• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4596 0

of the Indonesian people. ‘My reply’, Mountbatten telegraphed the British cabinet on 14 October, ‘is that his case is similar to Aung San, traitor or patriot according to point of view… the Dutch by dealing with him now could avoid having to deal with extremists later’.89 He had been urged to take a hard line against him in Burma, but found that the alternative leaders had no support. ‘It is as though [the Dutch] refuse to recognise any British government which did not contain Mr Baldwin or Mr Chamberlain.’90 But events were unfolding in the east of Java that demonstrated to all observers that Indonesian nationalism was an unstoppable and revolutionary force.

FREEDOM OR DEATH IN SURABAYA

Surabaya was the largest naval base in Southeast Asia after Singapore. The city had been rather quiet during the early days of the republic, at least until Ramadan drew to a close on 7 September, and the riot at the raising of the Dutch tricolour at the Oranje Hotel. Now Indonesian flags flooded the city. Families sewed white and red patches onto their clothes, and even the becak (trishaw) riders decorated their vehicles. When Dutch internees began to step off the train, towards the end of August, they were, as one former colonial official put it, ‘looking completely into a dark room’. Frantic to re-establish their lives, they collided with the new Indonesian authorities in a host of ways. This fed resentment and unease. A sense of menace intensified after 28 September with the arrival of a Dutch naval officer, P. J. G. Huijer, who, as a face-saving concession to the Dutch, had been despatched to the city in advance of Allied troops. Ostensibly he was there to look after prisoners of war and internees, but as ex-internees attached themselves to him, many Indonesians thought he represented the reappearance of the Dutch regime, and that the internees had arrived by ship. Exceeding his orders, and with only five men under his command, Huijer tried to reoccupy the city. In Surabaya, at least, the Japanese would surrender to a Dutchman. The Japanese vice-admiral commanding the city was only too happy to relinquish the responsibility. Bizarrely, the terms of the agreement stipulated that republican forces would act as custodians of the Japanese arms; but this was to recognize the reality of republican forces’ control, and they were delighted to accept the responsibility. Huijer’s car was then stolen, and he could not get to the airport to return to Jakarta. When he headed for the train – which was still running – he was detained by the republican forces and locked up for his own safety. Former internees were rounded up; some were imprisoned, interrogated and beaten in the Simpang Club, another of the pre-war playgrounds of the colonial elite.91

When the 49 Infantry Brigade Group of 23 Indian Division arrived in Surabaya on 25 October they found themselves confronted by Indonesians in possession of Japanese heavy artillery, tanks and armoured cars. Idrus described the mood:

People were drunk with victory. Everything had exceeded their dreams and expectations. All of a sudden their valour emerged like a snake out of a thicket. All their self-confidence and patriotism bubbled over like the foam on a beer. Rational thinking declined, people acted like beasts, and the results were eminently satisfactory. People no longer had much faith in God. A new God had arrived, and he was known under various names: bomb, machine-gun, mortar.92

The pemuda of Surabaya scented an historic opportunity. This found expression in the figure of Sutumo, the 25-year-old son of a clerk, who had worked as a journalist for the Domei news agency and was known universally by the revolutionary honorific of ‘Bung [Brother] Tomo’. He was a model pemuda: jaunty military attire, a handgun, a Napoleonic bearing. He refused to cut his hair, and swore not to touch a woman, until Indonesia had gained its freedom. With a Japanese transmitter he created his own radio station: Radio Pemberontakan, ‘Radio Rebellion’. British soldiers were astonished to hear on it the voice of a