The Japanese never actually seized all of Indonesia. They only controlled the northern coastline of New Guinea, which meant that Boven Digoel—the notorious detention camp for political exiles—remained one of the last territories still under Dutch rule. Ironically, those who hated Dutch rule the most were forced to stay under it the longest. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, some Dutch officers refused to give up and turned to guerrilla warfare, but they got almost no support from the local population.
Japanese forces hunted them down systematically. Only on the Bird’s Head Peninsula in northwestern New Guinea did a small commando unit keep resisting, backed by local Papuans, until American forces rescued them in 1944. Of the original 60 fighters—including one Ambonese woman—only 14 survived. Their resistance was dramatic enough for a movie, but it had little impact on the overall war.
The real turning point came when Admiral Nimitz and his Hawaii-based naval fleet captured the Gilbert Islands. His goal was to retake the Philippines and Borneo, then use those as bases to attack Japan. That meant bypassing Java and Sumatra—the crown jewels of Japan’s early expansion—because the primary Allied objective was to defeat mainland Japan as fast as possible, not to liberate every colony. In one of the grandest amphibious operations of the war, 50,000 American troops stormed the shore at Humboldt Bay.
The 11,000 Japanese soldiers there didn’t fight a major battle—they melted into the primordial jungle, bound by a code that forbade surrender even for lower-tier reserve units. Within days, a metropolis of barracks, hangars, and camps appeared, housing 150,000 American troops. Just 48 hours after landing, the first Dutch administrative unit arrived, reestablishing Dutch presence for the first time since the Japanese takeover. But the jungle turned into a massacre for the Japanese.
Papuan bounty hunters, paid to bring back severed ears as proof of delivery, attacked the retreating soldiers. The Japanese had left most of their rations behind, so they faced both constant ambushes and starvation. Out of 11,000 soldiers, 10,000 died. While the world watched the Normandy beaches in June 1944, General MacArthur seized Biak and carved out massive airfields.
From there, monstrous American B-29 bombers could strike mainland Japan directly. That strategic disaster forced Japan’s Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo, to resign in disgrace. By September, the Allied onslaught reached Morotai, the northernmost tip of the Moluccas. The Americans secured the strategic airfield on Morotai in just a few weeks, but fighting on the island continued until August 1945.
Since the mountainous interior and dense jungle had no military value, MacArthur decided not to send troops after the Japanese who retreated there. Between September and November 1944, the Japanese even managed to bring in thousands of reinforcements from nearby islands. Through 1945, it became a bitter survival struggle—most Japanese soldiers didn’t die from bullets but from tropical diseases and pure starvation. One soldier, Teruo Nakamura, survived there alone and wasn’t discovered until December 1974, almost thirty years after the war ended.
The Allies valued Borneo for its oil. Between May and July 1945, they attacked Tarakan first, carried out by the Ninth Australian Division that had fought at Tobruk and El Alamein. Nearly 900 Australians became casualties, including 225 killed. The Japanese were pushed off the coast by July 9, then withdrew to the rugged hills.
Other areas only saw Allied soldiers after Japan had surrendered. Some saw bombs before that—in January 1945, Palembang on Sumatra was hit because of its oil refineries. The Dutch were desperate to reestablish colonial rule, but most locals were simply glad Japanese rule had ended. On Java and parts of Sumatra, more densely populated and politically aware, the situation was radically different.
On August 15, Japan surrendered, and two days later, Indonesian nationalist leader Sukarno declared independence. They weren’t waiting for any Allied troops to liberate them. First the British went ashore, then the Dutch.
But by then, the Indonesians had already tasted freedom—and they weren’t about to give it back without a fight.
