ABSTRACT
I do not look for the enemy, I do not seek the Japanese, I simply try to find the father I missed so much.2
(Life story 2, born 1945, daughter of single Indisch mother and a Japanese father who
worked as an official for the army)
Introduction Imagine men going to war while at home their women fall prey to the enemy. Can we picture a more emotionally charged topic? During the Pacific War, most European couples in the NEI were forcedly separated by the Japanese. Men were imprisoned as POWs or in civil internment camps. Women were either interned with their children or had to make a living for their families outside the camps. Despite disapproval in both communities, some intimate relationships developed between Japanese men and Indisch women. Indisch was used to denote both Europeans who had settled in the NEI, and the Eurasians, the latter being regarded as Europeans before the war, but classified as ‘Asians’ by the Japanese. For political and emotional reasons, these relationships were controversial at the time, and remain so until today.
