Not an army academy

Not an army academy

In concern with your news on the front page of the Saturday
May 3, 1997 edition, titled Soeharto tells children not to depend
on education alone, I would like to draw your attention to your
level of inaccuracy, relating to the fourth paragraph:

"After secondary school (you mean junior high school
Muhammadyah in Wuryantoro?) Soeharto went to the Royal
Netherlands Indies Army Academy in Gombong, Central Java, in
1940."

Neither in his autobiography The Smiling General, nor
'Soeharto, pikiran, ucapan dan tindakan saya' (Soeharto, my
thought, speech and action), nor in his interviews with foreign
journalists did Soeharto ever mention about a military academy in
Gombong.

It should be noted, that before World War II and before
Indonesian independence, there was not a single military academy
in the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia). Most of the best
Indonesian officers were sent to the Royal Military Academy in
Breda, the Netherlands, such as Colonel Alex Kawilarang, or later
they were sent to an American military academy at Fort Benning or
Fort Leavenworth, such as General Soemitro, Hasnan Habib, and
Soehario Kecik Padmonegoro.

I have an uncle who is still alive in Kalimantan. He is a
retired chief commandant of a security service at a state-owned
oil company who had never joined the Military Ordinary School of
KNIL (Dutch colonial army and its members) in Gombong in 1939,
also after junior high school, and testified of no military
academy at all.

During Dutch colonial rule, it was really very difficult for
indigenous Indonesians to achieve the rank of sergeant after
graduating from the school except as common soldiers or PFCs. The
Dutch were very strict and closed to giving ranks to indigenous
Indonesians. Most of the old Indonesian soldiers became sergeants
after they fearlessly proved themselves, in battles in Aceh,
Lombok, Maluku or other hazardous military campaigns. So accuracy
and historical truth should be required in rectifying any
misleading or anachronistic news aspect.

WIMANJAYA

Jakarta

Note:

We based our data on a book by O.G. Roeder, The Smiling
General: President Soeharto of Indonesia; 1970.