6.
“She survived two-and-a-half years in a Japanese concentration camp in Indonesia. She worked in the rice paddies and smuggled food to my uncle. She also gave up her food every other day so he could have extra food. She smoked cigarettes instead to deal with the hunger. I saw her once get in an argument with a protester outside a Post Office in Seattle. I was about four, so this was about 1968. She asked the young man what he was protesting, and he fumed and ranted his explanation. She stopped him once and asked, “Do you have a job?” He blew up, screaming and yelling and blaming her for all that was wrong with the world. She kept asking, “What are you doing to peacefully change the world? It needs change. What are you doing to help?” At the end of the exchange, he was crying and begging her forgiveness. She was calm and collected, never raised her voice, and held his hand while he got it together.”
“My grandmother was the real badass, though. She was a German citizen and was offered protective custody during the war by the Japanese. She didn’t have to go to the camp, but she chose to as she had renounced her German citizenship. She was married to a Dutchman and took that nationality instead. My Oma smuggled a wealth of jewelry into the camp and saved most of it, trading the rest for medicine and food. She also kept parts of the secret radio the prisoners had. Either infraction, the jewelry or the radio, would have earned her an immediate death sentence, probably by beheading by sword.
I have been asked why she chose the dangers of the camp over the relative safety of the custody offered by the Japanese. She always told us that she was no man’s whore and she wasn’t going to serve any man against her will. Apparently the protective custody was little more than being a sex slave.”
— u/KaylaChinga
