Willem Frederick van Eelen

Willem Frederick van Eelen was born in a Dutch colony in Indonesia on July 4, 1923. His father was a Dutch doctor who ran a Dutch leprosy colony in Indonesia. When van Eelen was 17 he enlisted in the Dutch army to fight in World War II against the Japanese, where he would later be captured and spend the next five years in several Japanese prisoner of war camps. During van Eelens time in Japanese prisoner of war camps he self reports almost dying of malnutrition and was deeply impacted by the brutal way his captors treated animals.