Your father was a friend of mine…

Jan’s father was encamped as a Dutch soldier in the area of Semarang. Jan’s mother worked in the kitchen barracks and as a washing woman. She fell immediately for the tall Dutchman; he was attractive and charming. After a year Jan’s mother got pregnant, but because of a sense of shame for her environment, she left her village to go to Jakarta. There she completed her pregnancy, and gave birth to Jan.
After the childbirth she returned to Semarang. But Jan’s father had already left, to an unknown destination, without having seen his own child. Jan’s mother went to the barracks. From someone in the barracks she received the full name and the home address in Holland of her soldier lover.

Too dangerous

Jan's mother took up her work in the barracks again. An old lady in the kampong was looking after the little Jan when his mother was at work. When Jan was only two years old, his mother brought him and his younger half brother - who was also a child of a Dutch soldier who left Indonesia to go back to Holland - to a nearby orphanage of the Order of the Franciscans in Semarang. She thought it would be too dangerous for the boys to stay in the kampong, because of their light skin colour.

Jan stayed at the Franciscans Sisters orphanage until the age of six. The young boys and girls of that age shared the same orphanage section. After his 6th birthday, Jan moved to the boys section at the Franciscans Brothers. During primary school the boys were not allowed to go outside the gateway of the monastery, so Jan saw his mother very rarely. The monastery and orphanage had a strict regime, with a stringent daily schedule. It was only during secondary school that Jan was allowed again to go outside the building site, so he was able to visit his mother. His mother had got married with an Indonesian man in the meantime, with whom she had four children.

Danny Kay

Jan didn’t have a birth certificate and no officially registered name. When he arrived at the Franciscan Sisters he got a new, Dutch sounding name: Jan Dennie, named after the popular movie star Danny Kay. Nowadays Jan doesn’t remember his former Indonesian name anymore.
He never felt safe when he was outside the monastery gateway. The children outside the monastery kept yelling ‘londo’ at him: ‘White kid’. A term of verbal abuse. He was an outsider. However, looking back at his time at the Franciscan Brothers, he doesn’t consider his youth as bad. He had clothes, nutrition, accommodation, fine education, and he feels thankful for all that.
But despite having a lot of friends with whom he grew up with, it was nonetheless a lonely youth; without a mother, without a father, without intimate protection or emotional warmth and support. ‘Alone in the world,’ that’s how he felt.

Heading for the Netherlands

When the conditions got worse in Indonesia for people with Dutch blood, preparations were being made by the Brothers to let all the Dutch-Indonesian children emigrate to the Netherlands.
Jan had the chance to briefly say goodbye to his mother, the day before his departure. His mother was crying the whole time during his farewell. She gave him a photograph of his father as a young soldier. Moreover she gave him the name of his father, ‘Schuring’, and his former address in Denekamp in Twente.
Jan got on the plane, together with some of his mates, leaving his whole life behind. He was sixteen years old.

They arrived in January 1966 during a cold winter. They didn’t have any luggage with them. The only property they possessed was the outfit they were wearing. Short trousers, short sleeves. They had never worn any underpants or shoes before.
The white, snow covered world in which they arrived, was a complete surprise. Jan fell down within five minutes because of the slipperiness.
The first few months they got sheltered in a boarding house, and after that they moved to an orphanage. The orphanage was searching for foster homes during their stay. Eventually, Jan started to like the Netherlands. He and his friends were not called names anymore. The Dutch people accepted them more as a Dutch person than the Indonesian had accepted them as an Indonesian person.
However, the shame remained. Shame because his father had not wanted to acknowledge his existence, and shame because his mother had not wanted to take care of him.

Finding his father

Jan hadn’t seen his mother in years. He didn’t know anything about her, and he didn’t know anything at all about his father.
His Indonesian foster-mother started to search for Jan’s father. Eventually, she found out about father Schuring. She wrote him a letter. But mister Schuring denied his fatherhood and claimed that a friend of him was Jan’s father. Jan didn’t believe that. Why would his mother give him a photograph of another man, he wondered. And moreover, he had a picture of himself during the same age as the young soldier’s picture; they resembled enormously, just like two drops of water.
The sister of his supposed father interfered. She proposed to start an investigation, but Schuring didn’t want anything to do with it. He didn’t want any contact.
Jan was hurt so much that he didn’t search any contact ever since. He doesn’t know if his father is still alive, or where, or how. Jan says that his father can come to him if he feels like it, but Jan himself will never take the initiative again.

Contact with his mother

Eventually Jan got in contact again with his mother in Indonesia. There were a lot of things from his past about which she didn’t want to talk. Jan kept trying now and then to bring up the subject, but she only gave information very rarely. Nevertheless, Jan felt happy to have some family bonds again. A couple of years ago, his mother passed away.
However, he stays in touch with his Indonesian half brothers and their families.

(Text based on an Oral History Interview with Jan Dennie by Annegriet Wietsma, 2009)

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