My brother was so startled that he hung up the phone

About eight years ago my brother got a telephone call by a woman who was looking for our father. She said she was fathered by him when he was stationed in Indonesia as a soldier. My brother was so shocked, that he did not ask any further and stopped the phone call. But immediately thereafter he went to my father to ask about this matter. My father confirmed nor denied. He just said that he did not want to be remembered to those days in the army. And my brother had to promise that he would never talk about the phonecall while my father was alive. He was not even allowed to inform us, his sister and brother. My father made him promise that he would not try and figure out anything anymore. My brother promised.

My father is deceased a few years ago. And now the story finally ended up with us. My mother is still alive, we absolutely do not want her to hear anything about this. But my brothers and I decided to try and find the woman that called my brother. Because if the story is true, it means we would have a half-sister who must already be well into her sixties.

Photo album

I was never specially interested in the time my father served in the army during the colonial war in the Dutch Indies. And of course he has never given a hint that there would be a child. My father has a photo album of his Indies-time. When I browse it now, it is striking that there is a girl who comes back in many pictures. We have asked our aunt, a sister of my father, if she knew whether my father perhaps has had a girlfriend overthere. And she agreed right away. They have even kept writing letters when he was already back in the Netherlands, but it apparently bled to death. ‘She was from a wealthy family, you know’, knew my aunt. ‘And well educated. But he has not done anything indecent, he has been very careful’, she said. We have not told her that he might have fathered a daughter. My aunt is very old, and as long as we do not know for sure, we don’t mention it to her.

My brother has the same name as our father and when he received the phone call, he lived in the same place as my father in those days, Schoonhoven. So that may be the reason that this possible half-sister called my brother, perhaps in the belief that she was contacting my father himself. She must have heard my father's name and place of residence of her mother or family. Based on the information from my aunt and the pictures in the photo ablum, she is probably of Dutch-Indonesian descent. And it is even possible that she lives in the Netherlands nowadays. How else would she have been able to find and contact our family?

Blitar

My father served in the Guards Regiment Princess Irene. He departed from the Netherlands by boat on June 4, 1947. I do not know exactly when he came back home, but I think he served about three years, until sometime in 1950, I suspect. He has been stationed in many places, starting at Sabang, then in Semarang (July 1947), Surabaya, and many more smaller towns, as his photo album shows off. It could be that he's been the longest time in Blitar, on the south coast of East Java. There are certainly lots of photos taken in that place, and much of it is also with that girl on it. So maybe that is the place where his girlfriend lived and their daughter is born. On one of those pictures some people are standing together, and someone has written the text ‘one of the many families who sought our protection against the Tentara’. It seems the  girl that is so often photographed, is on that picture too.

This is the only information we have. But if it turns out that there is indeed a Dutch-Indonesian half-sister of ours, we are open to get to know her.

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