independence leader Wikana, I learned that they had great respect for him, even if they hated the Occupation regime.
My talks with Maeda were pivotal for three different reasons. In the first place, he made me start to think about Japan in a more complicated way than before. Kahin had done his best to help the unfortunate Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, but he had been trained to fight against Japan, while I was still a child during the Second World War. This generational and cultural difference showed up in my first academic essay, âJapan, the Light of Asiaâ, which described the cruelty and exploitation of the Occupation regime, but also showed why the Indonesian Revolution was incomprehensible without acknowledgement of the Japanese contribution. In the second place, Maeda made me think, for the first time, about the roles of individuals. Third, and most important of all, he made me gradually change my thesis topic.
Originally I had planned to treat the Japanese Occupation simply as a short self-standing epoch in the series of Late Dutch Colonialism, Japanese Occupation, Revolution, Constitutional Democracy, Guided Democracy. But the more I looked at the evidence, the more I started to rebel against the neat sequences of events, and eventually resolved to break the mould. I had to think about theconnections between the Japanese Occupation and the Revolution. This was why my dissertation deliberately bridged the two, looking closely at 1944â46. In those days, when scholarly attention was focused on high-level elites, it was understandable why the Revolution and the Occupation were seen as opposites. But below the elites? It was out of this puzzle that my thesis of the âPemuda Revolutionâ (Revolution of the Youth) emerged, which argued, rightly or wrongly, that the tidal force behind the Revolution was neither the nationalist political elite nor a social class, but a generation, formed by its complex experiences under Japanese imperialist rule.
It is a great tribute to Kahinâs affection for his students, his modesty and his intellectual broadmindedness, that he not only strongly supported a student whose dissertation argued against some of his own theses in Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia , but also helped to ensure its speedy publication. In fact, both of us were partly wrong because we did not understand Japanese, and had no access to many Japanese documents. Almost half a century later, David Jenkins, a great friend of mine and the leading historian of the Indonesian military, has shown, using countless documents and personal interviews in Japan, that it was high-ranking Japanese officers in Java who made the Revolution actual.
In the course of the Potsdam Conference between July 17 and early August 1945, the zone of MacArthurâs Southwest Pacific Command was abruptly turned over to Mountbattenâs Southeast Asia Command (including Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and Indochina). Mountbatten,however, did not have the soldiers, transportation, weaponry or effective knowledge of local political movements necessary to exercise control over the region. Thus it was not until September 15 that some of his officers arrived in Java. In the month between the Indonesian Declaration of Independence and this landfall, the top Japanese commanders had the time to provide secretly to the Indonesian revolutionaries 72,000 light arms, more than a million rounds of ammunition, many mortars and field artillery. Jenkins rightly observes that, without this help, the Revolution would not have been possible, and Mountbatten would not have given up on the idea of occupying all Java and returning the island to the Dutch.
My fieldwork came to an end in April 1964, and I spent the summer in Holland studying the Dutch documents on the Japanese Occupation and the Revolution that finished off colonialism in Indonesia. It happened that just that summer the leftist Provo Movement broke out in Amsterdam. It
My talks with Maeda were pivotal for three different reasons. In the first place, he made me start to think about Japan in a more complicated way than before. Kahin had done his best to help the unfortunate Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, but he had been trained to fight against Japan, while I was still a child during the Second World War. This generational and cultural difference showed up in my first academic essay, âJapan, the Light of Asiaâ, which described the cruelty and exploitation of the Occupation regime, but also showed why the Indonesian Revolution was incomprehensible without acknowledgement of the Japanese contribution. In the second place, Maeda made me think, for the first time, about the roles of individuals. Third, and most important of all, he made me gradually change my thesis topic.
Originally I had planned to treat the Japanese Occupation simply as a short self-standing epoch in the series of Late Dutch Colonialism, Japanese Occupation, Revolution, Constitutional Democracy, Guided Democracy. But the more I looked at the evidence, the more I started to rebel against the neat sequences of events, and eventually resolved to break the mould. I had to think about theconnections between the Japanese Occupation and the Revolution. This was why my dissertation deliberately bridged the two, looking closely at 1944â46. In those days, when scholarly attention was focused on high-level elites, it was understandable why the Revolution and the Occupation were seen as opposites. But below the elites? It was out of this puzzle that my thesis of the âPemuda Revolutionâ (Revolution of the Youth) emerged, which argued, rightly or wrongly, that the tidal force behind the Revolution was neither the nationalist political elite nor a social class, but a generation, formed by its complex experiences under Japanese imperialist rule.
It is a great tribute to Kahinâs affection for his students, his modesty and his intellectual broadmindedness, that he not only strongly supported a student whose dissertation argued against some of his own theses in Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia , but also helped to ensure its speedy publication. In fact, both of us were partly wrong because we did not understand Japanese, and had no access to many Japanese documents. Almost half a century later, David Jenkins, a great friend of mine and the leading historian of the Indonesian military, has shown, using countless documents and personal interviews in Japan, that it was high-ranking Japanese officers in Java who made the Revolution actual.
In the course of the Potsdam Conference between July 17 and early August 1945, the zone of MacArthurâs Southwest Pacific Command was abruptly turned over to Mountbattenâs Southeast Asia Command (including Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and Indochina). Mountbatten,however, did not have the soldiers, transportation, weaponry or effective knowledge of local political movements necessary to exercise control over the region. Thus it was not until September 15 that some of his officers arrived in Java. In the month between the Indonesian Declaration of Independence and this landfall, the top Japanese commanders had the time to provide secretly to the Indonesian revolutionaries 72,000 light arms, more than a million rounds of ammunition, many mortars and field artillery. Jenkins rightly observes that, without this help, the Revolution would not have been possible, and Mountbatten would not have given up on the idea of occupying all Java and returning the island to the Dutch.
My fieldwork came to an end in April 1964, and I spent the summer in Holland studying the Dutch documents on the Japanese Occupation and the Revolution that finished off colonialism in Indonesia. It happened that just that summer the leftist Provo Movement broke out in Amsterdam. It
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