by Sheldon A. Krancher On September 1, 1939, the world changed. My world changed. I wasn’t born yet, but on that day my father was born. He was born Jan Adolf Krancher to his parents Ludwig Krancher and Henriette Krancher. He was the second of three children born in Malang on the island of Java…
by Jane Vogel Mantiri War is hell. My parents survived two wars: World War II and the Indonesian National Revolution that followed. Although those wars ended, my parents’ trauma never did. This story is dedicated to my parents. I was my parents’ only daughter. My father was a brave, strong, and loving man who lived…
by Astrid Berg, author of Mixed Bood: Reconciling My Colonial Family’s History in the Dutch East Indies. In August while visiting The Hague and riding my bike, I came upon the Indisch Monument in de Scheveningse Bosjes (large park in The Hague) near Madurodam. I had been there many times before. This time I had…
“Who was in which lifeboat?” A mission by Peter Versteeg to find out which of the three remaining lifeboats his father traveled in — as one of 116 survivors of the sunken “Poelau Bras” — and who were in the other two lifeboats? www.poelau-bras.nl (To translate this website from Dutch to English: Go to Google…
by Astrid Berg, PhD During childhood, I had little connection to my Indonesian roots. I rarely heard Maleis (Malay) or Javaans (Javanese) spoken. I only had a slight relationship to Indo/Indische customs and culture. Both my parents appeared European. My mother is Dutch, and the Indonesian influences were subtle in my Indo father. I was…
By Ronny Geenen (IndoWorld) Roots in the Dutch East Indies My youngest sister Peggy Geenen was born in Padang, in the former Dutch East Indies, during World War ll in 1943. Over 50 years later, in 1996, she, her friend Jaap, and six others decided to take a trip through the islands Sumatra and Java,…
A Search for the Truth Interview with Thomas Watson by Patricia Teunisse, Secretary of The Indo Project. Also published in Moesson International. On October 31, 2021, The Indo Project and Moesson attended the Netherlands premiere of The Past Ended on Mango Street. The documentary is the vision of Thomas Watson, who narrates the film and…
by Maureen Welscher The Bombing of Pontianak When I was 8 ½ years old, I lived in Pontianak, the capital of Borneo, Indonesia. On the morning of December 19, 1941, I visited a friend who lived opposite the military barracks. We sat in the lounge facing their barracks. We heard planes, which was a rare…
Speech: Inez Hollander, Photos: William Lee, January, 2020, San Francisco, CA, USA On January 13th, 2020, Antonie Heystek (sergeant in the Dutch East Indies Colonial Army and member of the militia in Eastern Java during WWII), received a posthumous Mobilization War Cross from Consul General Gerbert Kunst at the Dutch Consulate in San Francisco. The…
By Jason A. Dixon, grandson Name: Richard E. Coert Born: October 5, 1922, Dutch East Indies Died: October 17, 2003, California, USA POW: Burma-Siam Railway Richard E. Coert was born in 1922 in what is now Indonesia, where he grew up. He dreamed of becoming a pilot in the Dutch air…