Five Brothers and a War

A van Pelt Night Out

The van Pelt boys were big fans of Hawaiian music, Dixieland and Boogie Woogie among others, so when the Kilima Hawaiians came to play in Den Haag they made sure to be there. The Kilima Hawaiians were a Dutch band, so they were able to perform without crossing international borders when the war broke out. But the Germans made it illegal to play or listen to jazz music. As a consequence, Hawaiian music became even more popular. Because it was also forbidden to sing (or speak) English, the bands were forced to sing in Dutch. The Kilima Hawaiians were the pioneers of “Nederhawaiian”, or the Dutch Hawaiian sound. Both parents had misgivings about the boys attending evening concerts across the city, mainly because the concert would end only half an hour before the German-instituted curfew time of 11:00 pm. Anyone trying to break the curfew would be arrested and potentially shipped to Germany to help build military materiel to conquer the rest of the world. In asking permission from their parents to go, the boys eased their parents’ concerns by pointing out that they had plenty of time to catch the last streetcar home. Reluctantly Leendert and Marie agreed. A good friend of Jan, Hans de Heer, a neighbor a couple of houses up the Margrietstraat, Jan, Kees and Bertus would go together. This concert was, as always, a great success. So much so, they had to perform a few extra encores. The foursome began to get a little concerned about the time factor, but figured that the streetcar would wait until everyone Both concert halls were about 6 km (straight line) from the Margrietstraat home, essentially around the corner from Leendert’s workplace at Bruynzeel, and right against the central exclusion zone.

van Pelt

Five Brothers and a War

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