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