I created the artwork ‘Broken Body’ in 2010. This process helped me shed the heavy burden of this event and gain an understanding of my father’s sorrow and unresolved emotions, which he himself couldn’t process, and which we, as his descendants, unconsciously carried with us. By staring the beast in the eyes, I can finally leave it behind.
The letter: “The father who lost his soul in the Dutch East.
has been publicized by the NOS on 27 Dec 2009″!
My father was nineteen years old in 1946 when he was called up for military service. The Netherlands needed soldiers to participate in the war of independence in Indonesia. The Dutch soldiers were supposed to bring order and safety after the Japanese surrender and make every effort to maintain Indonesia as a colony. They called it ” Politionele Acties: A Historical Perspective on Dutch Military. Not knowing what lay ahead and loyal to the Netherlands, my father went. Under the pretext of participating in police actions, my father found himself in a war for which he was unprepared. My father returned unharmed. It was much later that I learned to take that literally.
My father didn’t marry until his forties, and we were born in the 1960s. When we were still young children, we would occasionally look at his marine badges in a box, along with his photos. We’d ask him about them, but he never said anything, and we thought it was some kind of sports competition. We were too young to understand what had happened there. He passed away at the age of 58, and my two sisters and I were thirteen, seventeen, and nineteen years old at the time.
The family years we spent with him were marked by his powerlessness. For us, it was normal, part of who my father was. He was indifferent to me and my sisters. There was an eerie kind of threat that emanated from him. I remember him as being depressed, apathetic, and panicky. I avoided him wherever possible. When we called on him for the slightest thing, he would panic and swing his big hands wherever he could. Most of the time, or actually, always, he would miss and become even angrier. He missed because he was physically unsteady and often vulnerable. When it was slippery outside, we had to go and get my father from work because, at around 50 years old, he couldn’t stand steadily on his own. He drank a lot, which made him even more irritable and unpredictable. All of this was part of my father, and when he passed away, there was a kind of relief that we no longer had to bear his burden. It was called “Tropenkolder,” the madness that men who returned from Indonesia deranged. We never knew it was Tropenkolder or what it was. It was not a conscious part of our lives. It was never discussed in our family, certainly not from the outside. Nowadays, you would call it post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which my father suffered from, and it is recognized, and treatment is provided for veterans who return damaged from military missions. Missions, none of which can even remotely compare to the intensity of the war in Indonesia.
The price our family paid is indescribable. My mother turned away from my father because she couldn’t bear his suffering. She took care of him until the end, but the price she had to pay to keep his love was too high. As a child, I was left to myself, with a father in dire need of help, a need we couldn’t come close to meeting. Help, however, that you give to your father as a child, from a naive intuition, and beyond a limit that is humanly possible. Besides, you survive in your own way. I survived by mocking him, provoking a reaction, then jumping away and escaping his large hands with tension and adrenaline. Always, always, but always, I stayed away from him because he was dangerous. During summers, I spent time with my friends on the street. In winter, I stayed indoors, depressed, frequently sick, and delighted with the first rays of sunshine that indicated I could go outside again.
My father fell ill and passed away. An old man of 58, broken, his soul lost in Indonesia and unreachable for those who loved him. In hindsight, he was broken long before he married my mother, already unreachable for those who loved him. My mother passed away even younger, at 52, much too young. The inability that preceded that is largely rooted in Indonesia, through my father.
Only recently has the full impact of his time in Indonesia become clearer to me. The family I grew up in bore that burden. My childhood was marred by it. Both my parents succumbed to it, and their inability became a part of us. Fortunately, my sisters and I are strong enough to carry our own lives, but the struggle for survival has been ongoing for a long time and is still partially fought daily. Now, after many years, insight is bringing back the pain. And the pain is turning into anger. Anger at so much that was left unspoken, so much that was unspeakable. Anger at the concealment of what really happened in Indonesia, what my father and all the other Dutch soldiers had to do and did. Anger at the sanitized narrative of our war that was told in the Netherlands, at the denial of the true face of the Indonesian war, and at the widespread pressure to maintain a superficial image of our Indonesian war long after 1949. The Dutch state still has a role to play in giving a rightful place to our Indonesian war in the image we have of our country, the country my father fought for. It has a role to play in finding a place for that struggle in our hearts, so that our hearts can finally find peace. My father, my children’s grandfather, was loyal to the Netherlands by fighting in Indonesia as a marine, defending his number. He fulfilled his duty. This stands in stark contrast to the pain and incapacity I grew up with as a result. The least that can be done is to ensure recognition. And true recognition can only come about when the pain can also be fully visible. Part of that pain is not just the struggle, the unnecessary nature of the war, but also the cruelties and the shame that resulted from it. To this day, much needs to happen before full recognition of the struggle, pain, and shame surrounding our Indonesian war can find its place in the full light of the Netherlands today. My father, my mother, my sisters, and I deserve that recognition. And the Netherlands has the right to confront its own pain.
My father was nineteen years old in 1946 when he was called up for military service. The Netherlands needed soldiers to participate in the war of independence in Indonesia. The Dutch soldiers were supposed to bring order and safety after the Japanese surrender and make every effort to maintain Indonesia as a colony. They called it “political action” at the time. Not knowing what lay ahead and loyal to the Netherlands, my father went. Under the pretext of participating in police actions, my father found himself in a war for which he was unprepared. My father returned unharmed. It was much later that I learned to take that literally.