I have two birth certificates

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.

From Sumatra to Java

My biological mother was married to a Chinese man, who had disappeared during the war. She was alone with three children and moved in with her mother. She worked in the military hospital in Padang. Then she met that Dutch military and she got pregnant. After the delivery her mother said: “This child looks so different, you can not keep this child”. My mother begged her to be allowed to keep me for one more day. The day after my birth I was given away to the young stepmother of a colleague from the hospital, Maria Menkel, who already had had a couple of miscarriages and desperately wanted a baby.

The orphanage

Until my fifth year I lived with my parents Menkel. Then I had to go to the orphanage. The grandmother of the family had decided that way. She wanted me to get a western education. At home we spoke Dutch, and I could continue to do so in the orphanage, run by Dutch nuns. Also it was safer for me in the orphanage. I look very European, with brown eyes, a round face and a big Dutch nose. White children were bullied.

I lived in the orphanage until my tenth. I was comfortable there, with lots of girlfriends, and the sisters were sweet. Dientje Faessen was one of them, her story is also on the website. Each month we were allowed to go home one day. Althought I did like life in the orphanage, I always started crying when the day was over and we were brought back. I got a lot of love from my parents, and the closer we came to the gate of the orphanage on Sunday afternoon, back on the bike, the harder I cried. I prefered to be home!

Dangerous

My grandmother Menkel was a keen woman. My parents did not have the Dutch nationality. So I was registered in Semarang, the town where they lived, as Hendrika Carolina Joannes, daughter of her son Joannes, who had a Dutch passport. That’s how I got the Dutch nationality.

When I was ten, my grandmother decided that I had to leave for the Netherlands with the family of my uncle. In Indonesia life was getting worse for white people. I had to leave my mother, father and brothers, my grandmother, my friends in the orphanage. It was horrible. I had no relationship with that uncle and his family. We arrived in February 1958. Cold, with only summer clothes on our body. Wrapped in army blankets we went on the bus to Brabant. That first year I was terribly sad and completely in shock. The mother was not maternal, the father not paternal. He could not be trusted and could not keep his hands of me, just as an other man who lived with them.

For four years I've been through this awkward situation, until my grandmother, who had also come to the Netherlands, took me to a large family in Maastricht. The boarder who abused me, ended up in jail. I was fourteen. Shortly after I joined another family, where I lived for six years. That was not pleasant either, there were many strict rules and we were kept very short. The mother blamed me that I was abused as a teenager. I did not laugh anymore and was deeply unhappy. At the college a teacher noticed that something was wrong, and he helped me to get out and found a boarding school. And so I came to the nuns of the Holy Immaculata, twenty years old. They were very kind to me. I finished the college, and met a fine husband. When we shortly thereafter emigrated to the U.S., it felt like a relief that I could leave it all behind. Finally, as free as a bird!

My mother's name

I have two birth certificates: I was registered in Semarang as a natural daughter of that uncle Menkel, and one from three months earlier, my real birth, registered in the Chinese registry. I have seen these certificates for the first time when I was 55 years old. It had been hided in a suitcase on the attic of my half sister all those years. It says the name of my birth mother, Gho Bie Nio. The name of the Dutch military I do not know. I thought finding my biological parents would no longer make sense: the chance the might already have deceased was immense. I also never asked my mother Menkel about it, I did not want to hurt her.

I cried and cried

Through the stories of my friend Dien, and the website of War Love Child and the movie Tuan Papa (Sir Daddy), I now know that I am not the only one. I cried and cried when I saw that movie. Now I can return to my own memories and dig a path down to my past. I would really like to find my biological mother and father. Everyone wants to know his biological parents, isn’t it? Maybe I faint when I see them, no idea. The chance is very small to find them, it is almost impossible that they are still alive, but sometimes a miracle happens. I'm not religious, but I hope it's true that you can meet beloved ones, though it's in another life.'

Rika Jones (Hendrika Carolina Joannes)

Please also read the story of Rika's friend Dien Faessen: 'Two military fathers instead of one and an unknown half-brother', in the category Stories: Warlovechildren in the Netherlands.

Rika told her story to Annegriet Wietsma in June 2013.