The Beijen/Beyen Family Site
by Laurens Beijen

The homepage
The overview of the site
The next page
The previous page
 The list of first names
The photo gallery
Searching this website
Comments or questions

The Johan Franco branch of the IJsselstein family Johan Franco Beijen from the Dutch East Indies

Born in Meester Cornelis

Johan Franco Beijen (12.6) was, as far as is known, the youngest child of Hendrik Rudolph Beijen senior. He was born in 1885 in what was then Meester Cornelis. That place is now a district of Jakarta called Jatinegara.
It seems obvious that he was a son of Anna Johanna Regina Stops, whom his father had married nine months earlier. On his personal record card, however, an unspecified 'Tina' is named as his mother.
He does not belong to the unbroken series of Johan Francos I to VI mentioned on previous pages. His double first name comes from his grandfather Johan Franco IV, a physician in Barneveld.

Overseer at the Forestry Service

For over thirty years, from 1903 to 1934, Johan Franco worked for the Forestry Service (Boswezen). The Forestry Service was a government agency that managed the colonial forests and supervised the forest districts. He worked in districts in West, Central and East Java and rose from temporary monthly-paid worker to chief overseer.
After his retirement he also held other positions, such as postmaster of a local post office.

Married twice

In 1907 Johan Franco married Susanna Rosalie Martherus.


They had four children. The marriage was dissolved by divorce in 1920.
In 1926 Johan Franco remarried, to Nji Mas Soehaemi (Imik). With her he had one son.

Moved to the Netherlands

After the independence of Indonesia, Johan Franco, like many Dutch people from the Indies, applied for a Dutch passport. Below is the top part of the application.


At the end of 1951 he nevertheless chose Indonesian nationality.
In the 1950s his children and grandchildren moved to the Netherlands. He himself first stayed in Indonesia with his wife, but in 1958 he came to the Netherlands after all. He went to live near relatives in Bergen op Zoom. His wife remained in Indonesia.

In 1960 Johan Franco regained his Dutch citizenship through a naturalisation act in which he was included together with a number of others. The explanatory memorandum to the bill addressed his situation:
The petitioner Johan Franco Beijen, named in article 2, under 1, was born in 1885 in Djatinegara (Indonesia) and is Dutch by birth. From his eighteenth year until his retirement in 1934 he worked for the Forestry Service. For social reasons the petitioner opted in December 1951 for Indonesian nationality. He has lived in our country since May 1958. The petitioner receives financial support. He has agreed that Dutch citizenship will be expressly withheld, by a specific statutory provision, from his wife, who lives in Indonesia.

Below is a photo of Johan Franco from 1962.


He died in 1969 in Bergen op Zoom.

The five children of Johan Franco

All that is known about Eduard (13.6), the eldest child of Johan Franco, is that he received technical training. He was born in 1909 in Soekaboemi and died in 1932 in Tjimahi (now Cimahi) near Bandung of an intestinal obstruction. He was only 23.

The other four children are discussed below: Henriėtte, Rudolph, Christiaan and Willem.

Henriėtte (Smith-)Beijen


Henriėtte (Jet) Beijen (13.7) was born in 1910 in Tjiandjoer (now Cianjur) in West Java. In 1936 she married Christiaan (Chris) Smith in Tegal in Central Java; he was a teacher and school principal. They had six children.
After the war the Smith-Beijen family came to the Netherlands. They settled in Zaandam. In the Netherlands Christiaan Smith worked as a technical draughtsman. He died in 1996. Jet died in 2007, almost 97 years old.

Rudolph Beijen, killed in 1944


Rudolph Beijen (or Beyen) (13.8), the second son of Johan Franco Beijen, was born in 1912 in Tegal in Central Java. In 1929 he joined the KNIL (the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army). He subsequently rose to the rank of sergeant-major instructor. In March 1942 he was taken prisoner of war by the Japanese.
In September 1944 he was transported, together with about 6,500 other prisoners, on the transport ship Junyo Maru. The prisoners were American, Australian, British and Dutch prisoners of war and Javanese forced labourers. The Japanese took them under inhuman conditions to Sumatra to work on the Pekanbaru railway.

However, the Junyo Maru (pictured above in a photo from 1933) was torpedoed and sunk by a British submarine off the west coast of Sumatra. Only a small proportion of the prisoners were able to save themselves. Rudolph Beijen was one of the thousands who died in the disaster.
More about the Junyo Maru disaster can be found on Wikipedia.

Below are copies of the front and back of the card kept by the Japanese about Rudolph's imprisonment:

According to the Japanese text on the back of the card, Rudolph was taken prisoner on 8 March 1942. He was first held in the prisoner-of-war camp near Bandung and later in the one near Batavia. The exact time and place of the sinking of the Junyo Maru are given: 18 September 1944, 6:30 - 6:45 p.m.; 2º 53' South, 101º 11' East.

Rudolph Beijen had married Margaretha Jeanne (Greet) Rijnenberg in Pontianak on Borneo in February 1938. They had three children: Ilse (1938), Ron (1940) and Henk (1942). Henk was born when his father had already been a prisoner for well over half a year.
Later Greet received a note that Rudolph had written to her in the prisoner-of-war camp. It had been smuggled out of the camp. The note said: "A firm trust and a speedy reunion". Sadly, that reunion never came. In 1945 Greet received a telegram informing her that her husband had died.

After the war the situation in Indonesia became increasingly difficult for the family. In the 1950s Greet and her three children left for the Netherlands. They lived in Bergen op Zoom. Greet died there in 1988.

Some regional editions of the Algemeen Dagblad of 18 August 2020 carried an article in which Ron and Henk (by then 80 and 77) talked about their father. Click here for a copy of the article..

Rudolph Beijen's children have struggled all their lives with the loss of their father, whom they barely knew, if at all.
A special moment for the family was the posthumous presentation of the Mobilisation War Cross (Mobilisatie Oorlogskruis) to Rudolph's sons Ron and Henk. On 3 July 2021 retired lieutenant-general Hans van Griensven presented the commemorative award. In the photo above Ron is on the right and Henk on the left.


In this photo Ron Beijen is in the middle, just visible behind his wife Nancy Beijen-Eman. To their right are Henk Beijen and his wife Joyce Beijen-Brodie. All five of Ron's children were present: Paula Versteden-Beijen (far left), Franky Beijen (top row, left), Jeffrey Beijen (top row, second from the right), Roy Beijen (next to Paula) and Cindy Beijen (two places from Roy). Henk's two children were there as well: Danny Beijen (next to the general, with little hair) and Femke Beijen (just above her mother Joyce).

Christiaan Beijen, former prisoner of war


Christiaan Beijen (13.9) (known as Chris) was born in 1914 in Tegal. Like his father Johan Franco, Chris went to work as an overseer at the Forestry Service. In January 1942 Chris married Jenny Boogaard in Soerabaja (now Surabaya).
By then the war with Japan had broken out. He received a call-up from the Dutch East Indies army and was posted in Bandung to the motorcycle dispatch riders. The army moved all across Java, but surrendered soon afterwards. Chris then went to his grandmother in Tegal. In June 1942 the first child of Chris and Jenny was born, Victor. Later the Japanese arrested Chris after all. He was transferred to Padang on Sumatra to work on the Pekanbaru railway.

The front and back of Christiaan's Japanese internment card:


According to the Japanese text on the front of the card, Chris was arrested on 15 January 1944.
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945 he was able to return to Java. He received another call-up from the army and was posted to the motorcycle dispatch riders in Batavia. His wife and little son had been confined by the Japanese in the women's camp Tjideng near Batavia. After Chris had picked them up, he first took them to Surabaya and later to Borneo. There he again worked for the Forestry Service.
Because of anti-Dutch measures in Indonesia, Chris left around 1952 with his family for Dutch New Guinea. When that territory was transferred to Indonesia in 1962, he went to the Netherlands with his wife and, by then, four children.
Chris Beijen and his wife both died in 1997 in Rotterdam.

Willem Beijen, emigrated to America


Willem Beijen (13.10), the only child of Johan Franco's second wife, was born in 1919 in Poerwakarta in West Java. In 1947 he married Luci Angelique Pitton in Djakarta. She was born in 1915 in Soerabaja and had been in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp for more than two years. They had four children, the first of whom died young.
In 1952 Willem came to the Netherlands with his family. They lived in Vlissingen. In 1960 they emigrated to America, first to California and later to Missouri and Florida. Willem died in 2001 in Fort Lauderdale (Florida), Luci in 2004 in St. Louis (Missouri).

Family visit from America

In September 2024 Eduard Beijen and his wife Kathy from Kansas City and Nancy Burkett-Beijen and her husband Robert from St. Louis paid a family visit of a few days to the Netherlands. Eduard (born in Bandung in 1950) and his sister Nancy (born in Vlissingen in 1958) are a son and a daughter of the aforementioned Willem Beijen.
Eduard had last met a number of the members of the Beijen family in 1956. He could only remember his grandfather Johan Franco, who was very strict. Nancy had last visited the Beijen family in Bergen op Zoom in the mid-1970s.
On 7 September there was a get-together in Bergen op Zoom, attended by many of their Dutch relatives. The photo below was taken there.


The members of the Beijen family are indicated by a letter:
A and B: Eduard (14.15) and Nancy (14.16) from America.
C: Ron (14.7), a son of Rudolph, born in 1912.
D, E, F, G and H: Ron's children Paula, Frank, Jeffrey, Roy and Cindy (15.4-15.8).
I: Henk (officially Rudolph Hendrik, 14.8), another son of Rudolph.
J and K: Henk's children Danny and Femke (15.9-15.10).
L and M: Frouke (14.11) and Raymond (15.11), a daughter and a grandson of Christiaan, born in 1914.
The others in the photo are partners, children and grandchildren.

The next page
The homepage
The overview of the site
 The top of the page
Searching this website
Comments or questions