The Japanese occupation of Indonesia is often remembered for the suffering of Dutch internees, but the Indonesians themselves paid a far higher price. Out of a population of 68 million, an estimated 4 million Indonesians died—almost 6% of the country. That made Indonesia one of the hardest-hit nations of World War II, with the highest civilian death toll of any country. Yet the world barely noticed.
It started in June 1941, when talks between Japan and the Netherlands over Dutch oil deliveries broke down. Japan needed the oil of the Dutch East Indies, and it was willing to go to war to get it. After Pearl Harbor, the Dutch declared war on Japan, and on January 11, 1942, Japanese troops landed on Borneo and Sulawesi. The conquest was swift.
The Dutch colonial army, the KNIL, was a police force meant to suppress rebellions, not repel a modern invasion. On March 8, 1942, the Dutch surrendered the entire archipelago. Fewer than 1,000 Japanese soldiers died in the conquest. At first, many Indonesians welcomed the Japanese.
A 14-year-old boy watched the first landings near his village and heard the Japanese tell the crowd that the Dutch had left and that Japan was now in charge. Another Indonesian remembered how his family fled into the forest when the Japanese arrived, and how the children had to catch chickens for the soldiers. One man recalled his uncle, a soldier in the Dutch colonial army, who took off his uniform and walked home in his underwear, shouting, “Quick, lock the door. ” He stayed inside for days, afraid the Japanese would kill him.
The Japanese slogan was “Asia for Asians,” and many Indonesians believed it. One person remembered thinking, “Here are Asians who never studied at a European university, and they can defeat a world power just like that. ” But the reality was different. The Japanese set up a propaganda machine and imposed a rigid, brutal order.
People had to bow to Japanese soldiers or be beaten. Cyclists had to dismount or face violence. A coffee seller recalled, “I was scared of them. If you forgot to bow, they hit you.
If that knocked you over, they kicked you while you were down. Our Asian brothers, they were kayam, brutal, and implacable. ”
The Japanese erased Dutch influence completely. Banks were shattered, political groups banned, and the media dismantled.
Loudspeakers broadcast propaganda and the Japanese anthem all day. Radios were locked to prevent people from listening to foreign broadcasts—a crime punishable by death. The Dutch language was prohibited. The calendar was changed to the Japanese year 2602, and clocks were set an hour and a half ahead.
Even the currency was replaced. The Chinese population was viewed with suspicion, and Indo-Europeans found themselves too European for the Japanese. One woman said, “Japan wanted us on their side. On the outside, I do look like an Indonesian.
I’m a half-blood, but on the inside, I was staunchly in the Dutch camp. Every Japanese is one too many. ”
Indonesian nationalists who had been imprisoned by the Dutch were released. Sukarno and Hatta became advisors to the Japanese.
Sukarno believed that cooperating with the Japanese would bring independence. The Japanese promoted the Indonesian language but kept the red and white flag banned. They preferred to work with organized Islam, which had many members in rural areas. More Indonesian children went to school than under Dutch rule, and girls had more opportunities—but they also became prey.
Around 20,000 Indonesian women and girls were forced into sexual slavery as comfort women. One woman was lucky: she took Japanese lessons in self-defense, and her teacher, a Japanese officer, treated her like a daughter. Others were not so fortunate. The Japanese needed labor for massive construction projects.
The Burma Railway was one of the deadliest. Tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war and hundreds of thousands of Asian laborers, called romushas, were forced to work in brutal conditions. The deadline was cut from five years to one. Workers were ordered to move up to 3.
5 cubic meters of earth per day. About 13,000 Allied prisoners died, but the romushas suffered far worse—a death rate of around 50%. The total number of romusha deaths may have reached 100,000 on the Burma Railway alone. One man from Java recalled how his father was taken by the Japanese army.
“I was playing and saw it happen. They trained their guns on him. I wanted to go with him, but they pushed me away. He was sent overseas.
It was the last time I saw him. I was 9 years old. ”
Inside Indonesia, forced labor was just as deadly. The railway in West Java may have killed between 15,000 and 60,000 people.
The Pekanbaru railway in Sumatra killed an estimated 80,000 Javanese romushas, even though the line was only finished on the final day of the war—making their suffering pointless. Around 24,000 people died building airfields in Flores and the Moluccas. A supervisor on the island of Muna recalled, “We were given one day off a month. If something went wrong at work, the mandors had to step in.
We would then be scrubbed down followed by severe beating. We were usually beaten with a stick mostly on the head. In the course of a year, 100 coolies died on Muna mostly due to the lack of food. Twice I complained to a Japanese officer about the food.
Both times the result was a severe beating. ”
Historians estimate that between 300,000 and 500,000 Indonesian romushas died during the war. Sukarno, who actively recruited many of them, later said, “In reality, they were slaves. I knew they were skin and bones, and I couldn’t help them, but if I have to sacrifice thousands to save millions, then I will do so.
As a leader of this country, I cannot afford the luxury of sentimentality. ”
Sukarno’s cooperation with the Japanese made him a mass political figure. In December 1942, he gave his first radio speech under occupation, reaching hundreds of thousands of Indonesians through Japanese-controlled loudspeakers. He said, “If this war does not end in victory, all of our aspirations, all of our hopes, all of our efforts will be shattered and we shall once again suffer and be oppressed and exploited by Allied imperialism.
Only a Japanese victory can save us, can save all of Asia. ” He later admitted, “The Japanese needed me and I was aware of that, but I also needed them to make my country ready for revolution. ”
The Japanese began drilling young Indonesians. The PETA, or Defenders of the Homeland, was formed in 1943, and by the end of the war it counted 600,000 men.
The Kaibodan, a vigilance corps for older men, had over a million members. The Heiho, auxiliaries raised from former colonial soldiers, attracted 25,000 men, many of them Ambonese and Manadonese. They were sent to New Guinea, the Pacific islands, and even Burma. One former Heiho soldier recalled, “Ouch, they were so strict.
Couldn’t speak proper Japanese? They beat you. Didn’t stand up straight for roll call? They beat you.
And if you keel over during a march, no one looked back. But I was put in charge of a 40-man section. I was the only one with a gun. ”
Frustration grew.
Burma and the Philippines were promised independence, but Indonesia was too rich in resources. In 1944, Japan, fearing invasion, demanded total mobilization. The Putera organization was replaced by new bodies to manage the war effort. A young man sent to a refinery remembered, “It was fun in the beginning that Japanese uniform discipline was strict, but we learned useful skills.
Me and 700 other students slept in a huge warehouse under a sugarcane roof. When the air raid siren sounded, we all had to go to the underground shelter. To reduce the probability of bombing, the Japanese even built a decoy of our factory. One night I saw an enemy American aircraft being caught by three large searchlights and shot at from the ground.
” But as time passed, he realized the Japanese had not come to liberate them. “The Japanese were bad at feeding people. Our usual staple food is rice, but rice became expensive, so we were given rice mixed with maize. Eventually it was only 20% rice and 80% maize.
But meanwhile, we could see trucks driving past loaded with rice. ” His conclusion was clear: “Colonialism is colonialism. ”
The greatest killer was famine. Rice prices soared as 1944 progressed, from 35 cents to 7.
5 guilders by mid-1945. The Japanese military administration forced farmers to sell rice at low prices, but the distribution system collapsed. Transport networks were destroyed, smuggling and black markets flourished, and corruption spread. In some fertile regions, rice rotted while people starved elsewhere.
Production fell from 8. 5 million tons in 1939 to 5. 6 million tons in 1945. The famine of 1944-45 was caused less by drought than by Japanese policies.
Survivors recalled, “We no longer had any rice and ate papaya leaves with soy sauce. Even boiled, they were bitter. All we had to eat was old dry cassava, indigestible. Those were the worst days of my life.
We were so hungry. We ate only twice a day. We ate only once a day. The sight of walking skeletons no longer surprised us.
We saw many dead bodies on the streets. We saw the sick and the dead lying all over the place, out in the streets, under the trees, at the edge of the forest. Corpses were just like litter. ” In absolute figures, 2.
4 million people died. There were local uprisings, but they were always crushed. In 1945, PETA soldiers in Blitar rebelled to free prisoners—the largest armed uprising during the occupation. Six rebels were executed.
Underground groups smuggled weapons and counterfeit currency. Sukarno publicly cooperated with the Japanese but also maintained secret contact with resistance groups. On Kalimantan, Japanese paranoia led to the arrest and execution of over 1,500 civilians, many with no proven connection to resistance. In September 1944, facing domestic unrest and military pressure, Prime Minister Koiso announced that Indonesia would be granted independence in the future.
A year later, on August 9, 1945, Sukarno met with Field Marshal Terauchi in Saigon, who told him that Japan had decided to grant Indonesia independence. Sukarno returned to Jakarta on August 14, and a committee was assembled. But on August 15, Japan surrendered. Indonesia had lost at least 4 million people—99.
7% of them civilians, the highest proportion of any country in the war. They died in a war that was never theirs, starving in a conflict between Japan and the Netherlands over the mineral wealth of their country. Two days after Japan’s surrender, on August 17, 1945, Sukarno proclaimed Indonesia’s independence. Youth groups and militias seized weapons and government offices.
The period that followed, known as Bersiap, was marked by revenge attacks against Europeans and perceived collaborators. Thousands were killed. When British and Dutch troops returned, they found a country transformed. The old colonial order was gone, replaced by armed Indonesians demanding independence.
What followed was the Indonesian War of Independence, a brutal four-year conflict from 1945 to 1949.
