From independence to republic: One woman's chronicle

From independence to republic: One woman's chronicle

Doug Anthony, Contributor, Jakarta

An Endless Journey: Reflections of an Indonesian Journalist

Herawati Diah

Equinox Publishing

304 pp

In her newly translated autobiography, Herawati Diah, journalist,
businesswoman and the wife of a former minister, charts her 87-
year odyssey through a changing Indonesia.

She has been a pioneer of sorts: the first woman to study at
Columbia University in New York, and one of Indonesia's first
woman journalists and newspaper editors.

Endless Journey records her lucid observations from a
childhood on the island of Belitung, off Sumatra, through to the
heady years of Reformasi.

Like much of Jakarta's aristocratic elite, Herawati seemed at
her most passionate during the privations of the early years of
an independent Indonesia, from 1945 until the mid-1950s. As she
and her husband grew in power and status, radicalism gave way to
comfort and respectability.

The gems in the book are her anecdotes of colonial Indonesia,
the Japanese occupation, the independence war and the first years
of the nascent Republic. The description of Jakarta as a wartime
garrison town, strafed with Dutch secret police, makes for lively
reading.

Perhaps few readers, even now, will welcome accounts of arisan
-- informal social get-togethers, mostly held among women -- with
Tien Soeharto, the late wife of former president Soeharto.

In the first chapter, Herawati recounts childhood memories of
life in a port town on Belitung. Her mother, devoted to advancing
her family's fortunes in life, rigorously trained the children in
the mores and customs of the Dutch colonizers, including their
language and education. This also brought the young Herawati
headlong into confrontation with colonial racism; one Dutch
teacher told her that islanders or natives couldn't study Latin
because of their inferior brains.

In the 1930s, her mother sent her to study in the United
States, and Herawati became the first Indonesian woman to study
at Columbia University.

Upon her return, she had become an unwitting celebrity, and as
she pulled into Gambir station, a gamelan orchestra chimed in her
honor.

Thus begins the period that makes the most interesting
reading: The Japanese occupation and early years of the
Indonesian Revolution.

The well-spoken Herawati is press-ganged into working for a
news agency that produces pro-Japanese propaganda. She marries a
firebrand journalist and joins him on the staff of Merdeka, a
nationalist newspaper. They are harassed by both Dutch and
Japanese intelligence agents, and are present at the declaration
of independence on Aug. 17, 1945.

At first, Herawati's reporter's notebook, even when she is
serving as a protocol officer, serves her well.

She recalls the pro-Dutch American consul who accused the
Indonesian independence fighters of "terrorism". Some of these
so-called terrorists take on Japanese soldiers armed only with
machetes and bamboo spears. One Merdeka bicycle courier has to
dodge bullets while delivering president Sukarno's copy of the
paper. And in 1954, Herawati goes on to help found the
independent republic's first English-language daily, the
Indonesian Observer (which closed in June 2001).

Throughout it all, Herawati seems determined to uphold the
values and behavior of traditional womanhood: "At the very least,
a woman could not leave the femininity behind in carrying out her
assignments," she writes. "I didn't have to be masculine in my
attitude when it came to my profession."

For their Generation of 1945 sacrifices, the couple is
rewarded well. Both presidents Sukarno and Soeharto appoint
Herawati husband to ambassadorial posts, which raises her status
to that of an Ibu of power.

From churning out stories -- with a baby in tow -- in the
underground nationalist press in Solo during the independence
war, she turns to organizing charities with the likes of Ibu
Tien. In the 1970s, Herawati adds the role of businesswoman to
her resume, moving into hotel management.

Somewhere along the way, her journalistic impulses seem to
have deserted her. For example, after an encounter with Imelda
Marcos, possibly the biggest kleptocrat in modern Asian history,
Herawati notes that "she was a diligent collector
of porcelain".

On a visit to Irian Jaya, now called Papua, she describes the
province's 1.2 million people as "people who come from another
country", adding that "we may call them primitive because they
don't need clothing."

Of East Timor's bloody path to independence, she writes that
"It is not necessary to dwell on the human rights issues that
arose when the Indonesian army was told to maintain peace and
order in East Timor during the referendum."

Perhaps some of her Dutch women journalist friends felt the
same way about the writings of Merdeka in a different era.