Pramoedya's indictment of Japanese war crimes

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.