AT the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (Jl. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229 Bandung 40154), Mohammad Iqbal (A Case Study of General Election in the Indigenous Society, Baduy), Wildan Insan Fauzi (Transforming Social Studies Learning Through Neuroscience) and Dina Siti Logayah (Comparing Natural Disaster Literacy between Indonesia and the Philippines) are exchanging views with Emmanuel Jeric A. Albela and Wensley M. Reyes (Teaching Social Studies in the Philippines), Atoy M. Navarro (Indonesian Studies in the Philippines), and Sharon A. Caringal (Trends in Area Studies in the Philippines) in the International Seminar on the Current Trends in Social Studies and Area Studies. This is my contribution:
1. What Is the Role of the Historian in 2025? Historians have expanded their notion of the public spheres and their definition of political actors and intellectual authorities, and interpretive trends could only be possible in an atmosphere where critical innovation is encouraged, where scholars have regular access to archives and libraries. [Barbara Weinstein]
2. That public sphere includes ongoing commemorations of anniversaries of events related to the Second World War. This week, for instance, the US Ambassador to the Philippines Mark Kay Carlson, Spanish Ambassador to the Philippines Miguel Utray, Canadian Ambassador to the Philippines David Bruce Hartman, New Zealand Ambassador to the Philippines Catherine McIntosh, the deputy chief of mission of the Japanese embassy Minister Matsuda Kenichi, and Australian Embassy charges d’affaires Moya Collet joined Manila Mayor Honey Lacuna at Adamson University’s commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Manila. [The Daily Manila Shimbun, https://www.manila-shimbun.com/ja/category/english/news282067.html]
This prompts us to look into books on our regional history for coverage of the Asia-Pacific War.
1. “Japan’s grand strategy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific relied on Germany and Italy in containing Britain and the United States. Because the Americans were turning their country into a gigantic arms factory and building up their own military strength in the Philippines and Hawaii though, the Japanese reinsured themselves by concluding in early 1941 a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union…With the British retreat into India, Japan became the sole colonial power in Southeast Asia. Portugal held on to East Timor for as long as it could…So annoyed was the Imperial Japanese Army at prolonged resistance in the Philippines that American and Filipino prisoners of war were subjected to one of its notorious death marches, during which 2,250 servicemen died. Japanese soldiers were particularly cruel to the Filipinos, whom they regarded as colonial lackeys. This indifference to suffering on the part of the captors became patently obvious in the last months of the Pacific War. At Sandakan, in British North Borneo, 2,428 Allied prisoners were marched to death in mid-1945…An unavoidable aspect of Japanese rule was its repression, but in the end such severity was self-defeating: it failed to win over Southeast Asian peoples.” [Arthur Cotterell. Chapter 10: the greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere. A History of Southeast Asia. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2014]
2. “Dutch Indonesia. The Japanese invasion of Indonesia began on 10 January 1942. After the surrender of Singapore on 15 February, the Netherlands East Indies became the front line of the Japanese southward advance, but Dutch colonial and allied forces were no match for the Japanese. In the Battle of the Java Sea in late January, a combined Dutch, British, Australian, and American fleet was destroyed. Most Indonesians gave the colonial forces little or no support. In Aceh, the All-Aceh Union of Ulamas (PUSA), led by Daud Beureu’eh, actually rebelled against the Dutch and drove the colonial power out even before the Japanese arrived. On 8 March 1942 the Dutch Governor-General surrendered in Batavia and the Dutch colonial regime came to an end, never to be restored. Some 65,000 Dutch military men were interned along with about 25,000 other Allied troops and about 80,000 civilians. Some 60,000 of the latter were women and children. The conditions in Japanese prison camps were horrific: about 40 percent of the civilian male internees died, 20 percent of the military, 13 percent of the female civilians, and 10 percent of the children. The Japanese conquest of Indonesia was thus swift and the consequences of its occupation were momentous. But it was not to last long.” [M. C. Ricklefs, Bruce Lockhart, Albert Lau, Portia Reyes, Maitrii Aung-Thwin. Chapter 10: World War II in Southeast Asia (1942–1945). A New History of Southeast Asia. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010]
Which topics should we expect from any full-length coverage of WW2 in Southeast Asia? For and about the Philippines and the Filipinos, these include the undeterred Japanese espionage in Rizal’s Archipelago, the bombing of Manila coincident with the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Bataan Death March, the belligerent Japanese Occupation of the Philippine Commonwealth, the role of the Quezon Administration in the Pacific War Council, the puppetry of the Laurel regime, the guerrilla commands from Batanes to Sulu, the 1944 Leyte Battles, the Rape of Mapanique, the 1945 Lingayen Landing, the Cabanatuan Raid, Manila 1945 (Battle, Rape, Liberation), the Los Banos Raid, and Japanese cannibalism in Mindanao.
We are also interested in the 1942 Qantas Short Empire shoot-down, the Massacres of Australian and Dutch prisoners of war by the Hirohito’s Army (Laha, Bangka Island, Balikpapan), Pekanbaru Death Railway, the Semarang Comfort Women Incident, the Japanese imperialist Dutch East Indies campaign, Pontianak incidents, Operation Lentil (Sumatra), Operation Meridian (aka the Palembang Raids), and Perang Kemerdekaan Indonesia, among others.
Elsewhere in the region: the Sook Ching Massacre in Singapore, the Burma-Siam Death Railway, the Sandakan Death March, the Vietminh Revolution, etc.
What lessons are we learning from and teaching about the Global Anti-Fascist War? Today, SEA is a nuclear-weapons-free zone as well as a Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality. Which should be defended from the corruption of the Han chauvinists.