Anton Colijn

Who was Anton Colijn?

Antonie Hendrikus Colijn was a Dutch amateur mountaineer who in 1936 led the Carstensz Expedition, being the first to climb the Carstenszgebergte in New Guinea.

Colijn was the eldest son of the Hendrikus Colijn, Prime Minister of the Netherlands in 1925 and 1926.

After studying at the Free University Amsterdam and gaining his doctorate at the Delft Technical University in 1919, Colijn joined the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and worked for them in Curaçao, in the United States, Romania and, in the 1930s, in the Dutch East Indies.

He was stationed at Tarakan, an island east of Borneo when the Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indies. He assisted the destruction of oil installations before they were captured, and he was subsequently sent, under Japanese supervision, to Balikpapan, to deliver an ultimatum to the military commander there to surrender the local oil installations, intact. He was sent to Java, from where he tried to flee to Ceylon, but his ship was bombed by the Japanese. He reached the coast of Sumatra, was captured and interned at Palembang. On 11 March 1945 he died from exhaustion and illness in an internment camp at Bangka Island.