Most of what is written as war history is the actual story of battles, of those who fought and the armies they belonged to, of where they fought and who won or lost. Relatively little is ever written about the downstream effects of war, especially of the diaspora and movement of peoples of many nationalities caused by conflict.
The Second World War was, by definition, played out on a truly global stage. The Brussels American Community includes a member whose roots lie in the soil of our Benelux region, but who, as a direct result of the conflict's titanic drama, became an American citizen, doing a full career in the U.S. military and public service.
Antonio "Tony" Beck is a 73-year-young retiree who has long been a member of the Brussels Community. Born a Dutch citizen, Beck, who retired as a chief master sergeant in 1988, did a 30-year career with the U.S. Air Force followed by 17 years as a civil servant. Beck, who is a habituAfA of the USAG Brussels Fitness Center, works hard at staying fit and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. But the personal story of this modest man is truly one of adversity overcome. Were it not for WWII, he would not have become a U.S. citizen.
Born in 1936 in Sumatra in what were then the Dutch East Indies, Beck was the son of an officer in the Netherlands East Indies army. Although he lost his mother prematurely to illness, he and his father, as members of the ruling colonial establishment, enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle.
All this changed, dramatically in 1942, the year the Japanese overran the Dutch East Indies. With the Japanese invasion, the elder Beck placed his young son with a civilian Dutch family and went off to fight. With the Japanese victory in 1942, he became a prisoner of war, spending the next three years working on the Burma railway as a slave laborer.
His young son Tony also was interned. "The Japanese collected all non-native Dutch civilians and put them in camps," he explained. "The civilian men were separated from their families and sent off to do forced labor. Women and children were sent to special camps. I spent the next three years in two different internment camps in Java."
It is difficult for Beck to discuss life in the camps during those three years. "You must understand that I was just a little boy," he explained. "But what I saw and experienced between the ages of six to nine really impacted me." In addition to the brutality and beatings (Beck witnessed his first summary execution at age six and was himself beaten several times by guards to whom he had apparently not bowed deeply enough in the prescribed manner), there was the constant companionship of hunger and malnutrition and diseases such as beriberi and dysentery.
The brutality and disease were bad enough, but almost worse, according to Beck, was the behavior these conditions fostered among the inmates. "When life is reduced to such survival basics, I hate to say, a lot of the conventions of civilized social life disappear. People who are otherwise 'good' don't hesitate to steal from each other, whether it's a scrap to eat or a shirt to cover themselves with. I know this is not nice to say, but I've seen it and been part of it. It took me years to get over it. But I did learn to be independent, to be a survivor. This really shaped my thinking."
Beck's camp was liberated in 1945 by British forces. He was shipped to a camp in Burma where he was treated and convalesced as authorities tried to figure out how to reunite thousands of broken-up families. Miraculously, he was connected with his father, another survivor. The elder Beck's health had been broken. He was no longer fit for active military service, and it was clear, there was no future in a Dutch-dominated East Indies, so the father sent his son to the Hague in The Netherlands as an "advance party" to live with relatives before returning himself.
"My life in the Netherlands after the war was not a happy one," said Beck. "To my Dutch family and my teachers, I was an incorrigible delinquent. None of them could understand what I'd been through. I could barely read or write, I spoke a Dutch that was heavily mixed with Bahasa [the East Indian language], I was in constant trouble at school, and because of the survival skills I'd honed at the camps, schoolmates and even teachers who tried to beat me always came out second-best. I hung out with what would today be best described as Indonesian gangs; those kids were my friends."
Beck recalled that his stare was particularly disconcerting to those around him. "The camps had taught me to survive by observing everything. I had learned to focus my concentration and senses, and it had become a habit for me to stare at people who were talking to me. It's just not something you do in polite company, and it really bothered everybody around me. They couldn't understand why I did it, and it further made me seem like an oddball."
Although nominally a Dutch citizen, the younger Beck had retained status as a Displaced Person, which was to prove an advantage in the still-booming post-war refugee resettlement business. In 1956, at age 20, he had somehow managed to graduate from a Dutch technical high school. A provision in U.S. emigration law, at the time, encouraged him to emigrate to the U.S., and an individual in Elkhart, Ind., agreed to sponsor him.
Beck's father gave him $100 ("a fortune at the time," said his son), and the younger Beck arrived by ship in New York to seek a new life. "Right away, I was impressed with how ultra-friendly Americans were. I spent my first night at Grand Central Station. I didn't speak much English, but somebody helped me buy a train ticket to Indiana," said Beck.
"My Indiana family really rehabilitated me," said Beck. "They were genuinely interested in me and provided me a secure life that I'd never had. They were patient with me, never losing their temper. I finally got away from feeling constantly threatened. My sponsor even got me to lose my stare." After spending nearly a year with this family, Beck felt himself transformed.
The Cold War was already going strong, and young Beck received his draft notice. Coming out of the induction center, Beck ran into an Air Force captain, who asked if he was interested in the Air Force. "I didn't really know much about the Air Force, but I told him I was. He took down my name, and before I knew it, I'd enlisted in the Air Force."
Beck found that he'd enjoyed military service, and kept re-enlisting. An admin and personnel specialist, he did tours in the U.S., Europe and Viet Nam, steadily rising in rank. He met his wife, Netty, in 1961 while stationed in France [prior to 1966, the USAF had several bases in that country]. In 1968, he became an American citizen, "one of the proudest moments of my life," he said.
Beck retired in 1988 as a chief master sergeant. "I was blessed throughout my Air Force career with leaders who guided and mentored me," he explained. "They taught me about loyalty up and down. They taught me the importance of the organization. And the best officers derived their authority, not from being appointed over you, but from the examples they provided me as leaders. I like to think I passed what I learned to my subordinates."
Because Beck's Dutch mother-in-law was still alive when he retired, he pursued a second career as an Army civil servant in Brussels from 1989 to 2006. His two sons and their families are in the U.S. "We'll go home, eventually," he said. In the meantime, Beck stays involved as an active member of the Brussels American Community. A volunteer burger-flipper at the community's last Independence Day celebration, he said, "I have Dutch roots, I live in Belgium, but, most of all, I'm proud to be an American!"
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