 Louis Victor Wijnhamer, Jr., was born on 11 February 1904 in Tegal, Central Java, the Dutch East Indies. One of three siblings, Wijnhamer was born to an ethnic Dutch administrator from Surabaya, Louis Gregorius Wijnhamer, Sr., and J. F. Ihnen; he was of Indo descent. He studied at the senior high school in Semarang, before spending some time at the Suikerschool in Surabaya, later arriving in Batavia (now Jakarta). There, between 1927 and 1937, he worked as an amanuensis at the School tot Opleiding van Inlandsche Artsen.
