Date of birth:

March 25th, 1895 (Breda/North Brabant, Netherlands)

Date of death:

September 21st, 1945 (Singapore)

Buried on:

Dutch War Cemetery Leuwigajah
Plot: I. Grave: 119.

Nationality:

Dutch

Res.Elt.
KNIL

Arend was born on 25 March 1895 in Breda and lived in Medan on Sumatra. On 8 December 1941, one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Dutch government in London declared war on Japan. The Japanese seized this opportunity to immediately invade the Dutch East Indies. Due to its natural oil reserves and geostrategic location, the conquest of the Dutch colony is one of the Japanese's most important goals in their quest to dominate East Asia. Against this backdrop, Arend enlists in the KNIL and is deployed as a reserve 1st lieutenant in the defence of the colony.

After a three-month campaign, the Japanese had captured the most important strategic points in the archipelago. On 8 March 1942, the KNIL surrendered on Java; Arend was taken prisoner on 17 March and, together with thousands of other Dutch soldiers, was transported to the camps. It is not known whether Arend was used as a forced labourer on the Burma railway or whether he was sent to camps in Japan to work in the mines.

Arend lived to see the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945, but by then he had been severely weakened by years of abuse, illness, exhaustion and malnutrition in captivity. After his liberation, he was repatriated and was about to return to the Dutch East Indies, where the Indonesian struggle for independence had broken out two days after the Japanese surrender. There he would be called up for military service again, but in the end Arend never got that far. On 21 September 1945, he died in Singapore as a result of years of hardship in the camps. He was 50 years old and found his final resting place at the Dutch military cemetery Leuwigajah in Cimahi.

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• Photo 1: Oorlogsgravenstichting
• - Arend Hendrik van der Pijl | Oorlogsgravenstichting
  - Arend van der Pijl | Brabantse Gesneuvelden
  

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