|
|
Ron Heynneman was born in Surabaya (Java), and raised in Makassar (Celebes, now Sulawesi). In 1942, the Japanese invaded the Netherlands East Indies and interned the family — his father and older brother in Pare-Pare; Ron, his mother and younger brother at Malino, and later at Kampili. There he met Jeanne-Marie van Diejen-Roemen, the heroine of this book.
Three and a half years later Australian troops liberated him, and the reunited family left for the Netherlands to recover. The family stayed there so the children could pursue their education in a secure environment.
After an engineer-in-training stage in the Netherlands and Sweden, he immigrated to Canada in 1953. Losing his job after the Canadian Government cancelled the development of the Avro CF-105 “Arrow”, he left for Chicago, where he worked on industrial and aerospace projects.
In 1964 he returned to Canada, and made Toronto his home. In 1966 he became a registered professional engineer, and in 1968 earned an MBA from the University of Toronto.
In 1972, he married Mireille Desjarlais from Montreal, a social worker by training, now a full-time writer. They live in Toronto.
In 1974, Ron met Jeanne van Diejen again in the Netherlands and persuaded this gifted raconteur to publish her memoirs. Ron crossed the Atlantic almost every year to record these memoirs. Partly written down and partly conveyed by word of mouth, they were then translated into English and set into a larger historical context. He then chose to tell her story the way it was told to him - complete with Malay (Indonesian) words and expressions that the Dutch of the East Indies freely intermixed with their own language.
|
