Stories

As a married young man I left as a military for the Dutch Indies in October 1946. But like so many of my buddies, my marriage in Holland could not withstand the distance in time and place. I asked for a ‘separation in the field’, as we called it, which was the normal procedure that would be arranged by the military authorities to make me a free man. But the procedure came to nothing. This brought me into a quandary when I met Noes, my new love, in 1948 at the monthly dance party at the barracks.

The story of son Jan Tigchelaar

Our story is the reverse of that of the Indonesian warlovechildren. When my father went to the Dutch Indies as a young soldier at the end of 1945, my sister and me were already born. Maybe my father met a girl overthere, because he has never come back to the Netherlands. My mother was left alone with two young children. I've never seen my father ever since.

As a soldier I was posted for driver work in the construction of a military airport near Tjililitan, near Jakarta, in mid-1949. I got to know a girl there. Her name was Anita or Wanita, I did not figure that out quite well. Our relationship only lasted two months. But it was very intense.

Nana had just been born when her father, the Dutch soldier Jack who was encamped in Indonesia, had to return to the Netherlands in 1949. "Take care of my sweet little daughter," he wrote his fiancée. But after a while the flow of letters dried up and the contact got broken. Only 45 years later Nana met her father for the first time.

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?’

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.

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.

A young Marine asks permission to marry his Indonesian 'sweetheart’. His commander is not amused and orders his immediate departure for Holland. The Marine leaves the barracks the day before his departure to join and unite with his love, but he never reaches her: he is arrested. During his imprisonment, between the cockroaches and mosquitoes, he desperately scratches a poem on the wall:

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.

A week ago, in August 2011, my mother called me with the words: "There is a child in Indonesia, from your father." She had just heard it from a cousin who was visiting her. I've always felt that there was something peculiar about my father’s military service period in Indonesia, and now it suddenly became a reality. It probably is a boy. Since this telephone call, I am looking for my half-brother.

The story of Dora and the search for her half-brother