Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World

by Philip Dwyer

  2.Tim Harper, ‘A Long View of the Great Asian War’, in Legacies of World War II in South and East Asia, ed. David Koh Wee Hock (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007), 8.

  3. The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Complete Transcripts of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Twenty Two Volumes, eds. R. John Pritchard & Sonia Magbanua Zaide (New York: Garland, 1981), 452–462.

  4.For further details see, Kelly Maddox, ‘The Strong Devour the Weak: Tracing the Genocidal Dynamics of Violence in the Japanese Empire, 1937–1945’ (Ph.D., Lancaster University, 2016).

  5.Doc. 7: ‘Telegram on the Administration of the Southern Areas’, in Japanese Military Administration in Indonesia: Selected Documents ed. Harry J. Benda, James K. Irikura and Kōichi Kishi (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 35–46; Allied Translator and Intepreter Section (hereafter ATIS): Current Translations No. 52, Doc. 573: ‘Orders of the South Seas Detachment’, 47.

  6.For more details see Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in World War II: Selected Readings and Documents, ed. Joyce C. Lebra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).

  7.National Archives and Records Administration, RG 165: Military Intelligence Records, Entry 77: Regional Files, Japan: 6000: ‘Translation of Pamphlet’, 13.

  8.Details can be found in ATIS: Enemy Publications No. 9: ‘Records of the Southern Expeditionary Force in Malaya and the Philippines’, 3–4 and ATIS: Enemy Publications No. 15: ‘Bulletin of Punishments’.

  9.NARA, RG 165, Entry 77, Japan: 6960, ‘Regulations for Treatment of Prisoners’.

  10.Tokyo Trial Exhibits No. 877: ‘Details of the Execution of Administration in the Southern Occupied Territories’ (20 November 1941); Doc. 6: ‘Outline on the Conduct of Military Administration in Occupied Areas’ (14 March 1942), in Japanese Military Administration in Indonesia, 35–46; ATIS: Current Translations No. 52, Doc. 573: ‘Orders of the South Seas Detachment’, 17.

  11.ATIS: Interrogation Reports, No. 206, 10; see also Nos. 77, 157, 160.

  12.Ethan Mark, ‘The Perils of Co-Prosperity: Takeda Rintarō, Occupied Southeast Asia, and the Seductions of Postcolonial Empire’, American Historical Review, 119(4) (2014), 1192–1193.

  13.See Claro M. Recto’s letter describing this problem in Teodoro A. Agoncillo, The Fateful Years: Japan’s Adventure in the Philippines, 1941–45 (Quezon City: R. P. Garcia Publishing Co., 1965), 1033–1045.

  14.Grant K. Goodman, ‘Introduction’, in Japanese Cultural Policies in Southeast Asia during World War 2 ed. Grant K. Goodman (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 3–4.

  15.ATIS: Interrogation Reports No. 172, 22.

  16.ATIS: Current Translations No. 52, Doc. 573, 17.

  17.Cited in Official Journal of the Japanese Military Administration (hereafter Official Journal), Vol. 1, 8.

  18.Japanese Monograph (JM) 103: ‘Outline of Administration in Occupied Areas (1942–1945)’, 13.

  19.ATIS: Enemy Publications‚ No. 348: ‘Military Police Manual’, 1–17.

  20.Tojo Hideki, ‘Inaugural address to the Greater East Asia Conference’ (November 1943), Contemporary Japan: A Review of East Asiatic Affairs (November 1943), 1343–1345.

  21.Marius Jansen, ‘Japanese Imperialism: Late Meiji Perspectives’, The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945 ed. Ramon H. Myers & Mark R. Peattie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 62.

  22.See for example ‘Imperial rescript declaring war on Britain and the United States’ (8 December 1941), Contemporary Japan (January 1942), 158–159.

  23.For a detailed overview of the importance of securing economic self-sufficiency see Michael A. Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).

  24.Arita Hachirō, ‘The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’, Contemporary Japan, (January 1941), 10–15.

  25.United States, Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Japan: 1931–1941, Vol. II, 201–273 and Nobutaka Ike, Japan’s Decision for War: Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967).

  26.For more detailed studies of these elements see Eri Hotta, Pan-Asianism and Japan’s War, 1931–1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013); Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 161–190.

  27.Gregory Clancey, ‘The Japanese Imperium and Southeast Asia: An Overview’, in Southeast Asian Minorities in the Japanese Wartime Empire, ed. Paul H. Kratoska (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), 10.

  28.Tokyo Trial Exhibits No. 877.

  29.Doc. 6 in Japanese Military Administration in Indonesia, 29–30.

  30.Ricardo T. Jose, ‘Accord and Discord: Japanese Cultural Policy and Philippine National Identity during the Japanese Occupation (1942–1945)’, in Imperial Japan and National Identities, 1895–1945, ed. Li Narangoa and Robert Cribb (London & New York: Routledge, 2003); Lydia N. Yu-Jose, Japan Views the Philippines, 1900–1944 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1992), 18–19, 156–157.

  31.‘Proclamation’ (3 January 1942), Official Journal, Vol. I, 1–2; see Nakano Satoshi, ‘Appeasement and Coercion’, in The Philippines under Japan: Occupation Policy and Reaction, ed. Ikehata Setsuho & Ricardo Trota Jose (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1999), 31–35 for Japanese plans for the Islands.

  32.Ken’ichi Goto, ‘Cooperation, Submission, and Resistance of Indigenous Elites of Southeast Asia in the Wartime Empire’, in The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945, ed. Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 274–301 offers a comparison of these three areas.

  33.Marcial Primitivo Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam”: A Diary of War in the Philippines (Manila?: Unknown Publisher, 1949), 17; Pacita Pestaño-Jacinto, Living with the Enemy: A Diary of the Japanese Occupation (Pasig City: Anvil Publishing Inc., 1999), 15.

  34. Address to the Filipino People (Manila: Unknown Publisher, 1942), 6–7; Sven Matthiessen, Japanese Pan-Asianism and the Philippines from the Late Nineteenth Century to the end of World War II (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 109–163 gives further details of Japanese pacification efforts.

  35.‘Warning’ (2 January 1942), Official Journal, Vol. I, 1.

  36.‘Proclamation’ (3 January 1942), Official Journal, Vol. I, 32–33.

  37.NARA, RG 153, Judge Advocate General’s Office Records, Entry 143: Case Files, 1941–1945 (hereafter JAG Case Files), Case Files, No. 40-0 (Books I–IX), contains details of numerous incidents during the first months of occupation.

  38.‘Warning’ (3 January 1942), Official Journal, Vol. I, 12.

  39.For further discussion of the kempeitai see Maria Felisa A. Syjuco, The Kempeitai in the Philippines, 1941–1945 (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1988); on the ‘Neighbourhood Associations’ see ATIS: Research Reports, No. 126: ‘The Hokō System’ (26 April 1945); ATIS: Enemy Publications, No. 358: ‘The Hokō System in Formosa and Proposed for the Philippines (August 1937–July 1942)’, 15–21.

  40.José G. Reyes, Terrorism and Redemption: Japanese Atrocities in the Philippines, trans. Jose Garcia Insua (Manila: Unknown Publisher, 1945), 16.

  41.Manuel E. Buenafe, Wartime Philippines (Manila: Philippine Education Foundation, 1950), 150.

  42.Goto, ‘Cooperation, Submission, and Resistance’, 286–287.

  43.Agoncillo, Fateful Years, 747–748; various chapters in Philippines under Japan describe these policies.

  44.Agoncillo, Fateful Years, 648–677.

  45.For summaries see ‘Guerrilla Resistance in the Philippines’ (21 June 1944) in Japan and Its Occupied Territories during World War II (Washington D.C.: Office of Strategic Services Publications, 1945) and Agoncillo, Fateful Years, 754–760.

  46.See Reynaldo C. Ileto, ‘World War II: Transient and Enduring Legacies for the Philippines’, in Legacies of World War II,
74–91 for discussion of an over-emphasis on guerrilla warfare in the post-war narrative of the occupation.

  47.Japanese Monograph (hereafter JM), 3: ‘Philippine operations record, Phase II Dec 1942–Jun 1944’, 4; Nakano, ‘Appeasement and Coercion’, 34

  48.NARA, RG 226, Office of Strategic Services Records, Entry 16: Intelligence Files, File No. 53213, ‘Political Review of the Philippines, January 1942–September 1943’, 24–25; JM 3, 4.

  49.‘Army will Annihilate Guerrillas in Visayas’, Manila Tribune (21 November 1942).

  50.NARA, RG 165, Entry 79: ‘P Files’: PACMIRS Translations No. 1, 53–57.

  51.JAG Case Files, No. 40-0 (Books IV & V) & 40–1187.

  52.PACMIRS Translations No. 1, 56–57.

  53. Reports of General MacArthur, Volume 1: The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific (Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, 1966), 298–307.

  54.ATIS: Enemy Publications, No. 343: ‘Counterintelligence Reports (January–December 1943)’, 9–45.

  55.Proculo L. Mojica, Terry’s Hunters: The True Story of the Hunter’s ROTC Guerrillas (Manila: Benipayo Press, 1965), 344.

  56.ATIS: Bulletin No. 1862, ‘Censorship Report (July 1943—January 1944)’, 1; Accounts of this practice are contained in JAG Case Files, File 40-0 (Book VIII and IX).

  57.ATIS: Current Translations, No. 147, ‘Report on Punitive Operations (December 1944)’; Syjuco, Kempeitai, 45–46; Mojica, Terry’s Hunters, 349–350.

  58.‘General amnesty granted’, Manila Tribune (25 November 1943).

  59.See soldiers’ accounts in ATIS: Interrogation Reports Nos. 193, 545, 600, 601 and 613.

  60.JM 4: ‘Philippines Operations Record (July—November 1944)’, 1–2.

  61.ATIS: Enemy Publications No. 370: ‘16th Division Battle Report (April 1944)’, 1–6; ATIS: Enemy Publications No. 359: ‘Guerrilla Resistance in the Philippines’, 2–7.

  62.ATIS: Enemy Publications No. 370, 6; Official Journal, Vol. IX, xxiv; ATIS: Interrogation Reports Nos. 600 and 610–B.

  63.JM 3, 40–42.

  64.ATIS: Enemy Publications Nos. 358 & 359 give details of these operations to September 1944.

  65.ATIS: Philippines Series Bulletin No. 4, 8.

  66.NARA, RG 331: SCAP Records, Entry 1322: US vs. Tomoyuki Yamashita (1945–1946) (hereafter Yamashita Trial), Transcripts, 3520–3545; ATIS: Current Translations No. 152, Doc. 10: ‘Philippines Operation Plan Summary’, 3.

  67.ATIS: Bulletin No. 1858: ‘Yamaguchi Yoshimi Diary’, 8.

  68.JAG Case Files, No. 42–0–13.

  69.ATIS: Bulletin, No. 1721:‘26 Division Field Hospital Operation Orders’, 2.

  70.NARA, RG 165, Entry 79: ADVANTIS Interrogation No. 17557-J, 4.

  71.NARA, RG 165, Entry 79: SEATIC Translation No. 88, 22–23; ATIS: Current Translations No. 150, Doc. 41: ‘Instruction of the Director’, 9.

  72.ATIS: Bulletin No. 2062, ‘Kobayashi Group Order’, 19.

  73.For an overview of violence in Manila see Office of the Resident Commissioner of the Philippines to the United States, Report on the Destruction of Manila and Japanese Atrocities (Washington D.C.: US Government Print Office, 1945).

  74. Yamashita Trial, Transcripts, 38.

  75.ATIS: Bulletin No. 1995: ‘Notebook’, 3.

  76.ATIS: Bulletin, No. 2071: ‘Diary’, 11.

  77.ATIS: Bulletin No. 2018: ‘Notebook’, 4.

  78.ATIS: Bulletin No. 2071, 11.

  79.ATIS: Bulletin No. 2088: ‘Diary’, 4–5.

  80.NARA, RG 331, Entry 1321: US vs. Masatoshi Fujishige et al. (1946), Uehara Zenichi Testimony, 1269–1296.

  81.For more information see Hayashi Hirofumi, ‘Massacre of Chinese in Singapore and Its Coverage in Postwar Japan’, in New Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Singapore, 1941–1945, ed. Akashi Yoji and Yoshimura Mako (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2007), 234–249.

  82.‘Declaration’, Syonan Times (23 February 1942).

  © The Author(s) 2018

  Philip Dwyer and Amanda Nettelbeck (eds.)Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern WorldCambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Serieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62923-0_13

  Nothing to Report? Challenging Dutch Discourse on Colonial Counterinsurgency in Indonesia, 1945–1949

  Bart Luttikhuis1 and C. H. C. Harinck1

  (1)KITLV, Leiden, The Netherlands

  Bart Luttikhuis (Corresponding author)

  Email: luttikhuis@kitlv.nl

  C. H. C. Harinck

  Email: harinck@kitlv.nl

  Introduction

  The historical literature on colonial wars and colonial violence has seen a resurgence over the past two decades, but only rarely in the historiography is the appropriateness of the qualifying adjective ‘colonial’ questioned. 1 Naturally, violence is a crucial element of colonialism, as most colonies were taken, maintained and abandoned through violent confrontations and intense forms of everyday violence. In other words, violence is intrinsic to colonialism. As Frantz Fanon famously put it, modern colonialism is ‘rule by means of guns and machines’. 2

  The vast literature on the mid-twentieth century wars of decolonization can be divided, very broadly, into two schools. On the one hand there are those, often with close ties to the creators of present-day military doctrine, who study the wars in, for example, Malaysia (1948–1960) or Algeria (1954–1962) through the eyes of counterinsurgency theory (‘COIN’) . As a result, libraries have been filled with books on the strategies and tactics of insurgency and counterinsurgency. The instrumentalist demands of military doctrine developed in the wake of the recent wars in e.g. Afghanistan or Iraq have seen military historians and theorists return to these libraries. The other school of historiography on wars of decolonization is more firmly lodged in colonial history departments, where scholars often study these conflicts as the endpoint and culmination of a long tradition of colonial repression and anti-colonial rebellions. The failure to analyse the particular ‘colonial-ness’ of the violence of the wars of decolonization is a surprisingly common feature of both these schools. The so-called ‘COINdinistas’ tend not to be very interested in the colonial pedigree of these wars, whilst colonial historians often seem to assume the peculiarity of the colonial context as a given. 3

  In this chapter we re-examine the war of decolonization in Indonesia between the Dutch colonizer and the nascent Indonesian Republic (1945–1949), taking our cues from both schools of thought described above, and comparing Dutch and Indonesian sources on the violence perpetrated by Dutch colonial forces. Although the Dutch-Indonesian war has received ample historiographical attention, especially from Dutch colonial historians, Indonesian sources have so far been almost entirely disregarded. As we show in this chapter, that neglect has resulted in certain blind spots regarding the impact of the violence of Dutch decolonization on Indonesian society. And ultimately, combining the perspective from the Dutch and Indonesian sources also yields new insights into the nature of that violence. Viewing different sources from both sides helps us see how this war of decolonization had both colonial and conventional modern military genealogies.

  This chapter first provides an empirical contribution to the discussion regarding the use and nature of (military) force by the Dutch in Indonesia 1945–1949, and by colonial powers in the context of decolonization in general. We offer new insights from Indonesian source material in addition to Dutch sources. But more importantly, the chapter is a broader appeal to listen to subaltern voices when studying and analysing ‘colonial’ violence—not only to read against the grain of the colonial archive, but also to go looking for alternative archives. It is precisely in the period of decolonization that these alternative archives become more widely available because former ‘subalterns’ started writing in greater numbers. Such sources not only help us to reduce and overcome the limits and limitations of colonial sources, but they also open up new, hitherto underreported, worlds.