Narrator:
Peter Koens was only 13 years old when together with his sister Elly and parents, arrived in a flying boat from Java. He describes that morning exactly 70 years later at the age of 83.
Peter Koens:
Just as we were drifting into the bay the Japanese came in and strafed right across the wing where we were standing and my dad jumped off and he got some shrapnels from the bullets that were coming through, and the fellow that was standing next to me got hit immediately so when I turned around to see what happened to him he just fell into the water and I looked and there was nothing but blood and that’s it.
My dad was then at that time yelling at me to come and jump in the water because they were coming back.
So I just jumped into the water and swam to my dad and then we had to find my mother and my sister who were on the other side of plane, so then when we were swimming around the plane I could hear my mother yelling at a man that was also swimming with us to come and get his wife because she was hanging onto this burning wing and with a child around her neck.
But the man could not swim back to the plane to help his wife because the tide was so strong that he had no possibility to reach them and she just disappeared with the wing into the water.
We had twenty people in our plane so I assume the other ones would have the same.
Just shouting and screaming all the time.
So plane was on fire so then once we collected my mother and sister we stayed as close to the fire as possible, that’s what our dad told us, in case there were sharks or anything like that.
So, and then after we swam for about ten minutes close to the oil fire he just said to just go onto your back and just lay and relax and stay together, and that’s what we did.
