Draft from: 2009-03-10 12:14:02

My father came to Amsterdam to see me in July 2002, it was his last visit. During this visit he told me about his future plans now that he was retired; he still had so many dreams and wishes. Since my brother had finally moved out of the house about 18 years well past the expiry date, my dad had a room to himself that he intended to change into his hobby room. He’d been building part of a wooden ship with tiny sails and ropes that he wanted to finish. When I asked him about Indonesia and if he had plans to go back, he told me he wanted to study Japanese again, he’d enrolled for a course which was quite odd considering his background.

My uncle has been digging -for at least the last thirty-five years- in the Indonesian and Dutch censuses which traced all the way back to a royal Indonesian blood line at the time of the Dutch East India Company [1602]. I have a copy of our own crest and a full report on dates, names, old tales, myths, mysteries and stories that are part of this colourful history. My kakek [grandfather] was a wealthy man, he owned quite a lot of land, the family had a huge house [which is still there, these days surrounded by skyscrapers] and separate quarters for the servants to live. My dad even had his own babu who would feed him and look after him all day.

During the Japanese invasion in WWII my dad, his mum and sisters, had been captured by Japanese soldiers and sent to a prison camp for the next three years. His father who was a border guard, had vanished some months earlier when the Japanese came to arrest and deport him. While my dad was in the POW camp he had to learn to read and write Japanese. Life in these camps was rarely discussed in our family ***, but many other horror stories have been published over the years. In 1947 my grandmother had to leave Indonesia and moved to the Netherlands with her three children during the Indonesian National Revolution.

Soon after she left her children with a foster family and went back to Indonesia to search for her husband and check the lists at the Red Cross each day. Altogether it took her a year to find him after he got rescued from one of the hell ships… I remember the day my dad proudly showed me a paper from the Dutch government stating that he received some kind of war compensation. To him it wasn’t about the money but about the acknowledgement. I never had another chance to ask him why he’d chosen to study Japanese again while the subject was directly linked to many painful memories and the main reason for leaving his home country.

I guess he somehow had found closure and was at peace with the past. He knew how to read, write and speak Japanese but I guess he wanted to brush up on these skills although he never stayed around long enough to actually finish the course…

*** I have many stories but some should stay within the family, others I might mention in a book one day: I don’t feel this blog is the right place to share these although they’re not a secret or anything. They’re personal stories, ones I should share face to face…

© Zesty Gal

© Zesty Gal