A Wanganui family have got closure on a major part of their heritage with the posthumous presentation of war medals to their father.
Alex Goodwin's father Johan Frederik Warners served in the Dutch Royal Navy during World War II in what was then the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and after the war continued serving as the Dutch battled insurgents in the area until 1952.
And last month she and her sister Kahrin McEvoy-Roberts and some of their family were guests of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Wellington to receive medals awarded posthumously to their father.
Mrs Goodwin said Dutch veterans were entitled to the medals for their war service but her father's recognition only came after she had applied for a war pension for her mother.
She said she had wanted to research more about her father "because he didn't talk at all about his war experience".