Golden Stamp - Dutch East Indies 1945-2020 - Collectibles

The fourth stamp commemorates the 75th anniversary of the laying down of arms by the Japanese army. This brought an end to over 41 months of occupation of the former Dutch colony.

On 15 August 1945, World War II officially ended for the Kingdom of the Netherlands. On that day, Emperor Hirohito of Japan officially announced that his country had surrendered to the Allies. This also marked the end of the war in the Dutch East Indies. The occupation by Japan of the former Dutch colony began when the Dutch and Allied forces surrendered on 8 March 1942. It took until 1988 before an official national commemoration of the end of the war could take place in the Dutch East Indies. Since then, we commemorate all of the victims of the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies each year on 15 August at the Indies Monument in The Hague. The official name of this ceremony is the Nationale Indiëherdenking (‘National Indies Commemoration’). It is one of the three national commemorations that take place in the Netherlands, in addition to National Remembrance Day on 4 May and Holocaust Memorial Day on the last Sunday in January.