Warlovechildren in Indonesia

The story of Eduardine Geers (Ibu Ditty)

interviewed by Annegriet Wietsma, story written by Inge Manoch

In 2011 Ditty receives a birthday card from her aunt. Finally, finally, she sees for the first time a picture of the man who is her biological father, the Dutch military Eddy Geers. Why all this secrecy, why has it taken so long before Ditty cameto see this picture?

Nana had just been born when her father, the Dutch soldier Jack who was encamped in Indonesia, had to return to the Netherlands in 1949. "Take care of my sweet little daughter," he wrote his fiancée. But after a while the flow of letters dried up and the contact got broken. Only 45 years later Nana met her father for the first time.

The story of Tetty Geertruida Sahusilawane

“I visited the Netherlands twenty-one times. Friends of mine always said: “Why do you always go to the Netherlands? As if there is no other country to spend your holidays.” I did not care what they said. I have a personal mission. I am looking for my biological father.”

When we visit Tetty Sahusilawane on a wet Friday morning in February in Jakarta, she is awaiting us with the proverbial Indonesian hospitality and a table full of snacks and drinks. But according to herself, Tetty has so many Dutch habits that it seems as if she grew up in the Netherlands: she likes things like herring, wet cold, punctuality. Yet her only real bond are her origins: her unknown Dutch military father.

The story of warlovechild Lenny

While Lenny tells her story, every now and then her eyes fill with tears. Her house in Jakarta is full of memorabilia from the Netherlands: the famous Delft Blue kissing Volendam couple, the colored wooden tulips in a Delft Blue vase, a coffee cup with Amsterdam canal houses painted on it, Delft Blue plates on the wall with windmills or an Islamic text in Arabic script. Even the studio photo, shot in an old-fashioned Volendam kitchen in Volendam traditional clothes, is not lacking. But the looks of her own father are unknown to Lenny.

Josta Rumahlaiselan and Wilma Pattinama, both employees of the organization HALIN in Jakarta, grew up in Jakarta in the fifties and sixties. One of their fellow school girls was Betty. Betty was, so it turned out much later, the child of a Dutch soldier. Wilma: “She was so beautiful that everyone at our school called her ‘Elizabeth Taylor’.”

On a hot and rainy afternoon in February 2012, Jenny Dotulong and her husband receive us (Yanuar Siddhartha from Indonesia and Annegriet Wietsma from the Netherlands, who visits Jakarta for two weeks) in their hospitable house in Jakarta Pusat. Jenny, beautician, tells us her life story. The couple Dotulong married in 1969. From this marriage four children were born. Meanwhile, the family is also rejoiced with the birth of two grandchildren. But Jenny knows almost nothing about her own parents.

The story of John Sopaheluwakan and his sister Elly Hahijary

When I was  6, 7 years old, I lived with my mother and my two brothers near a military camp. Adrie Vermeulen, one of the soldiers stationed there, came around a lot on our door for a couple of weeks. And suddenly, after five weeks, he did not appear anymore. We asked his friend: "Where is Adrie?" “He’s gone”, he said, “he's back to the Netherlands.” Later we learned that my mother had become pregnant of my sister Elly. Father Adrie has never given a sign of life ever after.

Edwina was half a year old, when her mother left Bandung (Java) in 1950 to go to the Netherlands in search of the missing father, the Dutch military Eddie de Haan. Edwina will not see her mother back until 53 years later: mother Wanda stayed in the Netherlands and the young Edwina remained in Indonesia, where she grew up in foster care. It is Edwina's daughter Dinah who managed to complete the quest for the unknown father Eddie.

"Indonesian women with Dutch husbands were killed. My mother and many other mothers, have long kept this secret. Only much later, she dared to tell that she had a Dutch husband. "

The story of Elly Hoektini in Kudus, Java

The return trips to Indonesia and the reunion with the country in the seventies was a feast of recognition for many Dutch veterans who had been garrisoned in the Dutch Indies 30 years before. But for the men of 3-7 RI, who quietly enjoyed their holiday in the lounge of their hotel in Semarang, it was a confrontation with a call for recognition.