By Sonia Isaacs
MORE than 80 years after surviving brutal Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and the devastation of Nagasaki, former Dutch soldier Alois (Wies) Felix Ferdinand Amrein was formally honoured at the Glasshouse Country RSL on Tuesday, May 26, with two posthumous medals recognising his wartime courage, sacrifice and survival.
The medals were presented by the Dutch Defence Attaché to Australia and New Zealand, Colonel Gerbe Verhaaf, who travelled from Canberra for the ceremony attended by family, friends and community members.
Accepted on behalf of the late soldier by his 90-year-old son Alfred Amrein of Beerwah and daughter Meike Amrein, who travelled from the Netherlands especially for the occasion, the honours recognised a remarkable story of endurance, spanning World War II imprisonment, forced labour and survival near Nagasaki during the atomic bombing in August 1945.
Colonel Verhaaf described the awards as a long-overdue acknowledgement from the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
“These medals are a formal recognition… that Alois Felix Ferdinand Amrein’s courage, service and suffering during the Second World War will never be forgotten,” he said.
“It is important to keep personal stories alive, not only the great events of history, but the individual lives behind them.
“The story of Wies Amrein is one of duty, endurance and survival.”
Born in 1910 on the west coast of Sumatra in the former Dutch East Indies, Wies Amrein was known as a talented soccer player and respected technical educator before war engulfed the region.
Although he held Swiss citizenship through his father and was under no obligation to enlist, he volunteered to serve as a sergeant in the Dutch colonial forces following the Japanese invasion in 1942.
Captured soon afterwards, Wies Amrein disappeared from family life for years.
In 1943 he was transported through Singapore to Japan, where he was imprisoned at Fukuoka Camp 14 near Nagasaki and subjected to brutal forced labour.
Prisoners were routinely starved, beaten and worked to exhaustion, with many never surviving captivity.
Amrein remained in the Nagasaki region in August 1945 when the atomic bomb known as “Fat Man” was dropped on the city.
Amid the devastation, he joined fellow prisoners searching for survivors, carrying wounded men to safety in nearby caves and assisting with the recovery and cremation of the dead.
The ordeal left deep physical and psychological scars that family members said he rarely discussed.
On September 11, 1945, rescue ships finally arrived in Nagasaki Harbour. Amrein was evacuated aboard the American aircraft carrier USS Chenango to Okinawa before later being transferred to Manila for rehabilitation.
He eventually reunited with his family in Bandung, but political upheaval and the Indonesian independence struggle forced the family to leave in 1953 and resettle in the Netherlands.
There, Amrein helped establish a company manufacturing lightweight electrical generators for NATO before later returning to teaching at a technical institute in Eindhoven.
Colonel Verhaaf said Amrein’s life embodied resilience, sacrifice and quiet service.
“Mr Amrein volunteered to serve when he did not have to, endured years as a prisoner of war, and rebuilt his life after the conflict,” he said.
“His legacy lives on in his family and in the freedom and peace we enjoy today.
For eldest son, Alfred Amrein, the ceremony marked both pride and closure.
Recalling his father’s return home after four years away at war, he told guests he had been about 10 years old when a friend informed him his father had arrived home.
Alfred said his father rarely spoke about the horrors he endured during the war, making Tuesday’s presentation a deeply meaningful public acknowledgement for the family more than eight decades later.
Meike Amrein thanked representatives of the Dutch Embassy and paid special tribute to researcher Maureen Hoyer, whose work uncovering her father’s wartime records and preparing the medal application helped secure the recognition.
Without those efforts, she said, the family would not have been standing together like this more than 80 years after the war ended.
She also acknowledged the assistance of Alfred’s wife Willie Summers, who helped organise the ceremony at the Glasshouse Country RSL.