When the enemy becomes your father…, the title of a lecture about the concealed descendants of Dutch soldiers in the Indies. Annegriet Wietsma gave this moving lecture in the context of the Month of History with the theme Friend &Enemy. Kennislink then put her to the test to close the Month in style.
Annegriet Wietsma is an independent film and documentary maker. In recent years, she has interviewed India veterans, their former loves and children. A forgotten group that has never been researched before.
You call them war love children. Why? “We thought about that for a long time. War child or soldier child did not cover the load; it was too general. The word war love child did not yet exist and because many of the spoken veterans and mothers left behind in Indonesia talk about this time with love, we have chosen this. And we needed a good URL for the corresponding website.”
Then why did you talk about the enemy during the lecture? Were Dutch soldiers seen like this in the Dutch East Indies? “Japan capitulated on August 15, 1945 and Sukarno declared the Dutch East Indies independent two days later. The Netherlands did not agree, but it was not until March 1946 that the first Dutch soldiers landed in Indonesia. At that time it was chaos there; there was a power vacuum. The Dutch soldiers who arrived were seen by the independence fighters as the occupier, but not necessarily by all Indonesians. Some simply hung out with them or were happy that the Dutch were back, others didn't.”
Landing of Dutch troops in Palembang, December 1, 1946
“And then there was the difference between Indonesians and Indo Dutch – or Indos, a mixture of the local population with the Dutch. They looked down on the Indonesians who were lower on the social ladder. Indian women wanted an Indo and preferably a Dutchman as a marriage partner. And besides that, they were young boys in uniforms, which has universal appeal to women.”
And how did 'our boys' look at the women there? “Since the time when the Dutch East Indies was a colony, there have been rumors about the women in the Netherlands. In the East, Dutch men often had native mistresses and maids were expected to do hand and span services in the bedroom. The Dutch took advantage of the Javanese culture:it prescribed servitude to men. Furthermore, the Indonesian women were known as beautiful. Compared to the Dutch women, they are more refined and graceful. And in the tropics they also dressed a lot more casually than we do here…”
Full expectation to India so… “Yeah, but don't forget that we're talking about young boys here. The soldiers were in their early twenties with testosterone raging through the body. You couldn't do much with that in the Netherlands, because sex before marriage was as taboo as anything. As green as grass, most boys left in search of adventure after World War II. In that first period, many war volunteers applied. They still had in mind that they would liberate 'our colony' from the Japanese occupier. When that stream dried up, conscripts were sent. It was not their choice for them to go to the Indies to fight.”
Did their dreams come true? “It was disappointing, the life of a soldier was hard. Walking patrols, standing guard, anxiety, stress, boredom. And then that heat in the tropics. Women were a welcome change. Often it was about plain sex, and prostitution was rampant. But in exceptional situations you fall in love faster, think of holiday loves. Two smiles back and forth and it's done. Moreover, the men considered that romantic sex 'safer', because infection with a venereal disease was always lurking. Many relationships arose between Dutch soldiers and local women of all ethnicities. Indian, Moluccan, Indonesian, Chinese women. Many different population groups lived on the islands and it was not only the Indies women who fell for the Dutch.”
From relationships come children… what did the military think? “Defence was not concerned about that at all. Pregnancies were seen as collateral damage. Sexual diseases, which were the great danger, according to the sources. Every two weeks the men had to appear on roll call, also known as the cock parade, to be checked for venereal diseases. And whoever showed it wasn't ready yet…”
“The only propagated cure for venereal disease was abstinence. And pray a lot. Condoms were not provided, as that would only encourage the soldiers to have sex. This is in contrast to, for example, the American army during the Second World War. Not that that helped because the condoms were thick and unpleasant, so they probably haven't been used much."
But once a father, what then? “The military discouraged marriages with the pregnant women. They did not want the Dutch boys to stay in the Indies and, in addition, a soldier with wife and child was entitled to more pay. Boys were transferred or put on a boat to the Netherlands. They had to forget their beloved with child. Once at home, the veterans kept silent about the Indies and nobody knew about the existence of their children.”
“Most quickly resigned themselves to the situation. A child was quite a shock and responsibility for those young boys. What else were they supposed to do in India? And what would their family say? Of the veterans we spoke to for this survey, only a few had been serious about their attempt to stay or return to the Indies. It just didn't help:very few children conceived in this way grew up with their Dutch father.”
How many children are involved? “We estimate between 3000 and 8000. This estimate was made on the basis of calculations of other numbers of war children:children of German soldiers during the occupation in the Netherlands, of Canadians and Poles during the liberation or of Americans in Vietnam. In the Netherlands, for example, a year after the liberation, 6000 children have already been registered without the name of the father. And the Canadians were only here for a few months, guess what. The 135,000 Dutch boys often spent three years or more in the East.”
What happened to these fatherless children in India? “We have spoken to dozens of war love children in both the Netherlands and Indonesia. Remarkably, half of them did not grow up with their mother. They were placed with family, offered for adoption or ended up in orphanages for Indos. Of the thousands of war love children, maybe about a hundred came to the Netherlands. But that is also a blow in the air.”
“The orphanages were safe enclaves, but outside it the whiter children had a harder time. The children who grew up in the kampong were often bullied and called names:'hey, child of the occupying forces!' or:'pale nose!' With their light skin, it seemed that they would have considerably fewer opportunities in the new Indonesian society. The mothers sometimes kept in touch with their children, but they were often looked at skewed. They usually did not say whether the Dutch father was military or not. There was and is silence on this subject, it is still taboo.”
How is it possible that these children have never been researched before? “In the first thirty years there was little talk at all about the so-called Police Actions. This changed when in 1969 a veteran first told about the horrors on television. Slowly it became a topic of discussion and historians and journalists dived into this period. But the veterans were silent about any children in the East. Their families in the Netherlands knew nothing about it and they wanted to keep it that way. This side of the story has never surfaced before.”
“For researchers it was a kind of blind spot:nobody named it so it must not have happened. But if you think about it, that's impossible. Where there are armies (ie young men), women become pregnant. So there had to be descendants. It is only very difficult to track them down because of the taboos, both in Indonesia and in the Netherlands. In our country it is less. It is very Dutch to have an interest group for every minority or victim, where experiences are shared. But this group had never sounded the alarm on its own.”
“The veterans are now old, if not already dead. They often don't feel like turning their family's lives upside down. The secret sometimes comes out after their deaths, when the family finds a photo in their father's coffin with a dark woman on his arm and a blond baby. Who could that be but his girl and child?” “The war love children themselves are usually those who actively look for their Dutch father. Or the Dutch children who suspect or know that their father has fathered a child:they go in search of their Indonesian half-brother or sister. This shows the universal need to want to know where you come from and who your family is.”
- Documentary The in-depth research and interviews with veterans, mothers and children in the Netherlands and Indonesia resulted in the impressive documentary Tuan Papa. (Mr. Father) delivered. Aired in 2010 as Other Times Special. (Hellwig Productions)
- Book Subsequently, the book Love in times of war was published by the same makers. Our boys and their hidden children in the East. (Annegriet Wietsma and Stef Scagliola, 2013).
The book is in the CPNB Top 20 Historical Books for History Month.
- Website More information about this subject and parts of the interviews can be found at www.warliefdekind.nl.
In order to bring the veterans and/or their descendants together, it is possible to place an (anonymous) call on the site www.warliefdekind.nl.