Arrival of Japanese troops stirs wartime memories
Arrival of Japanese troops stirs wartime memories
Chris Brummitt, Associated Press/Banda Aceh
Razali Hasan still remembers Japan's brutal World War II occupation of Indonesia: the beatings, the forced labor and the stories of terrible punishments.
But six decades later, he views the return of 1,000 Japanese troops to Aceh with little concern. This time, their mission is different: to offer aid following the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami.
"Now their mission is about serving humanity. Jews, Christians, Japanese: everyone is welcome," the 76-year-old Hasan said, over cups of sweet coffee in the cafe he owns in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.
Japan's mission in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra island is its military's largest-ever overseas relief effort -- and the second-biggest contingent in the province.
It's a deployment that Tokyo hopes will put it on the map as a political heavyweight to match its status as an economic power, and comes as it competes with China for influence in Southeast Asia.
But Japan's wartime occupation of the region is forcing it to tread lightly. Many in Southeast Asia remain wary of a possible resurgence of the militarism that marked Tokyo's occupation.
"There were cruel ones, and there were nicer ones," Hasan said, puffing on a thick clove cigarette. "But everyone here in their heart hated them."
That hatred has deep roots.
Though cultural taboos prevent history books here from describing how Japan's military forced local women into sexual slavery, they tell of Indonesians who were put to work as laborers or conscripted to fight alongside the Japanese, and how the invaders stole crops from farmers.
Hasan was a teenager in 1942 when the Japanese Imperial Army attacked Indonesia, under Dutch colonial rule for 400 years.
He recalled how he was forced to join a work gang that built an airstrip for the Japanese. But it was the beatings he saw and other punishments he heard of that were most chilling: His friend told him of a villager, accused of stealing by Japanese soldiers, who had his legs cut off while tied to a coconut tree.
Currently, Japanese troops are bivouacked on a naval ship off the province's hard-hit western coast. They have been ferrying food, treating the sick and spraying insecticide to kill off malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
In one recent mission, they flew Chinook helicopters along the coast, dropping sacks of rice and biscuits to tsunami survivors. Later the chopper transported people, bringing a group of teachers to the devastated coastal town of Meulaboh and returning to Banda Aceh with a batch of exhausted corpse collectors.
Having foreign troops in Aceh would have been unthinkable before the tsunami disaster. Aceh had been off-limits to foreigners since 2003, when the military launched an offensive against rebels who have been fighting for independence since 1976.
Despite foreign troops' help in delivering relief aid, Indonesia is keen to have them leave by an informal deadline of late March, perhaps worried their presence might bring international sympathy for the rebels. The separatists say they want foreign troops to stay.
For Japan, the mission, which follows deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, could help burnish the country's image that it is committed to help resolve conflicts round the globe.
Japan's post-World War II constitution restricts its 238,000 troops, officially known as the "Self Defense Forces," to a defensive role.
But Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has sought to quiet criticism of his country's past "checkbook diplomacy" -- a tendency to send money, not troops, to troublespots -- and recently has been expanding the military's participation in UN peacekeeping missions, starting from 1992 when Japanese forces went to Cambodia.
Japanese military commanders play down the political motives behind their deployment, and brush aside questions about Japan's wartime invasion of Asia.
"I don't think (the invasion) is a sensitive problem," Col. Takashi Muramoto said, at an Indonesian air force base on the outskirts of Banda Aceh. "The people here are always smiling and waving. We have good ties with the Indonesian government."
Many Indonesians, thankful for the aid, seem willing to forget the past.
"We have forgiven them. It is in the past," said Hasan, the cafe owner.
GetAP 1.00 -- FEB 1, 2005 12:19:01