South China Morning Post
June 19, 2005
Asian Memoir |
An Endless Journey
by Kevin Sinclair
When the Imperial Japanese Army invaded the Dutch East Indies, many
subjects of the European colonialists welcomed the conquerors as
fellow Asians. Among them was a young Indonesian woman journalist
held in a camp outside Jakarta after her arrest on political charges by
the Dutch secret police. Along with her mother, branded as a dangerous
nationalist, and her sister, who had once gone to school in Japan,
Herawati Diah was imprisoned for three months until the Japanese
arrived.
"As a family, we were only freed after the colonial government
unconditionally surrendered to Dai Nippon," she writes. "The
happiness of Indonesia's young people and the nationalist
movement {hellip} didn't last long."
It soon became mandatory to fly the Japanese flag and to sing the
Japanese national anthem. Next, men were taken away for forced labour
in the archipelago or to Japan, Burma and Thailand. Then, the army
started murdering intellectuals. The cheerfulness with which they had
been greeted faded swiftly. "The attitude of the Japanese towards the
Indonesians made them disliked," Diah writes. "Anyone who didn't bow
when he met a Japanese was beaten up. Cyclists had to dismount and pay
their respects to them. If not, their bicycles were confiscated." Such
memories make this book readable.
Diah was the first Indonesian woman to go to university in the US,
which made her a minor celebrity when she entered journalism in
Batavia. As a member of a family committed to an independent
Indonesia, she had a cockpit seat in the revolution and uprising
against Dutch rule. After independence, she travelled widely,
especially to other former colonies struggling to rule themselves.
There are interesting insights: does anyone know that Burma gained its
freedom at 3.30am on January 4, 1948, because an astrologer chose it
as an auspicious time?
Diah is a friend of the enigmatic Sukarno, who led the anti-Dutch
struggle, and his successor, Suharto. As an "ink coolie" - the
derogatory term used to describe journalists in Indonesia - Diah met
and interviewed elderly visionaries who had opposed colonialism, such
as India's Gandhi, and the rising generation who would continue the
task, like Philippine foreign secretary Carlos Romulo. Some of her
stories give a flavour of the times, be it a meeting of women of the
press in Mexico City in the 1950s or a 1967 coronation in Tehran. Her
husband, B.M. Diah, was ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the 1960s,
then Britain and Thailand.
But these aren't the key points of interest in her story. The focus is
on building Indonesia, and she makes no secret where her sympathies
lie. "By the time Indonesia had entered the 1980s we were in the
golden period later known as the New Order, led by the father of
development, General Suharto," she writes. There's no mention of the
hundreds of thousands of people slain when the "father of development"
was putting down the pro-communist coup in the 1960s. Admittedly, she
criticises the former dictator for his "32 years of autocratic rule"
during which, incidentally, her husband was running the information
ministry.
This is an interesting book mainly because it gives long-forgotten
details of the Indonesian independence movement from the point of
view of a privileged insider.
But there are indications that the grandmotherly writer isn't as
cuddly as she seems. Coming from a prominent family, she was
also part of the pre-independence elite. There are throwaway lines
that many would consider racist, such as that about a black porter
on her trans-American train who stole her apple. And how about
this from the devout Muslim who makes numerous references to
God: "At Columbia University, it can be seen how varied Americans
are, physically speaking. Minorities are very visible. American Jews,
for example. During lectures, they are very aggressive and want to
be number one. Many succeed."
An Endless Journey is an interesting, if biased, read.
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