The story of veteran Bas about his daughter Rose

'A year ago I received a letter from the FIOM (organisation that helps reunite family members). My daughter was looking for me. That was a bolt from the blue. I was shaking in my seat, with the letter in my hands. Pictures and everything was in it. I was devastated. I knew everything was true, I recognized it all. It was so obvious, it was not necessary at all to ask for a DNA-test.

The story of mother A. about the sudden disappearance of her lover Bas

I worked as a nurse in the Navy Hospital in Surabaya. There I got to know B., a marine man who worked in the hospital. It was not exactly love at first sight. It has grown. You think: cute boy. I started to like him. We started dating. Eating together, dancing in the Marines canteen. Eventually nothing more than that, it was just fun. I got pregnant. That was how it went in those days, getting pregnant was part of the risk. But suddenly he was gone.

Love in wartime. During the colonial war in Indonesia 1946-1949, Dutch soldiers maintained extensive contacts with Indonesian girls. Often they fathered children as a result of their ‘war romances’. Many of these warlovechildren never met their fathers. They kept looking for them all their lives and would like to get in touch. Is there any family in the Netherlands? Fathers also decide, sometimes after sixty years, to search for their withheld children. And children of Dutch marriages may want to meet their unknown Indonesian half brother or half sister.

Are you looking for a father, warlovechild, half brother or half sister? Or are you curious to read the stories of others?

See the quests in Your Search or start a quest yourself. In Information you can read how to undertake a personal search yourself. For stories about love and war, go to:

Warlovechildren in the Netherlands | Warlovechildren in Indonesia | Daddy Soldiers |
Family & kin | Soldiers Sweethearts in Indonesia |
Soldiers in love | Persevering lovers

Dear readers and users,

We, the three founders of the project ‘Warlovechild’, will have to finance the maintenance of this website Warlovechild.org.nl out of our own pockets from January 2013 onwards.

If everyone who cares about the project helps us to pay the necessary expenses, we can keep this website online.

How can you help us financially?

The History Online Audience Award is awarded annually to the best historical site of the past year.

OUR WEBSITE ended IN THE TOP-10 OF AUDIENCE FAVORITES

Tuesday 12 February the final winner will be announced. We thank you all for your support.

The 80 minutes documentary Tuan Papa (or: Sir Daddy), loaded with touching stories and breathtaking archive material, is available on dvd with English subtitles.

Dear Father, if you are still alive, please read the following notice:

Your blood flows through my veins. Maybe we are lookalikes, maybe not
You abandoned me, cold and in poverty. Now, years later, we surely are different in our attitude:
I will never leave my descendants like you did.
Probably you don’t feel remorse. That’s the reason why I can not carry your name

Warlovechild José has found her father. It indeed appeared to be the Dutch veteran who was detected in 2009, but denied any possibility of being the father. A DNA test in November 2012 finally gave certainty. Two weeks later José and her husband were permitted to visit her father. His wife and daughter were also there. In the photo albums of her fathers military period in the Dutch Indies José recognized her mother on several pictures. José: “I am so relieved! My mother has spoken the truth. That is very important to me. Perhaps this was the one and only meeting with my father, I don’t know. It is now up to them to get in touch with me another time. But my quest is completed. This gives a tremendous peace of mind.”

You can read a report of José's quest on this website: ‘Another happy end of a search?’.

You can also read Jose’s complete story on this website: Category ‘Warlovechildren in the Netherlands’. Title: ‘The only thing I know for sure is that I’m a child of a Dutch soldier’.

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.

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.