Anton Colijn

Antonie Hendrikus Colijn (13 April 1894 in Ambarawa – 11 March 1945 in Muntok) was a Dutch amateur mountaineer who in 1936 led the Carstensz Expedition, being the first to climb the Carstenszgebergte in New Guinea.

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 (now Indonesia).

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.

On 11 March 1945 he died from exhaustion and illness in an internment camp at Bangka Island.

Helen Colijn, a daughter of Anton Colijn, wrote The Power of Song, a book about survival in a women's camp, upon which the film Paradise Road (1997) is based.