Aftermath of war

World War II was waged between the Axis (Germany, Italy and Japan) and the Allied forces (most European countries and USA). In Australia, internment camps were set up to accommodate Italian, German and Japanese internees. Most Japanese army internees (which included Koreans and Taiwanese) were captured in Indonesia and numbered about 1,000. However, among the internees (not prisoners of war) there were about 200 old people who arrived from New Caledonia, an island belonging to France and located near New Zealand. They originated from the Okinawa islands, a Japanese colony until now. All of them worked as contracted laborers in coal mines. They were short of stature, had dark and weather-beaten faces, talked little and were diligent workers.

I had the opportunity to interview one of them. In 1905, the Russia-Japan war broke out. The Japanese Imperial Army had its mind set on winning the war at all costs. Among the Japanese soldiers there were some Okinawans, in as much as the Okinawa island group was a Japanese colony.

The old veteran told me that when the Japanese soldiers were confronted by the enemy -- at that time it was the troops of the Russian Czarist regime behind barbed wire -- the Okinawans trampled the barbed wire under foot, and there were volunteers who covered the barbed wire with their bodies so that their comrades could leapfrog or walk over them. Of course, many Okinawan soldiers died, but perhaps to die for the emperor was deemed an honor at that time.

Anyway the war was won by Japan, but at what price? The Japanese economy was in a shambles and the war veterans returned home to no jobs and it was difficult to get three decent meals a day to eat. Coincidentally, the New Caledonian French colony recruited workers for its coal mines and many veterans of the Russia-Japan war volunteered, working there until World War II broke out in 1941.

Strange as it may sound, in New Caledonia the Okinawans met and associated with workers from Indonesia. From Japan, only male Okinawans came, but from Indonesia (at that time it was a Dutch colony) men with their wives and children arrived in large numbers as contracted laborers.

So, many of the Okinawans married Indonesian women and many of them even spoke a little of the Javanese dialect. One of the Okinawans was a hunchback, because a small canon had run over his back. So is the aftermath of war. It seems that mixed marriages (between different ethnicities or even different races) are not an uncommon phenomenon.

A. DJUANA

Jakarta