The only thing I know for sure is that I’m a child of a Dutch soldier

I was born in 1950 in Central Java, Semarang. My mother worked as a kitchen help in the military barrack. She was given board and lodging there, so I guess she was there day and night. And my father was a serviceman and worked as a cook. In that kitchen, they came into contact with each other. Did they spend long evenings together, or was their contact just like an afternoon snack? Was it a longer relationship? I do not know. However, I do know that I was the result.

I have no idea whether my father was still in Indonesia or perhaps even back in the Netherlands when I was born. But he knew about my existence. He knew my mother was pregnant because she continued working in the kitchen.

They once prepared chicken together. My mother was superstitious, like all Indonesian people. And she thought my father was not allowed to cut pieces of chicken legs in the presence of a pregnant woman. That was not tolerable in Indonesia. She was afraid I would be born handicapped. And my father cut off those legs of that chicken anyway. My mother’s fear became reality: I miss some of my toes and fingers, which are grown together. My mother believes my father is to blame, because he prepared that chicken while she was pregnant.

After my birth, my mother moved to Jakarta to work there, and I grew up living with my grandmother.
On my fourth, my mother brought me to the orphanage in Semarang, the Franciscan Sisters. I cried terribly, I wanted to go back home with my mother. I knew that I had no father, but I still thought it was strange that I had to stay in the orphanage while I had a mother who could take care of me.
But my mother could not take care of me, and I was the child of a Dutchman, a soldier, so that was inexcusable in Indonesia. And there was also the handicap of my hands. So my mother thought it was not a good idea to bring me up in Indonesia, being a white disabled child of a Dutch soldier. My mother actually wanted to hide me in some sort of way, that’s how I see it. She has therefore decided to abandon me. I think my mother had conflicting feelings about it. Maybe she really wanted to have me, but on the other hand, she had done something wrong in the eyes of her peers, by having contact with a Dutchman.
Maybe she also did it for my own good, because she thought I would have a better future in the orphanage.

Sometimes my mother came from Jakarta to the orphanage in Semarang with a treat. But she was never allowed to stay too long, because the nurses said I was starting to get whiny if I saw her too long.
Eventually, my mother married a Javanese man. They had a son when I was already 10 years old, I think. My brother sometimes came along with my mother to visit me in the orphanage. But her husband never came along. So I don’t know the father of my half brother either.
In the orphanage I got my current name, Margaretha Maria Jose Kerry. I was called Jose Sukini when I was born, but in the orphanage they thought it was better to give me a different name. Kerry in Javanese means that I'm left behind by my father. That is now my surname.

My grandmother lived in the village near Semarang. Once a month and during holidays I was allowed to go to my grandmother. She was not very wealthy, so it actually was a convenience for her that I lived in the orphanage. She didn’t have to take care of me or financially support me.
Every time I arrived at my grandmother, the children in the village called me names, because I was a child of a Dutchman. ‘Londo’, they yelled. That meant ‘Dutch’ or ‘white kid’. You can compare it with our insulting terms for German people because of the war, such as ‘filthy sleef’. It was the way the people there looked at me. I also thought it myself: I was the child of a foreign Dutch soldier who was an enemie at that time. Of course I attracted attention with my white colour between all those brown coloured kids. Actually I'm as Indonesian as everybody, but they looked at me as if I was a Dutch kid, because of my skin colour.

The orphanage itself was actually a pretty good place to stay. I had quite a nice time there. Of course, life in the orphanage was more strict than living outside the gateway. The girls who lived outside the school had for example the possibility to go to town with their parents. I sometimes felt jealous of those girls: they had a father and a mother, they could go outside and go out at night. We were not allowed to do all that. And everything we did wrong was immediately punished. For us it was just our usual way of living. Children had no right of speaking, in those days. But it was not a bad time for me.
In the orphanage were many children like me, children from Dutch soldiers and Dutch people who lived in Indonesia. There were only a few purely Indonesian children in the orphanage. In my memory, all the children living there had Dutch names.

Even when we got older, we were not allowed to go out alone, because the nurses thought that was dangerous for us. We had to walk in groups or go to the market with a small group of children. Never walk around alone when you’re a Dutch kid! That was the time of Sukarno, the time of the mentality that all Dutch people had to leave. I didn’t understand it at that time. We were protected in the orphanage, I've never lived in fear. But outside the walls of the orphanage it was dangerous for us.

During the holidays I received gifts from the Netherlands. A box of chocolates, Palmolive soap, face flannels or handkerchiefs... I didn’t know from whom it was or where it came from. I always felt that my father had something to do with it, but when I asked questions to the sisters, I didn’t get any answers. There were several children who received packages from the Netherlands. Annette, for example, received an expensive doll. Maybe her father had more money to spend. I was very jealous at her, because she got a beautiful doll and a little chair, and I got soap and face flannels. In Indonesia we don’t even use face flannels. My mother later told me that my father in the beginning had sent us money. But only the first three months. After those months he stopped sending money.

When I was thirteen years old, I once secretly snooped around in the office of the head nurse. The head nurse always had dinner at six o'clock, keeping her door open. I sniffed around in the cabinet with dossiers. In that time, I was really occupied with the question why I had a mother but not a father. When I looked at the other children, who lived outside, I saw that they had a mother and a father. So I thought: is there something wrong with me? In my dossier I read that I was an illegitimate child of someone called Jan Swartberg. I asked the sisters what that meant. They gave me detention-work instead of an answer.

I was fifteen when I left Indonesia and went to the Netherlands, in 1965. The nurses had arranged it. The situation in Indonesia was very bad for Dutch people and children at that time. My mother had given the nurses permission for my departure. She briefly came by to say goodbye. It really was a quite cold goodbye. That was the last time I spoke to her for a very long time.
I came to the Netherlands along with several other children from the orphanage, and the nurses. It was a very severe winter. And there we were, standing in our summer clothes. At first I really liked it when I heard we would go to the Netherlands. It felt like an adventure, especially going by plane. But shortly after we arrived, we realized that we could not go back to Indonesia. The homesickness began soon after our arrival. I cried for months, because I wanted to return to Indonesia.

We went to a shelter house in Zutphen, and from there we moved to an orphanage in Herpen. I have lived there until my 17th or 18th. After that we were placed in foster homes, and I moved to my own place when I was 21.

Once in the Netherlands I lost contact with my mother. But I missed our connection. When I was out with friends, they could eventually go home to their parents. I could not.
In 1973 I went to Indonesia to look for her, and to find out more about my father. When I finally met her, I thought she didn’t look like me at all. She was a real Javanese little woman. But I recognized her immediately.
After that I started to save more money to visit Indonesia more often, in order to meet my mother, and to find out more about myself and my father. I met an Indonesian man who had worked with my mother and father in the barracks kitchen. He told me that my father and mother got to know each other in Pamotan in East Java. My father was assigned to the 5th company, 37 supposition, R.I. battalion. He was chief cook, chef de cuisine. He arrived in Java in 1948 and left the country in 1950. According to the man, the friends of my father were called Bernhard, Kas van der Wiel, Henk and Jan. He also told me that my mother was six months pregnant when my father left her.

Later in life I became to understand more about my mother's problems, and so I have started to forgive her. She actually had a more difficult time than I had. As a child I had blamed her that she had sent me to the orphanage. But later I understood. I looked different than the other children. That was a more important factor than being poor. She wanted to begin a new life, without the constant accusations that she had done something wrong.
I actually blame my father more. For him, everything was easy. He surely thought it was just a nice experience, an adventure, while being here as a young soldier. But of course I don’t know what the reason was of leaving my mother. My mother never talked about it. She only said: "That's too long ago." Or: "I just slept with your father and you were the result. That’s all." And another time: "He is a tall man with dimpled cheeks, just like you." But for Indonesian people, all Dutch people are tall.

I have searched for my father a very long time. I typed all variations of his name into Google. Swartberg, Zwartberg, Zwartenberg. I had a name, Jan Swartberg, but that could easily be misspelled. My mother could not read and write, so she could have misunderstood his name at that time.
There is a family in Almere, which has a feeling with cats. The family is called Zwartberg. I love cats. The website of the internet says they love cats too. But I didn’t dare to contact them. I wouldn’t know where to begin. "Hi, I'm Jose Kerry, and I want to ask you something." I would scare them to death. No, I don’t dare it.

I'm not looking for my father anymore, because I’m afraid of the result. Does he want me or doesn’t he feel like hearing from me? You don’t know what a man like he might be thinking. Maybe he will think I only search contact to receive some money from him. And suppose he would have a family ... That's why I stopped searching. And the nurses here weren’t of any help. But sometimes when I see an old man, I think, oh, maybe it’s my father. Or at Liberation Day on TV, when I look at those old men, I think: maybe he is sitting right there with them? I was once in a taxi in Utrecht. And then I saw that the taxi driver had the same disability as me. I thought, ‘oh, maybe you’re a part of my family.’ I was afraid to ask him. But the question keeps running in my head, though.
And why has my father never looked for me? He knew I existed. Such things I would like to know. I would like to see him once. Or I would like to hear something about him. If I look like him in some way, for example. That's all I really want to know. But it’s actually fine this way. It doesn’t bother me any longer. I was fathered a war zone. My mother slept with a stranger. That has happened and I must just learn to live with that idea. I don’t feel like I’m miserable, but it would have been nicer if things had gone differently. Actually the only thing I know is that I’m a child of a Dutch soldier. The other things in my life are part of my own accomplishments.

(Text based on an Oral History Interview with Jose Kerry by Annegriet Wietsma, 2009)

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