When the Netherlands fell to Hitler in 1940, contact between it and the Dutch East Indies was lost. The Dutch surrendered the Indies to Japan in 1942. Anyone in the military became a POW and ended up in especially bad places such as the railway project that later became the subject of The Bridge on the River Kwai . Adult civilians were sorted according to both gender and blood quantum. Johannes was totok —pure Dutch. Greta was an Indo—mixed European and Indonesian. The Japanese High Command "invited" them to place themselves under Japanese jurisdiction at "protection centers"—separate camps for adult males on the one hand, women and children on the other.