Hans Ludwig Retemeyer

Hans was born in Malang, Indonesia. His father (Cornelius) was a chemist on a plantation and his mother (Arabella) was a homemaker. Life was blissful until 1941 and the Japanese invasion of the island of Java. My father, his mother and her mother, avoided internment camps by hiding from the Japanese going from house to house. During the war, Hans’ father was taken captive and subsequently died as a POW while working on the Burma railroad. He is interred in Thailand. Upon the conclusion of the war, Hans was again faced with strife during the revolution of Indonesia in the late 1940s. Around 1950, his mother and him sailed as refugees to The Netherlands. There Hans finished schooling and worked toward a bachelor’s degree in Electronics. He met his wife, Inga Weeda, at the end of the 1950s and they were married on August 25th, 1960. They stayed married until his passing…64 years. They both emigrated to the United States under the Truman Refugee Act. They lived in North Carolina for a year with the help of a sponsor family. After that year they moved to California where they lived their lives. Hans worked hard his entire life to provide for his family. His main occupation was a research assistant. Hans was preceded in death by his youngest son, Ken in 2009. He is survived by his wife Inga and his oldest son, Jim. He also is survived by four grandchildren: Alex, Geoffrey, Emily and Seth. Hans also is survived by one great-grandchild, Xander.