(1916-2001)
On
the cover of "An Unconventional Woman", the autobiography
of Jean Tahija, is a head and shoulders photograph of a young woman
with her fair hair dressed in the fashion of 1942 and a young man in
the uniform of the army of the Dutch East Indies. Their marriage, in
1946, was reported in the Melbourne Herald under the headline: ‘Black
Hero Returns for White Wife’. Jean Tahija protested and the adjectives
were deleted from later editions. Julius Tahija was a war hero and a
nationalist who became a senior government official and held the position
of president of Caltex Oil in Indonesia for 15 years. The couple had
two sons and lived in Indonesia after their marriage.
Jean Tahija described her life until her marriage as far from conventional.
She is the daughter of a policeman, whose thinking, in Tahija’s words,
was ahead of his time: “‘Women,’ he often said to me, ‘should have the
same opportunities as men. Every career should be open to them, including
the sciences, medicine and dentistry’.” When Tahija graduated in Dental
Science in 1941, she was only woman in her class of twenty-four. She
worked as Registrar at the Dental Hospital for five years before leaving
for Indonesia in 1947. Her husband was equally supportive of her right
to a career, commenting that the Moluccas, with a population of more
than five million, had only one dentist. Practising proved easier said
than done. The Dutch dentist at the Macassar hospital refused to employ
her, even as a volunteer. Almost four years later, however, an offer
to the Jakarta public hospital was accepted. Tahija worked for two years
in appalling conditions, grateful for her graduation present from her
parents of a set of dental instruments, which she passed to a colleague
on her retirement.
Tahija was an enthusiastic horticulturist, establishing a garden at
Tugu, which she planted with both native and exotic trees, especially
eucalypts and cinnamon. The Cinnamomum tahijanum is named for her husband
and herself.
Jean Tahija, courtesy Penguin Books.
