The Japanese and RI independence war

Chisato Hara's interesting article, Legacy of Japanese 'Merdeka' veterans lives on, published in The Jakarta Post on Sunday, June 27 -- about the Japanese who fought for Indonesia after the end of World War II -- leaves out a very pertinent question or two.

Under the terms of the Yangoon Agreement between Lord Louis Mounbatten for the Allies and Field Marshal Teraguchi for the Japanese, the latter's forces were to surrender their arms to the victors at such time as the Allied forces arrived.

Until that arrival took place the Japanese were to be responsible for law and order, and no arms were to leave their control. That they did was a clear breach of the terms of the surrender.

Given that substantial war crimes had been committed by the Imperial Army, not least in the horrific treatment of Javanese romusha (slave laborers) and Allied prisoners of war on such labor-intensive projects as the Pekanbaru railway, it would be interesting to see if any of these men, who went over to the cause of Indonesian independence, did so as a means of escaping prosecution.

Equally, it would be interesting to know if any were involved in clashes with units of the Imperial Army that were used by the British against Indonesians, such as in Semarang, Central Java, and Tebing Tinggi, Sumatra.

That the British used Japanese soldiers against Indonesians as they did against Vietnamese nationalists is, to my mind, a shameful matter.

DAVID JARDINE Jakarta