you?’
He had no memory of leaving the East Indies, going back to what his mother called the Homeland, back to Holland. It was 1946. He was three and a half years old and had only known life in a camp of one sort or another; the internment camp run by the Japanese on Sulawesi and then three displaced civilian camps run by the British and Dutch in the suburbs of Batavia.
His mother told him about it though, the journey, the perilous weeks at sea. They shared a narrow, windowless cabin with another woman and her two daughters – the daughters slept on a mat on the floor between the bunks; the youngest girl had whooping cough and gasped for breath all night. Harper slept on his mother’s bunk. She pushed him against the wall and lay on the outside, to keep him away from the whooping girl. Like all the children, he had had his head shaved before embarkation to stop the lice and scabies spreading and at night, his scalp scratched his mother’s arm. ‘You’re prickling my arm,’ she would whisper to him in the dark, and they would both giggle together, then lie awake listening to the whooping child. ‘Still, at least you don’t have diseases,’ she would say, after a while, stroking his stubble.
He remembered none of this himself, but later, when they had moved to Los Angeles and he had acquired an American stepfather and a baby half-brother, his mother would take him on one side and talk about their life together in the camp and the long journey back to Holland. She liked to do this when she had had a fight with his stepfather because it was something only she and Harper shared. ‘Weeks and weeks on end,’ she would say, ‘just you and me, baby boy, on a boat crammed full of people who were running out on their lives so far. You slept in my arms every night, you and your prickly head.’ At this, she would throw a glance at her new husband, or at the doorway through which he had recently departed, as if to say, this important thing happened before you, it excludes you, and don’t you forget it.
He and his mother spent only eighteen months in Holland before emigrating to America – long enough to find out that she was not eligible for an army widow’s pension even though his father had been decapitated by the Japanese while in the service of the Dutch Colonial Army. Harper’s father had been half Dutch, half Indonesian, an Indo, which made Harper – or Nicolaas, as he was called back then – an Indo too. You needed to be all white to be white but only a small bit brown to be brown. ‘Your papa wasn’t Dutch enough for you and me to get the money, baby boy,’ his mother said, ‘but he was Dutch enough for the damn Japs to cut his head off.’ She said that kind of thing when she had been drinking. The damn Japs had cut his father’s head off and put his mother in a camp and as he had been inside his mother at the time, he’d had no choice but to go along.
He had no memory of the camp either – no direct memory, in any case. But his mother talked about it a lot when she was drunk or angry or both, which meant she talked about it for a substantial proportion of his early childhood. She told him the same stories often enough for them to form pictures in his head – they became his own memories even though he remained outside them, as if he had been there, watching his mother’s life before he was born. ‘It was 1942, baby boy, but the Japs made us call it 2602, can you imagine? They even said the sun rose when it did in Tokyo. You got beaten if they caught you speaking Dutch.’ In the pictures in his head he saw himself as a brave toddler, asking for food in Dutch, a massive Japanese soldier taking a stick to his back. Making up memories from the seeds of his mother’s stories was, after all, a lot more interesting than actually having them. Through these stories, he could remember what it was like for her to be pregnant with him in an internment camp, standing in a queue with her mess tin and
He had no memory of leaving the East Indies, going back to what his mother called the Homeland, back to Holland. It was 1946. He was three and a half years old and had only known life in a camp of one sort or another; the internment camp run by the Japanese on Sulawesi and then three displaced civilian camps run by the British and Dutch in the suburbs of Batavia.
His mother told him about it though, the journey, the perilous weeks at sea. They shared a narrow, windowless cabin with another woman and her two daughters – the daughters slept on a mat on the floor between the bunks; the youngest girl had whooping cough and gasped for breath all night. Harper slept on his mother’s bunk. She pushed him against the wall and lay on the outside, to keep him away from the whooping girl. Like all the children, he had had his head shaved before embarkation to stop the lice and scabies spreading and at night, his scalp scratched his mother’s arm. ‘You’re prickling my arm,’ she would whisper to him in the dark, and they would both giggle together, then lie awake listening to the whooping child. ‘Still, at least you don’t have diseases,’ she would say, after a while, stroking his stubble.
He remembered none of this himself, but later, when they had moved to Los Angeles and he had acquired an American stepfather and a baby half-brother, his mother would take him on one side and talk about their life together in the camp and the long journey back to Holland. She liked to do this when she had had a fight with his stepfather because it was something only she and Harper shared. ‘Weeks and weeks on end,’ she would say, ‘just you and me, baby boy, on a boat crammed full of people who were running out on their lives so far. You slept in my arms every night, you and your prickly head.’ At this, she would throw a glance at her new husband, or at the doorway through which he had recently departed, as if to say, this important thing happened before you, it excludes you, and don’t you forget it.
He and his mother spent only eighteen months in Holland before emigrating to America – long enough to find out that she was not eligible for an army widow’s pension even though his father had been decapitated by the Japanese while in the service of the Dutch Colonial Army. Harper’s father had been half Dutch, half Indonesian, an Indo, which made Harper – or Nicolaas, as he was called back then – an Indo too. You needed to be all white to be white but only a small bit brown to be brown. ‘Your papa wasn’t Dutch enough for you and me to get the money, baby boy,’ his mother said, ‘but he was Dutch enough for the damn Japs to cut his head off.’ She said that kind of thing when she had been drinking. The damn Japs had cut his father’s head off and put his mother in a camp and as he had been inside his mother at the time, he’d had no choice but to go along.
He had no memory of the camp either – no direct memory, in any case. But his mother talked about it a lot when she was drunk or angry or both, which meant she talked about it for a substantial proportion of his early childhood. She told him the same stories often enough for them to form pictures in his head – they became his own memories even though he remained outside them, as if he had been there, watching his mother’s life before he was born. ‘It was 1942, baby boy, but the Japs made us call it 2602, can you imagine? They even said the sun rose when it did in Tokyo. You got beaten if they caught you speaking Dutch.’ In the pictures in his head he saw himself as a brave toddler, asking for food in Dutch, a massive Japanese soldier taking a stick to his back. Making up memories from the seeds of his mother’s stories was, after all, a lot more interesting than actually having them. Through these stories, he could remember what it was like for her to be pregnant with him in an internment camp, standing in a queue with her mess tin and
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