Maybe they have been living near his grave all the time

When a group of veterans visited Semarang in 1977, they were approached by two people, a brother and sister. It could clearly be seen that they were not fully Indonesian. They were asking for someone called Jan de Boer. Their father. My father. Only in 2010 one of these veterans dared to tell me, when my mother was already deceased. I have no idea where I should look now.

My father Jan de Boer was sent to the Dutch Indies in December 1947, as a 20-year-old boy from Schalkhaar. My parents were married young and I was born just a few months before his departure, in October 1947. He was a cook in 5.5 R.I. His regiment was active in various places, including in Klaten and in Salatiga. And at one point they were stationed in or near a sugar factory, the "Gondang Winangoe' in the village of Djatinom, near Klaten. That plant still exists.

During the colonial war the complete group of my father was moved to Yogyakarta, except my father himself who had to stay behind because he was such a good cook. He became the cook of the Tiger Brigade. In the end he was killed June 27, 1949, probably near Ambarawa. He is buried at the military cemetery in Tjandi, near Semarang. His grave is still there.

When that group of veterans went to Indonesia in 1977, they naturally visited several places where they had been stationed as a soldier. And so they came to the sugar factory. A man and a woman who worked there, a fraternal twin, came up to them and asked if they knew Jan de Boer, a cook of the 5.5 RI. They told that he was their father and that they wanted to meet him.

One of the veterans indeed knew Jan de Boer, and he was shocked. He thought: "Oh dear, John was married in the Netherlands, and now we have this situation! With suddenly two of his children running around here. He was so astonished that he completely forgot to ask their names. He did not even think of telling them that my father had died in 1949.

Years later, in 1995, I got in touch with the veterans group of 5.5.RI because I wanted to know more of my father's past. I never knew him after all. I came in contact with my fathers' mate, the butcher. Since then we talked occasionally and through him I found out more about my father. He told me that he had been a butcher in the army and that he worked a lot with my father. But all those years he did not dare to tell me about his meeting with the twins in Semarang who had been searching for my father. Maybe he wanted to spare my mother. He was silent all this time.

My mother deceased in 2008 and she never knew. Only recently, when the article about the Warlovechild Contact Day was published in Checkpoint, a few other veterans thought: children have the right to know that their father has other children. And so it happened that one of them told me the whole story recently. I then asked my uncle, the brother of my father, whether he knew anything. At first he refused to talk about it, but later we had a profound conversation. He knows nothing but the story sounds plausible. He himself has a fraternal twin, so maybe it runs in the family. It could well be so that the twins in Indonesia are indeed my father's. It all fits well.

That brother has always felt that something had happened between my father and a woman. Once my father had sent a picture home to his parents, writing: 'This is my washerwoman with my 'foster child', her daughter.' He wrote that the woman's name was Hannah. Much later I found the same picture in my dad's wallet when I was going through his old army stuff. Why would he have saved it if she was just an ordinary washerwoman to him? I think she was the mother of his children. And most probably he was transferred even before he knew that she was pregnant. And then he died and was never able to report anymore.

I'm not disappointed about my father. He was still young, 20 when he left and 22 when he died. I can imagine that a boy of that age, who is away from home for three years, starts something with a girl, even though he has a woman and child in a distant home.

I am just very disappointed that I only know now. In 1996 and in 1998 I went to Indonesia  with many veterans in an organized tour to visit my father's grave. He is buried in the military cemetery in Tjandi, near Semarang. If I had only known, I could have been looking for my half brother and half sister. And what about them? You hear the stories popping up about how difficult it is for children to accept that were abandoned by their father. But my father could not make himself heard, for he was killed. Maybe that is a comfort to them. And maybe, without knowing it, they live near the grave of their father. For all those years. I find that sad. Therefore I try to find them. So I can tell them myself: my father did not let you down on purpose.

But where should I look, how to start? The veteran to whom they presented themselves in the sugar factory does not have their names. I have nothing. I only know that they were working at the sugar factory in the 70s. Maybe they will read the call on this website some time. Because they know the name of their father, Jan de Boer. I've seen more calls on the website for men by that name. There must have been more around. But perhaps someone will recognize this story. And then in the end they will find the right one.

Do you possibly have a half brother or half sister in Indonesia, fathered by your own father during wartime in Indonesia? Or did your father ever tell you about this? Let us know! Contact us!