Martha Walandouw Lohn and grandson Brian Kimmel pose as Martha holds her memoir book “Blue Skies, Troubled Waters.”
courtesy photo by Love Art Legacies LLC
SNOHOMISH — At 13, during a quiet breakfast with his grandparents, Brian Kimmel made a small but defining choice. Instead of cereal, he reached for the fried rice his grandmother had made—Indonesian comfort food she cooked daily for his grandfather. “You don’t have to make me special food,” he told her. “I’ll just eat what Grandpa eats.”
“I just loved Indonesia. I loved it. Everything about it—the stories, the music, growing up with the cultural music. I can’t explain it,” Kimmel said.
Decades later, that connection would grow into a book: co-authoring and expanding his grandmother’s WWII memoir, “Blue Skies, Troubled Waters: An American Twin’s Odyssey in WWII Minahasa, Indonesia,” written with Martha Walandouw Lohn.
Lohn, now 91 and living in the area, was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1933 to a Polish American mother and an undocumented Minahasan-Indonesian father. In the years before WWII, the family was deported to Indonesia due to her father’s immigration status. In 1942, when Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies, the family was imprisoned as civilian prisoners of war.
The memoir follows twin sisters Ath and Kath as they navigate deportation, war, and survival. Ath was Martha’s nickname. It’s a deeply personal account of a little-known chapter of wartime history, one that Kimmel has worked for years to preserve and expand.
“I always wanted to work on the book,” Kimmel said. “My grandfather and my uncle, before they passed away, both told me: ‘Help your grandma with the book.’ So I knew I was going to be the one to do it.”
He received the rights to the story a few years ago.
“She said, ‘Here — it’s yours now,’” Kimmel said. “So I re-edited it, updated the language, and added glossaries to help readers understand the seven different languages used in the book, including regional dialects from Minahasa that often go unrecognized in mainstream Indonesian literature.”
Kimmel didn’t formally interview his grandmother. Instead, he listened—during car rides, conversations at home, and meals together.
“She and I talk quite often, so she would just share stories—and I filled in the blanks of the narrative with research,” Kimmel said.
That research took him to the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and correspondence with historical librarians to access documents and photographs that weren’t available when Lohn first wrote the story.
“I wanted it to be more than a memoir—it’s an educational tool,” Kimmel said. “It helps people understand the historical impacts of my family’s migration from Indonesia back to the United States, and how that story connects to the Pacific Northwest and Washington state.”
For Lohn, who still gardens in the Pacific Northwest, the story lives on not only in pages, but in her family.
“It’s alive, like a living story,” Kimmel said. “Every time I talk about it, I learn something new.”
On Saturday, May 17, the Snohomish United Methodist Church—the same church that sponsored Lohn’s return immigration to the U.S. in 1961—is hosting a book launch. The event will feature Indonesian food, cultural arts, a book reading, and a presentation of rare archival maps and photos Kimmel uncovered through years of research. Books will be available for purchase.
If you go
Book launch and presentation
Saturday, May 17 from noon to 3 p.m.
Snohomish United Methodist Church, 2400 Lake Ave.
RSVP requested by May 15 at info@briankimmel.com
