Thanks for the post! I'd love to know how Dutch Papua was affected by the war for Indonesia's independence from 1945-1949, and the later regional rebellions Permesta and RMS in South Maluku.

I look forward to the reply, great project!

I'm curious to what extent they were aware of the deep history and ethnic diversity of Papua. Did they divide the people into Melanesians and Papuans, were they all just natives, or were they aware of the fuzzy borders and internal complexity of those labels? And what did they think of the anthropologists that went crawling around there every so often?

I'm curious about the evacuation. In 1962, KLM organized a massive series of international flights to bring Dutch citizens to the Netherlands from PNG, and many of these stopped in Alaska on their way over the North Pole.

Your best bet would probably be to ask about her daily life. Dutch New Guinea was a backwater that was never truly developed / westernized, so there's bound to be some fun stories there. Also: how did she interact with the native population? What language did she speak? And where did she live? In a remote outpost or in one of the handful of (very unimpressive) towns? Did she travel around at all?

And finally: what did she think they were doing there? The Dutch claimed they were going to bring New Guinea into the modern world. In the end, they never put in enough effort to make that happen (though your grandfather probably did what he could)

Presumably you're Dutch. If so, you could seek out the book Dirk Vlasblom wrote about the history of Dutch New Guinea some 10 years ago called "Papoea: een geschiedenis". It's a big book, but very accessible as Vlasbom is a journalist who writes well (the book is a trade version of his PhD dissertation, IIRC, so it's probably thorough enough).