http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/14/news/vj-jakarta.php
Occupation helped put Indonesia on the path to independence
By Donald Greenlees International Herald Tribune
MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2005
JAKARTA When the war ended, Hideo Fujiyama had to choose where his true
loyalties lay. He decided not to return to Japan, but to stay in Indonesia, a
country he barely knew.
His decision to desert the Japanese Army was motivated by a mix of
reasons, both practical and sentimental. He had been accidentally left behind
when his unit shifted base. But he was also resentful at the way he had been
treated in the wartime army, had an ill-defined sense that he could have a
better life in the tropics and was inspired by Indonesia's burgeoning
nationalist movement.
Witnessing a stirring call for independence by Sukarno, the nationalist
leader who later became Indonesia's first president, at a mass rally in Jakarta
on Sept. 19, 1945, was a turning point.
"He was so energetic and impressive," said Fujiyama, at the time a
sergeant in an aircraft maintenance unit. "I was so moved by Sukarno's speech."
Fujiyama joined the rapidly forming Indonesian nationalist military
forces. He was one of about 1,000 Japanese troops in Indonesia to desert and
stay behind to fight for the country's independence from the returning Dutch
colonial power. Only 11 of those veterans are alive today and still living in
Indonesia. The eldest is 96; the youngest 78.
Fujiyama, 83, lives with his Indonesian Muslim wife on the northern edge
of Jakarta, in Tandjung Priok, a port-side neighborhood.
Still energetic and eager to tell his story, Fujiyama describes his days
of service in the Indonesian forces as the proudest time of his life. He was
twice wounded in combat fighting alongside Indonesians.
Asked whether he would have been happier to serve Japan or Indonesia, he
shot back, "Indonesia, of course." He added, laughing, "I didn't fight much for
the Japanese."
The vital role of Japanese veterans in the postwar independence struggle
is a largely overlooked chapter of Indonesia's recent history. The Japanese
deserters provided tactical leadership, weapons and training to the ramshackle
Indonesian forces. Although there was a modest contribution to the ultimate
victory over the Dutch in 1949, it illustrated the varied and complex part
played by Japan in Indonesia's attainment of independence and development as a
nation.
Unlike in other countries in East Asia, Japan's occupation of Indonesia -
which took place from 1942 to 1945 - elicits ambivalent responses from local
people today. There is none of the bitter hostility that has erupted in China's
or Korea's relations with Japan - perhaps because of the benefit of geographic
distance.
The Japanese conquest in 1942, which caused the Dutch to flee,
undoubtedly hastened Indonesian independence. Later, Japanese development aid
and investment was a major contributor to Indonesia's industrialization and
remarkable economic growth.
The legacy of Japanese wartime rule is still present in ways both great
and small: Indonesia's 1945 Constitution was written by committees of
nationalists brought together by the Japanese, and a nationwide system of
neighborhood chiefs and committees was implemented during the Japanese
occupation.
Yet, Indonesia also suffered during the occupation, if not to the same
degree as China or Korea. There is no accurate record of the number of women
forced into sex slavery - to be so-called comfort women - but it is thought to
be in the thousands. Historians estimate that there were at least 200,000
forced laborers, or Romusha, more than half of whom died. Periodic uprisings
were brutally suppressed.
Salim Said, a military analyst at the Center for National Strategic
Studies in Jakarta, captures the current feeling of ambivalence when he
describes the occupation as "a blessing in disguise."
From the time of their arrival, the officers of the Japanese
administration embarked on a program of social mobilization with the aim of
garnering support for the war effort. They organized political advisory
councils, self-defense militias, and religious, youth and women's groups. And
they adopted the nationalist term for the Dutch East Indies - "Indonesia."
"The Japanese could not use the machine that they created," Said said.
"When we proclaimed our independence it was easy to get support from the mass
of the public because they were already mobilized by Japan."
But the Japanese occupation also influenced Indonesia in less fortunate
ways.
Some historians believe the authors of the 1945 Constitution were
influenced by the Japanese political model when they created a powerful
presidency and hence the opportunity for authoritarian rule.
It was not until 2003 that the Constitution was significantly reformed.
Among the young soldiers to be trained by the Japanese were many of
Indonesia's future political and military leaders, including Suharto, the
second president, who served for 32 years. The experience, according to Said,
imbued authoritarian habits in them.
"The memory, experience imprinted in their souls under the Japanese
played an important role in the way they shaped society," he said.
Suharto's first overseas visit as president was to Tokyo in 1968. But it
was not a sentimental journey. He went in search of development aid and
investment.
Japan was to become Indonesia's most important benefactor. In recent
years, Indonesia has often taken the largest slice of Japan's aid budget, and
Tokyo's annual aid grants have topped $1 billion. About 1,000 Japanese
companies are set up in the Jakarta area alone, according to the Jakarta Japan
Club.
The money has paid diplomatic dividends. Peter McCawley, the Tokyo-based
dean of the Asian Development Bank Institute and an Indonesia specialist,
remembers sitting next to Indonesia's senior economics minister, Wijoyo
Nitisastro, at an international aid forum for which Japan played host Japan 10
years ago.
McCawley recalled Wijojo leaning over to him and saying of the Japanese:
"These people have given us a lot of support over the years. They have been
very good to us."
Because of the aid and investment, the Indonesian government has been
wary of getting mired in historical debates. The issue of official war
reparations was settled under a 1958 treaty and has not been reopened despite
later revelations about the existence of comfort women.
Said, the military analyst, said that in the early 1970s the Japanese
Embassy protested the imminent release of an Indonesian film called "Romusha,"
depicting the story of forced laborers. But there was a typically Indonesian
solution. Said, then a film critic, said the embassy was allowed to buy the
rights to the film. It was never publicly shown.
Around that time the relationship between Jakarta and Tokyo was
particularly sensitive. Indonesian students, angry over the direction of
economic policy, were critical of the influence and pervasiveness of Japanese
investment. During a visit to Jakarta by Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka in
January 1974, there were student riots that aimed at Japanese businesses and
cars.
Today, concerns about the crimes of the occupation are dying with the
victims. Ines Thioren Situmorang, a 28-year-old lawyer with the Indonesian
Legal Aid Foundation, remembers that her elementary school textbooks taught
that comfort women were simply prostitutes.
"The current generation perceives comfort women as part of a system of
voluntary prostitution. That is what our schools teach here," she said.
Situmorang is part of a project that is trying to register comfort women
in the hope of gaining direct compensation for them and an official apology
from the Japanese government.
With the number of Indonesians who recall the war rapidly dwindling, Said
believes the relationship with Japan will continue to be dictated by commerce,
not history.
"Japan for us is Sanyo, Sony - all kinds of electronic equipment," he
said.
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