Quick questions on The Japanese Occupation of Indonesia 1942-1945: HSC Modern History National Study

The Imperial Japanese Sixteenth Army under General Imamura landed in Java on 1 March 1942. The Dutch defence had been organised around the ABDA command (American-British-Dutch-Australian); after the loss of HMS Prince of Wales (10 December 1941) and the fall of Singapore (15 February 1942) it was hollow. The Battle of the Java Sea (27 February 1942) destroyed the Allied cruiser force. The Dutch Governor-General Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer surrendered at Kalijati on 8 March 1942.

The Japanese released the major nationalist leaders from Dutch detention. Sukarno was brought back from Bengkulu in southern Sumatra in March 1942. Mohammad Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir were released from internment in Banda. The Japanese banned Dutch and outlawed the use of European names on shops and streets; Bahasa Indonesia became the language of administration almost overnight, an unintended boost to national unity.

The Pembela Tanah Air ("Defenders of the Homeland"), formed on 3 October 1943, was an Indonesian volunteer army officered by Indonesians under Japanese supervision. It eventually fielded around 37,000 men in Java, 20,000 in Sumatra, and 2,000 in Bali. The Japanese also recruited around 25,000 Indonesians as Heiho (auxiliary soldiers) attached directly to the Imperial Japanese Army.

The cost was paid by the romusha. Between 200,000 and 500,000 Indonesians (some estimates run higher) were conscripted as forced labourers for Japanese military projects. They were sent to airfields and fortifications across the archipelago, to the Burma-Thailand railway, and to mines and plantations as far afield as Borneo and New Guinea.

By 1944 Japan was losing the war. After the fall of Saipan (July 1944), Prime Minister Koiso announced on 7 September 1944 that the East Indies would be granted independence "in the very near future." The Indonesian flag could be flown alongside the Japanese; "Indonesia Raya" could be sung.

M.C. Ricklefs (A History of Modern Indonesia, 4th edn 2008) treats the occupation as the decisive break with Dutch rule, in which Indonesian leaders were forced to embrace mass mobilisation in a way pre-war Dutch repression had prevented.

He cooperated openly, but the BPUPKI sittings and the Pancasila speech were Indonesian-led intellectual events that defined the Republic.

A balanced answer cannot describe the occupation only as a midwife of nationalism. Around half a million Indonesian conscripted labourers and 2.4 million famine dead make the period one of the most violent in Indonesian history.

PETA was an Indonesian-officered volunteer army (37,000 in Java). Heiho were Indonesian auxiliaries serving directly under Japanese officers (around 25,000).

It was 1 June 1945, before the Japanese surrender. Pancasila preceded the Republic.