In my mother’s archive, I found a bundle of letters, held together with a piece of string. In an accompanying note, there was an instruction: “Destroy after my death.” I knew the letters were from Taro, her fiancé, who had been killed during the war and of whom she spoke often to my brother and me. She always kept in touch with his mother and two sisters even long after the war.
I hesitated for a long time weighing up whether to destroy the letters or read them, but in the end I could not make up my mind and put them back in the box.
Some years later, when I decided to record her life story, I came across them again, and my doubts resurfaced, but in the end I decided to read them to see if and what they could add to this story. She had, after all, not destroyed them herself. I took them out of the box and started to read.
When Taro and Sabine met around 1937, it was love at first sight. He admitted that, from the moment they met, she never left his thoughts again. Within a short time, they were inseparable.
Taro was a handsome young soldier, a second lieutenant with the Mounted Artillery in the Royal Army. His full name was Johan Willem Yoshitaro Roeper-Bosch. His parents were living in Japan at the time of his conception, hence his Japanese name, which means “lucky firstborn son.”
Sabine at that time worked as a secretary at a small import/export company in The Hague. Her carefree life was full of fun, and being madly in love.
But dark clouds began to form over Europe. In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and Europe held its breath. In the autumn of 1939, Taro left his army base in Arnhem to start training as a pilot at the elementary flying school in West-Souburg, near Vlissingen in Zeeland, in the south of Holland.
A passionate and frequent correspondence, as well as regular visits to each other, kept them in touch. Some eighty-three letters from Taro dating from this period have survived.
And although they kept the intensity of their relationship quiet, they considered themselves engaged.
Both their mothers, however, objected to their relationship. I can only speculate as to Moeder Bien’s uneasiness. Sabine was still living at home at the time and was rather careless with Taro’s letters. Perhaps her mother was worried about the passionate contents. After all, Taro was a few years older and a man of the world.
I have no idea why Taro’s mother objected, but she later became very fond of Sabine and cared for and supported her a great deal, during and after the war.
Taro was very bored in Zeeland. He had to study hard for his pilot’s license, but there were few opportunities to practice his flying, which had been the main reason he had decided to become a pilot.
On October 23, 1939, during a rare flying session, his plane crashed, wounding him and his copilot. They both escaped with light injuries, but spent a short time in the hospital. A few weeks later, they placed a notice in the local paper thanking all those who had been involved in their rescue.
Since Taro had been the higher-ranking officer, he was held responsible for the crash and was accordingly sentenced to ten days solitary confinement in the barracks, although the sentence was not executed for several months.
At that time, rather than living on the base, he was lodging with a local family. And after having taken Sabine to introduce her to them, they took a great liking to her, encouraged him to invite her as often as possible, and allowed her to stay in his room—a very liberal attitude for those days.
While the threat of war came closer, their relationship became more and more serious, and there was much talk of getting married.
Taro even opened a bank account for her and deposited a monthly allowance in it so that she could buy nicer clothes (he felt she should not look like a shopgirl) and told her to look for a small apartment, which could be their home when he came to The Hague. Most importantly, it would mean they would be away from Moeder Bien’s prying eyes.
But despite the talk of wedding plans, Taro also had his moments of indecision. He still wanted to see a lot more of the world, and he felt that his salary was not enough to support them both. And although Sabine was perfect in his mind and he worshipped her, she frequently fell off the pedestal he put her on. He found it difficult to accept that she had faults, and he began to have doubts when these appeared. He did not like it that she was friendly with other men, she smoked and drank too much, and most of all, she did not follow his “wise” advice. She also did not seem as obsessed with him as he was with her, and the fact that she did not reply to every one of his letters particularly annoyed and worried him. But perhaps her silences were a reminder to him that she did not like being told what to do.
She was having a good time in The Hague while he was studying hard. He often wrote to her twice a day, and while he sometimes admonished her in the first letter, by the second one he was full of apologies and adoration again. His doubts were always momentary.
As the threat of war intensified, the marriage plans became more serious. Perhaps the thought of marriage gave them an idea of stability in those worrying times. Taro even suggested that when war broke out, they should get married immediately as Sabine would then receive a widow’s pension if he died.
The outbreak of the war drew threateningly close, and in his letter of May 8, 1940, he advised her to empty her bank account, convert all her cash into dollars, and keep them with her at all times in a small bag under her clothes. He also advised that as soon as hostilities started, she should go and stay with his mother, despite the fact that his mother had so far not been willing to receive Sabine.
“Just swallow your pride and contact her. Consider yourself her daughter. I will write to her that she must treat you as such.”
He also worried that the planned visit on May 10 would be impossible because of increasing tensions of the fast-approaching war.
The plan for that weekend was that Jan van den Hoek, a mutual friend, would collect Sabine in The Hague in his car, and Sabine would drive them both to Zeeland. Taro was keen for her to practice her driving so that she would be mobile if chaos broke out after Germany invaded.
He was by now very busy with war preparations, and his ten-day punishment, which had only just begun, was terminated after a few days. It was a question of all-hands-on-deck.
For the first time, he was seriously worried that he would never see Sabine again. He wrote,
In case we never meet again, this is my farewell to you. All my love and care is for you, even if I cannot act on it. Let’s hope we can meet again.
War did indeed break out, and the visit was obviously canceled, as on May 10, he wrote her a farewell letter, telling her she would always be in his thoughts and that he hoped that, if they never met again, she would have a happy life and would always love him as much as he loved her, although he of course hoped with all his heart that they would spend the rest of their lives together; he again urged her to “go to my mother, look after yourself and be sensible and for once take my advice,” ending with,
Sabientje, it seems not possible that this is truly our farewell. We have to meet up again. I will long for you for the rest of my life. My deepest love, darling. Be brave and strong. I will always love you. God bless you.
Taro
Strangely enough, he made no mention of war having started.
This was Taro’s last letter. Shortly afterwards, his flying school was evacuated to Northern France, and any further correspondence was impossible.