Pramoedya's indictment of Japanese war crimes

Perawan Remaja dalam Cengkraman Militer -- Catatan Pulau Buru (Young Virgins in the Military's Grip -- Notes from Buru Island) Pramoedya Ananta Toer; Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, Jakarta 2001; ix + 218 pp; Rp 25,000

JAKARTA (JP): Pramoedya is famous for his Buru tetralogy and his other novels that defend humanism, and this nonfiction book shows his deep concern about the legacy of World War II from the Japanese occupational forces, particularly in Indonesia.

The Japanese occupation of Indonesia (1942-1945) as part of the country's military aggression in Asia left an indelible bitter memory in the minds of the Indonesian people, particularly women. The occupational forces brutally seized a great number of young girls to be made comfort women, a euphemism for sex slaves.

Despite Japan's postwar reparations to countries it occupied, problems related to comfort women still linger. It is in this context that Pramoedya's work comes as a strong indictment of the Japanese occupational forces' brutality against young women. Here the writer, in his usual clarity, presents to us the bitter experiences of some of the young women who fell victim to the Japanese soldiers' bestial desires.

The book starts with Pram's eloquent letter to the present generation of Indonesian young women. He writes that in contrast with the freedom that they enjoy today, in the dark days of World War II, young women in this land lived in great misery.

Then Pram reveals how the Japanese government promised to take a number of Indonesian girls to Tokyo to pursue further studies. So, young girls from several areas, particularly in Java, were recruited. These girls, in their great hope of securing a better lot through education provided by the "Elder Brother", a reference Japan claimed for itself in relation to the Asian countries it occupied, joined the program, only to find later that they would only serve to satisfy the Japanese soldiers' bestial desires.

Pramoedya suspects that quite a few of the young girls joined the scholarship program because their parents were afraid of the cruel Japanese occupational forces. For the safety of the families, some parents, albeit reluctantly, let their daughters be recruited.

Pramoedya would not have been able to trace the fate of some of these unfortunate girls had he not been banished, for alleged involvement in the abortive coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party in late 1965, to Buru Island. While there, Pramoedya and some fellow exiles came to meet some old women, who later turned out to be the same young girls who were taken to Tokyo under the lofty-sounding program of a "scholarship".

These women were married to locals; one of them is even married to a local tribal chief. Most of these women, old already, generally refused to retrace their journey to Buru. They preferred to bury the dark experiences, although deep in their hearts they have a yearning for their hometowns and families.

"Don't think about me any more. I'm used to a life like thishere. Don't .... Useless. I'm resolved not to reveal that (my past) again," one of them says.

Generally, the women that Pramoedya and his fellow exiles met on Buru gave the same answer. They do not want to relive their past. For many years they have lived a different life and made a clean break with their horrible past.

The book is interesting in that it dwells quite lengthily on how Pramoedya and his fellow exiles tried to ferret out the truth from a number of women they met on Buru. Conversations with these women are enlightening in that they show how they braved the storm to survive and survived their great ordeal. They have got a family of their own and have adapted themselves to the local surroundings. The dark days of World War II no longer loom large to prevent their daily activities; this period is but a nightmare that only once in a while floats to their consciousness.

Pramoedya and his fellow exiles were also surprised that in a meeting with some of these women, they still could hear the polite form of Javanese spoken. This is an indication that although these women live in the present, their past is not entirely eradicated. Pramoedya believes that deep in their hearts there is an undeniable longing to be united with their former families and returned to their home towns.

For many years, they have deliberately refrained from using their native Javanese for fear of arousing the anger of the locals. They have intentionally submerged in their subconscious minds everything connected with the past but, as Pramoedya reveals in the conversation with some of these women, their root in the past, perhaps unconsciously, is still nurtured as evidence in the polite form of Javanese that some of them can still speak.

Another interesting thing about this book is that Pramoedya writes it as if he was writing a novel. His meetings with the women and their families are detailed with great pathos, revealing to the readers not only their physical but also their mental health. One meeting after another flows smoothly, building in the readers strong emotions against the brutality of the Japanese occupational forces. As Pramoedya says, he wrote this book to encourage present-day Indonesian women to pay attention to the victims of the bestiality of the Japanese occupational forces half a century ago.

-- Lie Hua

The reviewer teaches at the Department of English, School of Literature, UNAS.