The British Occupation of Indonesia: 1945-1946

Britain, The Netherlands and the Indonesian Revolution

Richard McMillan, Richard Mcmillan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9781134254279
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

This is the first work to systematically examine the British occupation of Indonesia after the Second World War. The occupation by British-Indian forces between 1945 and 1946 bridged the gap between the surrender of Japan and the resumption of Dutch rule, and this book is a reappraisal of the conduct on the ground of that British Occupation. Contrary to previous studies, this book demonstrates that occupation was neither exclusively pro-Dutch nor pro-Indonesian; nor was it the orderly affair portrayed in the official histories.

Richard McMillan draws upon a wide range of sources previously unavailable to scholars - such as recently declassified government papers and papers in private archives; he has also carried out revealing interviews with key players. Presenting a wealth of new information, this highly original and well-written book, will appeal to scholars of European Imperialism, the Second World War, military history and the history of South and Southeast Asia. It will also be relevant to a wide range of undergraduate courses in History.

1 THE ARRIVAL OF BRITISH FORCES IN INDONESIA

Planning the British occupation of Indonesia

When the Japanese surrendered on 14 August, Mountbatten was informed by the British Chiefs of Staff that the transfer of southern Indochina and the Indies would take place at once.¹ Mountbatten agreed with the Australians that their 7th and 9th Divisions would occupy the outer islands of the Indies. These troops would eventually be relieved by his own in all areas except Timor and Dutch New Guinea.² In the initial stages of their intervention, therefore, the British would only be responsible for Java, Madura, Bali, Lombok, Sumatra and a number of other islands in the area. In the Dutch Parliament, Professor Logemann, Minister of Overseas Territories, stated that the Dutch Government had not been consulted about the boundary change.³ The change he referred to was the allocation of the Indies to Southeast Asia Command, not the division of responsibility between British and Australians. This remark was symptomatic of a general Dutch objection to the transfer of the Indies from American to British responsibility. In Australia, the Dutch Government-in-exile of the Indies had placed the bulk of their limited resources behind the American advance, which was based there. This Government thought that it would be impossible to transfer these to Southeast Asia Command, based on India.⁴ It was doubted that the British were equipped to take on the responsibility for the Indies whereas the Americans had long been preparing to take control of the area.⁵

On 13 August, Mountbatten had been given instructions by the British Chiefs of Staff as to what the forces of Southeast Asia Command were to do on arrival. His troops were to accept the Japanese surrender, disarm and repatriate the Japanese, rescue and repatriate Allied prisoners of war and internees and prepare, by the introduction and establishment of Netherlands Indies Civil Affairs officers, for the eventual handing over of the administration to the Dutch civil authorities.

Co-operation between the British and Dutch was deemed essential for a smooth handover of the administration. As Sumatra had always been part of Southeast Asia Command, it had been necessary for them to reach agreement – the Anglo- Dutch Civil Affairs Agreement – on its administration in the event of its capture from the Japanese. According to this agreement, Mountbatten would assume overall control, but the laws of the country, that is, the laws of the government which had been in power before the Japanese invasion, would be enforced by members of the Netherlands Indies Civil Affairs Organization. A Dutch Chief Civil Affairs Officer was to be appointed as its Commanding Officer. During the early stages of the occupation, he was to be a staff officer of the military commander and would conduct the administration of the civil population on his behalf. Later, the Dutch Chief Civil Affairs Officer was to be given wider authority by the military commander or Mountbatten.

The British and Dutch decided on 4 September that the principles of the Civil Affairs Agreement for Sumatra should apply to all areas of the Indies which were to be occupied by British forces. It was also decided that the Netherlands Indies Civil Affairs Organization should be set up within Southeast Asia Command. Its Chief Commanding Officer would at first be Mountbatten. After Batavia had been occupied, Hubertus J. Van Mook, the Lieutenant-Governor-General, would take over this position.⁶Van Mook was in Australia with the Government-in-exile of the Indies.

It is important to recognize the nature of Anglo–Dutch planning prior to the deployment of the forces of Southeast Asia Command. The Anglo-Dutch Civil Affairs Agreement, relating to Sumatra, had been drawn up in wartime in anticipation of a military reconquest of that island. When Japanese forces retreated in the face of Allied military action, their place would immediately be filled by Allied troops: there would therefore be no power vacuum. The Agreement was overwhelmingly preoccupied with the trial of those who had collaborated with the Japanese and the jurisdiction which Southeast Asia Command would have over the Dutch forces who, it was assumed, would be participating in the reconquest of Sumatra. It went without saying that, in the event of a military reconquest, Allied authority would be established on a territory-wide basis and that the Dutch would take over from Southeast Asia Command. The question of Indonesian nationalism was not considered. In consequence, the terms of the Agreement, extended to cover Java, were inappropriate for the situation which arose after the Japanese surrender. This was one where a limited number of British-Indian troops arrived weeks after the end of hostilities to restore the Dutch to a country where an independent Indonesian government had proclaimed its own authority, had substantial armed forces under its command and where the bulk of the Indonesian population, many of whom had their own arms, were deeply suspicious of the returning Dutch.⁷

F. S. V. Donnison, in British Military Administration in the Far East, 1943–46, gives it as his opinion that the agreements reached between the British and the French prior to the British deployment in Southern Indochina served their purpose much better in that, unlike the Anglo-Dutch Civil Affairs Agreement, they were drawn up at the end of hostilities:

The general tenor of the [Anglo-French] agreements was to safeguard French sovereignty from avoidable encroachment by the Allied Commander. They differed in this from the agreement with the Netherlands Indies which … was drawn up in 1944, with the likelihood in mind of a re-occupation of Netherlands East Indies territory during active military operations against the Japanese, and was therefore mainly concerned to safeguard the temporary paramountcy of the military over the civil authorities. In so doing it tended to force upon the Allied Commander a responsibility for re-establishing Dutch administration because the Dutch were prevented from doing this themselves. The French agreements were in this regard much more appropriate to post-surrender conditions than the Dutch.⁸

In mid-August, however, and for many weeks to come, the nature of the situation which awaited the forces of Southeast Asia Command was unknown to both British and Dutch. On 14 August, for example, Brigadier Gibbons, the Director of Civil Administration at Southeast Asia Command Headquarters, sent the text of the Anglo-Dutch Civil Affairs Agreement to Major-General Weijerman of the Netherlands Indies Civil Affairs Organization with a note which read: ‘Will General Weijerman obtain confirmation that the text … is correct and that the instrument continues to be acceptable as a basis of action in the brief period of military control which now appears likely?’⁹ This ‘brief period of military control’ was to turn into 13 months of bitter fighting with regular and irregular Indonesian forces. Leaflets which were dropped by the British on behalf of the Dutch over the Indies also reveal the extent to which the British and Dutch were out of touch:

We know that your joy, like ours, is great, but do not express that joy by making demonstrations yet. Carry on your work calmly and await the arrival of the Allied troops and of the representatives of your own Government, who will come to you as soon as possible.

Help Allied prisoners, soon to be released, in any way you can.

The leaflet ended : ‘Long live the Queen [Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands]. Long live Indonesia.’¹⁰

September saw a preliminary deployment by small British and Dutch teams composed of military personnel in Java and Sumatra. They were to assist Allied prisoners of war and internees before the arrival of British forces. Estimates vary, but it is clear that there were at least 68,000 Allied prisoners of war and internees on Java at the time of the Japanese surrender.¹¹ At the end of August, the Royal Air Force Airborne Control Unit based in Ceylon had over 20 parachuting teams ready to take part in Operation Zipper, code name for the landings on the west coast of Malaya. As with the landings in Normandy in 1944, the plan was that paratroops would be dropped behind enemy lines before the seaborne landings and hinder enemy communications to the beaches. These teams were no longer needed as the operation was being undertaken in peacetime. They were therefore offered by Headquarters Air Command Southeast Asia to Headquarters Allied Land Forces Southeast Asia. Nine teams were held in Colombo in Ceylon in readiness for operations in Java and Sumatra. Teams usually consisted of four personnel: an Executive Officer, who commanded the team, a Signaller, Medical Officer and Medical Orderly. They took with them medical equipment and foodstuffs.¹²

The first team was dropped in the Batavia area on 8 September. On 15 September, No. 6 RAPWI Control Staff arrived at Tandjoengpriok, the port of Batavia, on board HMS Cumberland.¹³ RAPWI stood for ‘Repatriation of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees’. Little interest was displayed in their arrival by local people: they were greeted only by children. There were, however, nationalist flags and quotations in English concerning Indonesia’s right to be free from Dutch rule which it was clearly intended the British should see. Their Headquarters were established in Batavia’s Hotel des Indes. A Dutch contingent arrived the next day. British and Dutch set about planning operations. On 18 September, a team was dropped on Magelang. The next day, another was dropped on Surabaya. The dropping of this team apparently caused a ‘riot’ among Indonesians in the city as there were no prisoners of war or internees there. These two teams travelled to Batavia to be briefed and then returned to their respective locations.¹⁴ All the teams faced a considerable task. They went into their respective areas with inaccurate knowledge about both numbers of internees and locations of camps but had to effect a steady evacuation from the camps so as to maintain the morale of the internees. It proved of the greatest importance to gain Japanese co-operation. In the event, the Japanese were co-operative.¹⁵

The team at Magelang met representatives of the local Red Cross Committee and then Japanese Staff Officers. Indonesians allegedly looted supplies which were dropped for prisoners of war and internees and attacked Red Cross workers who collected them. Consequently, Wing-Commander Tull, who headed the relief effort in Central Java, sent a signal to Ceylon asking that supply drops be stopped. The team discovered that the internment camps were not at Magelang though the military hospital there had been handed over by the Japanese for the use of sick internees and was being prepared for their reception. At Ambarawa and Banjoebiroe, however, 25 miles from Magelang, there were six camps containing over 14,000 people; at Semarang, five camps contained about the same number. In the prisons at Semarang and Ambarawa, there were a large number of political prisoners of various nationalities including some prisoners of war. The team enjoyed good relations with local Indonesian Republican officials, who were prepared to co-operate with the British so long as they did not infringe the sovereignty of the Republican Government. These officials were aware of the importance for their cause of world opinion but had little control over the reactions of their fellow Indonesians. The team organized the evacuation of 773 internees to the hospital at Magelang: 600 of these were serious hospital cases; 900 hospital cases remained. Nearly 1,500 internees required constant medical attention but did not need to go to hospital; 110 internees were evacuated to the Wonosobo Hill Convalescent Centre. Internees were also sent to Soerakarta and Salatiga until this had to be stopped because of Indonesian hostility there. Sixty-eight internees were evacuated by air from Semarang to Batavia or Bandung so that they could rejoin their families. On 28 September, Rear-Admiral Patterson, who had arrived at Batavia on board HMS Cumberland and was at that time the most senior British officer in the Indies, ordered the release of all political prisoners held by the Japanese. Accordingly, Groom went to Soerakarta and Jogjakarta to release political prisoners. Among the political prisoners in all of these locations were British prisoners of war.

The team at Surabaya was composed entirely of Dutch personnel. It arranged accommodation for prisoners of war and internees who were to be sent there but did not make contact with the Indonesian Republican authorities in the city. Four trainloads of prisoners of war and internees were sent to Surabaya, totaling 1,800 people, 900 of whom were from the camps at Banjoebiroe, which had priority for evacuation in Central Java because sanitation and hygiene there were far worse than in the camps at Ambarawa. After this first evacuation, fighting broke out between the Japanese and the newly constituted Indonesian Republican forces in Surabaya. The Indonesian forces eventually assumed complete control and disarmed the Japanese. Consequently, it became impossible to send more prisoners of war and internees to Surabaya. Those who had already been evacuated there, along with 1,000 others who had gone there from all over Java on their own initiative, were, according to a British report, in ‘great danger’.¹⁶ Their presence in the city was to necessitate the despatch of an Allied force to superintend their evacuation. Chapter 2 will show what happened to this force and to the internees.

Most Dutch internees were not evacuated at this stage on account of British policy, laid down in a RAPWI directive of 13 August. This stated that Dutch prisoners of war and internees, both inside and outside the Indies, could only be repatriated to countries other than the Indies if their families were in such countries or if they themselves had simply happened to be in or near the Indies at the time of the Japanese invasion but had no Dutch or Indies government function or any private connection in the Indies.¹⁷ As for the vast majority of the Dutch internees, who had had a role in the territory before the war, the British intention was that they would be gathered into areas where they could be given medical treatment after their internment by the Japanese. There they would be restored to health so that they could, in due course, resume their pre-war lives in a country where Dutch authority was being restored by the British.

Southeast Asia Command was slow to realize what was happening in the Indies as the RAPWI teams carried out their work and as the Command itself prepared to deploy its forces on Java and Sumatra. Intelligence was poor, as has been mentioned earlier. Only after several weeks did an accurate picture emerge. When it did, the occupation plans were changed.

Mountbatten told General Marshall at Potsdam that he would require ‘adequate advance intelligence’ before he could assume responsibility for the territories which MacArthur wished to transfer. The Potsdam Conference was held in Germany at the end of the war in Europe and it was here that the Indies were entrusted to Southeast Asia Command. Mountbatten never received any such intelligence, for

General MacArthur had none to offer: his drive on Japan had by-passed the Indies. There had been no need to gather intelligence on that area.¹⁸

In the absence of American intelligence, and with no agents of their own in the area, the British were at first compelled to rely on little more than guesswork. An intelligence report dated 24 August 1945 clearly indicates a state of uncertainty on a range of issues. On the reception which would be given to the return of the Dutch by the Indonesians, the report stated:

It is thought that the Indonesian people now realize that they have been exploited and that the Japanese promises of ‘co-prosperity’ were a sham. They will therefore welcome the return of the Dutch by whom they were well treated, except for a small minority who will have profited materially under the Japanese.

It was more accurate in relation to the Chinese: ‘The Chinese have good reason to fear and hate the Japanese and the majority of them will give every p...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Arrival of British Forces In Indonesia
• 2. The Battle of Surabaya
• 3. Anglo–Indonesian Relations In the Aftermath of Surabaya
• 4. Anglo–Dutch Relations and the British Withdrawal from Java
• 5. The British Occupation of Sumatra
• 6. Morale
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Structure of Indian Divisions In Indonesia
• Appendix 2: Typical Brigade Headquarters
• Appendix 3: Typical Structure of a Battalion
• Appendix 4: Chronology of the British Occupation of Indonesia, April 1945–November 1946
• Appendix 5: Chronology of Events In Surabaya, 25 October – 29 November 1945
• Appendix 6: Dramatis Personæ
• Notes
• Bibliography