history as a Japanese military prison in Medan — was the site of Lt lieutenant H. van Zanten’s post-capture interrogation, court-martial and condemned detention in March 1943, and the staff history’s principal narrative instance of the Japanese krijgsraad (court-martial) procedure applied to Dutch officers captured in the terrein after the capitulation of 28 March 1942.
The Van Zanten court-martial (March 1943)
After Lt Van Zanten’s capture on 10 March 10 March 1943 at the edge of the forest north-east of Takengon, he and the five Maréchaussees remaining with him were “op beestachtige wijze mishandeld en verhoord,” with the Japanese repeatedly offering the lieutenant lijfsbehoud if he would act as their spy in the prisoner-of-war camps. He refused. “Hij werd tenslotte overgebracht naar Fort de Rock, waar hij door een zogenaamde krijgsraad ter dood werd veroordeeld.”
The staff history records his bearing: “Luitenant Van Zanten bleef tot het laatste toe, ondanks alle vernederingen en mishandelingen, waardig en fier, niettegenstaande hij zeer goed begreep geëxecuteerd te zullen worden.” The date and place of execution are not given in the staff history; the entry closes the Van Zanten episode.
Significance
Fort de Rock is, in the staff history’s Atjeh chapter, the principal narrative instance of the Japanese krijgsraad procedure applied to Dutch officers captured in the terrein after the formal capitulation. The staff history’s use of zogenaamde krijgsraad — “so-called court-martial” — signals the compilers’ view that the procedure was a quasi-judicial pretence for a predetermined execution. The Van Zanten case is the staff history’s clearest single instance of a Japanese capital sentence passed on a Dutch officer whose only offence was the continuation of resistance after a capitulation he had not personally recognised — an offence the staff history frames as a moral duty rather than a crime.
See Also
- Nederlands-Indië contra Japan
- H. van Zanten
- Van Zanten’s resistance (March 1942 – March 1943)
- Medan
- Takengon
- Sumatra capitulation (28 March 1942)
- 1943
Source
Nederlands-Indië contra Japan, Deel VI: De strijd op Ambon, Timor en Sumatra, bewerkt door C. van den Hoogenband en L. Schotborgh (‘s-Gravenhage: Staatsdrukkerij- en Uitgeverijbedrijf, 1959), Hoofdstuk V (“De strijd in Noord-Sumatra (Atjeh)”), Bijzondere verrichtingen na de capitulatie — Het verzet van luitenant H. van Zanten, pp. 150–152.