Stories

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 Warlovechild Rika Jones.

'Until I was 21 I did not know better than that I was born in April 1948 in Semarang, Java, as a child of mother Menkel. Only when I went to emigrate to America from the Netherlands an older half-sister told me that I’m actually born in Padang on Sumatra, as a child of a Chinese mother and a Dutch soldier. My biological mother had three Chinese children and I looked so different, that she was forced to give me away.

The story of Gerda de Haan about her half-sister Edwina in Indonesia

Out of curiosity and fun, we googled my father’s name, and while surfing, we arrived at the site of the December 7th Division. Just by coincidence. To our surprise there was a call from a certain Edwina who was looking for her father, Eddie de Haan. Our father! We really needed some time to recover from the shock. The call was one year old, but we still tried to contact. The call was in Dutch, so we did not even know if she lived in the Netherlands or Indonesia ...

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.

One evening I came home after a night out with my younger sister. My mother was still awake, sitting in the living room. I would soon get married, and she had decided to tell me the truth: I was fathered by someone other than my father. My biological father was a Dutch soldier who had been stationed in Indonesia. I was 24 years, and knew of nothing until that moment.

My sister reacted immediately, without hesitation. "Come on, let's go find him!" But I responded very cool. I thought, ‘If he never looked for me all these years, why should I bother and go find him?’

My father once said to me when I was young: "There's something I want to tell you later, but that will come." At that time I thought: what will it be about, something with my grandfather or whatever? Twelve years ago, I was 45 years old, I came to visit my parents. They sat together at the table, my father and my mother. "Come on dad, tell it now," my mother said. And so the story finally came out. My dad faterhed two children during his military service in Indonesia two children. My mother knew all along. They have never ever talked about it with us, my sister and me.

At the age of 48 years, in 1996, Henk urgently needed to hand over his genetical family history because of possible complications following a serious car accident. Only then his younger brother confessed that Henk and his twin brother Vincent have a different, unknown father. Everything is described in a diary of the man they thought was their father. Until that unforgettable moment.

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.

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.

I know for a long time that I have a half sister in Indonesia. Once my father was very open about it when I was still living at home. With my mother it was different; she did not want to know too much about it, and still doesn’t. My father used to write many letters home to his parents. I've read almost all of them now. But nowhere he mentions  a daughter. I do not think anyone in the family knew.

The story of Willy's daughter and her father Bob de Kleijn (Cor in the Dutch Indies)