My Rusche Family

WELCOME, WELKOM, SELAMAT DATANG to

My Rusche Family

A family history site of Art Rusche

My name is Arthur Denis Rusche. I was born in The Netherlands and my family immigrated to the United States of America in 1961. I created this site to document my family’s amazing history.

These are the stories of my mother and father as wealthy Dutch Colonialists to the horrors of WWII, refuge to The Netherlands then immigration to the United States of America.

  • Stories of Dutch Colonization and Nutmeg Plantations and  in the historic Banda Spice Islands of Indonesia.
     
  • Horrors of WWII in the Pacific Theater.
    • Prisoners of War of the Empire of Japan  for 1215 days!
    • Onboard the sinking of the Hell Ship called the Junyo Maru
      The worst single shipwreck in the Pacific Theater!
      There were 6500 onboard and 5,620 POWs lost their lives .

    • 723 POW survivors were taken to work as forced labor on the Pekanbaru Death Railway.
       
    • Out of the 5,620 POWs aboard the Junyo Maru, only 96 survived after WWII.
    • Johan Rusche was among the 96.
  • They took late refuge back to The Netherlands in 1950 and then immigrated to the United States of America in 1961.

I dedicate this site to

My sisters Joyce & Peggy and their families.

And of course 
Joopie and Conny.

 

  • You will see links in orange that take you to Wikipedia articles about that topic.
  • The links in white go to more in-depth information about a relative.

     Some pictures have been colorized using  .

Thank you for viewing this work in progress. 
Last update: 9/20/20

The Herrebrughs went to the Banda Islands, holding the riches from the monopoly of the spice nutmeg. They operated many plantations on the islands for several generations. 

Continue to 'The Two Branches'

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