the well English speaking writer Oba Sadao. It appeared he knew a lot about Nakamura and his friends and seemed very willing to speak about it. De Haan wrote everything down and collected documents about the case. Because of his position as a security man he had easy access to all sorts of secret reports. The general public didn’t know anything about ther robbery until some Batavia newspaper published the story in June 1946 with large headlines. Meanwhile Carla Wolff, Nakamura and quite a bunch of other suspects concerning the robbery had been arrested. There were also people who, by virtue of their position with the Nefis (Dutch Military Intelligence) or with its British counterpart, who during the investigation pocketed part of the discovered stones and gold themselves. The trials attracted great attention from the local Batavia press.
Corporal of Marines De Haan (right) in action in Indonesia, 1946
Michael Haan (in Australia he left the prefix "de" out) began to think about writing a book about the case. After his demobilization in 1948, Haan started a technical firm called BPT "Garuda". He began with five employees, after four years his company had 21 men and women on the payroll