By Inez Hollander – June 3, 2013.
My mother strongly advised against it. Everyone in my family knew that her cousin, Harry, had seen horrors during the war in the Dutch East Indies that neither he nor his mother, ever talked about it in private or public. As a family, we just did not go there. Asking might mean opening the sewer. A truly legitimate argument for not asking was re-traumatization.
“What if it is too much,” my mother said. “You’re not a psychologist…”
Who was I anyway?
I was just curious after I realized that more than three generations of my family had lived in the Dutch East Indies, yet there were no stories, no family gossip, no picture albums, nothing, nada, or rather… just a strong attraction to Indonesian food which, when we ate it at home, in the Netherlands, felt like coming home. Yet, we hardly looked Indonesian or seemed to have any affiliation with that faraway country at the other end of the world. If it was talked about at all in school, we yawned, unaware of the blood-stained ties which bound us to the country of spice, coffee, rubber and Max Havelaar. Why did we know so little?
“What’s Harry’s address…” I asked my mom. Reluctantly, she emailed me his mailing address. Even though he lived a stone’s throw from where my parents had settled down, I had never met him, so I decided a hard-copy letter might be least intimidating. A letter he could toss in the fire, tear up in a thousand pieces or file away like his Indies childhood. A week later, there was a letter waiting in my US mailbox. “Let’s talk,” it said.
So we talked. For hours. And laughed. And cried tears we forgot we had in us.
And we talked more, via email. He unloaded his secret history and we bonded. The family memoir that I had started became Harry’s story and before I sent it to the publisher, I needed Harry’s consent.
“If he hates it,” I told my hubby, “I can’t publish it. It needs to be authentic. This story is too important for my family, and all those Indies and Indo families out there who have struggled with a similar, cross-generational silence.”
After reading the manuscript,Harry wrote me back promptly. “I read your manuscript and wept,” he said.
“In fact,” he continued, “it feels like I have been sitting inside a dark bunker my entire life, and finally someone came and opened it, and the light of love is falling in and warming me to the core.”
When I did my book signing in the Netherlands for the Dutch edition, I met Harry’s daughter for the first time. “You do realize,” she said, holding the book like a family heirloom, “that none of us knew my dad’s story and that I will read it for the first time in your book.”
Harry’s friends who had read the book would come up to him, hug him and tell him, “But Harry, we had no idea…” The book brought some love back in Harry’s life but more importantly, the recognition that what he had seen was real and no longer a fading memory to be swallowed up by his own mortality.
Needless to say, our relationship intensified and Harry’s emails became a daily occurrence.
I forwarded emails from readers. For readers who struggled with similar familial conspiracies of silence, the book became a tool, a conversation starter, an excuse to ask before it was too late to ask. I encouraged people to interview their relatives remembering the question I had asked Harry once: “So why,” I asked him, “Did you tell me your story?”
“Because you asked,” came his rather laconic reply…
When my father died in 2006, Harry had already become like a second father to me. Then when Harry died in 2012, I felt like an orphan for the first time, but I had no time to wallow in grief as I had inherited his story and now that he is gone, I will keep on telling his story until my dying day. I would suggest you, dear reader, do the same with the untold stories in your family. Harry’s story came late, much too late, but just in time to hand it on to the next generation. The Indies are no more, but the stories are not lost yet and descendants need to keep the flame alive, for the magic is in the memories, yet memories will only find a way into our lives if we ask and listen…
Pictured: The two girls (Joke and Willie Francken) who were murdered in ’45 during the Revolution in Surabaya. Clearly in happier times with driver Kassidin in the background. Taken on Kali Jompo, Jember (East Java)
© 2013 Inez Hollander, Ph.D.
ihollander@berkeley.edu
(author of Silenced Voices, Ohio University Press, 2008;
Verstilde stemmen en verzwegen levens, Atlas, 2009)
Dutch Studies, UC Berkeley
Inez Hollander, thank you so much for asking Harry.
I will buy your book!
My parents already passed away and left me with so many questions, although I asked them over and over again.
Love,
Toby
Dear Inez,
Thank you for encouraging me to keep on asking. I just came back from a three months pilgrimage in Indonesia. I visited the camps my mother had been in and the plantation she grew up in. Her camp experience during the war and than the camp experience during the revolution were the big elephant in the room. I went to Holland in March 2012 with the sole purpose to talk with my mother about the camps. It wasn’t easy and she was reluctant. But to be honest so was I. It wasn’t until I actually was in Indonesia and saw the places were she had been imprisoned that I started doing a lot of research. One of the things I found out was that as horrible and traumatizing the Japanese camps were, the Bersiap period was even worse. That was when all the hope disappeared, that was when her sense of belonging was taken away. That is when she learned that her father had been beheaded already at the beginning of the war. On my way back, I stayed for a few days in Holland to prices with my mother and brothers. I understand my mother so much better. Still, it is difficult to ask questions. It is difficult to break the habit of silence instilled in us from birth.
Thanks for reminding me to have courage.
mooi Inez. Ik heb net het boek van
Touching Inez! I just read the book ‘Surabaya’, written by Pauline Slot. The book also accounts of the dramatic events experienced by aunt Fré, Harry and the two girls. You probably know the book. Indeed, after reading it, I very much regretted I had never really got to learn Harry although I remember him as a very fine person.
Lieve Inez,
Ik ben nu zelf 72 jaar oud, maar ik leerde mijn vader pas kennen nadat hij werd vrijgelaten uit Japanse gevangenschap, mijn grootvader van moeders kant stierf daar.
Mijn moeder was in verwachting van mij, toen mijn vader werd gevangen genomen, omdat hij voor onze regering daar werkte als Inspecteur van Politie, en dat ik hem vóór de oorlog nog nooit gezien had, heeft mijn jeugd er niet gemakkelijker op gemaakt, stel je voor dat je papa moet zeggen tegen een voor jou wildvreemde man.
De jaren van gevangenschap zijn noch door onze regering, noch door enig andere instantie ooit uitgekeerd, Nederland bestond het mijn vader te zeggen dat hij daar maar om moest vragen bij Soekarno, waar hij nooit voor heeft gewerkt en die hij hartgrondig haatte.
Hoewel hij nooit over zijn ervaringen vertelde, heeft hij de rest van zijn leven zelfs nooit een stap in een Japanse auto willen doen.
De laatste jaren van zijn leven merkten wij wel dat hij geesten achter het behang zag, ik wens niemand zo’n einde toe.
Mijn oudste zussen en ik hebben nog steeds last van de effecten van die tijd, mede daardoor hebben de meeste familieleden totaal geen contact meer met elkaar.
Bedankt voor je verhaal, ik denk, dat je er nog wel meer reacties op zult krijgen, en hoop ook, dat de door ons ondertekende petitie voor Angelina Jolie’s film nog veel meer medestanders gaat krijgen, deze periode mag en zal niet vergeten worden.
I did know how widespread the silence about those years in “kamp” were. We could talk about everything, and we did, but not the war years. My brother and I just knew that was a forbidden subject. And the time of the Indonesian war for independence was even worse. My mother shared a little bit, but not my father. We immigrated to America in 1958. Near the end of his life I asked my father how he came to be friends with a Japanese couple. He said that he realized that he could spend the rest of his life carrying hatred with him or let it go and move on. Turns out the Japanese friend was born in the USA and was in Japan when war broke out. Because he was American, he spent the war in a POW camp also. My grandfather and my father and his brothers all died too young. I blame the the years in “kamp.”