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Letters: 67 years after World War II

[The writer of this letter was born in 1927 in Semarang, Central Java, spent World War II in captivity and migrated to The Netherlands after the war’s end

The Jakarta Post
Thu, August 16, 2012

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Letters: 67 years after World War II

[The writer of this letter was born in 1927 in Semarang, Central Java, spent World War II in captivity and migrated to The Netherlands after the war’s end.]

Aug. 15, 1945. In a flash, I see them again: My grandfather, the relatives and strangers I had to bury in a Japanese concentration camp in Bogor. If I close my eyes I can still see their procession.

 “We will meet again,” I thought then. Every war generates its own deaths and victims. People remain marked by war for the rest of their lives.

I hope that humanity will find its way through diplomacy to “unity in diversity”, eventually. It may not be because we have become better people. We may suddenly realize that if we want to survive on our little planet, then we have to meet the challenges of our age: poverty, war and want, among other things.

I can now identify with the Netherlands and Indonesia, which was not always the case. It took a while. Growing up in the Dutch East Indies, as Indonesia was then known, my heart was closed to my motherland and my people. We were brainwashed to identify with the Dutch and Dutch culture. We learned that it was there that lay our opportunities and our hopes for a bright future.

That’s why, for those of us who migrated to the Netherlands after 1945, there’s an Aug. 15, when Japan surrendered, but no Aug. 16. In contrast, in the Netherlands, we remember the war dead on May 4 and the liberation of the nation from German occupation on May 5.

For us migrants, Aug. 15 was followed by the period that the Dutch called the bersiap, when Indonesian youth (pemuda) squared off against 100,000 soldiers sent to the East Indies to bring the colony back under Dutch control after World War II.

We will soon commemorate Independence again. Television and radio stations will broadcast documentaries about the war, the bersiap period and more. We will again ponder the universal eternal question: Who is to blame?

The Dutch government never answered the question as to why our leaders did not see the end of colonialism. No one likes change, but every generation needs leaders who can see change coming our way.

Most in my generation have died. Following generations had rebuild the Netherlands. They have forgotten that once we had colonies.

The children and grandchildren of my generation are living in a fast changing world. They have guts and see the necessity for building a global society. They, my grandchildren, can shape a new meaning for Aug. 17.

They can discover that Indonesia has risen on the ashes of its forefathers.

They can discover that there is a proud and brave people trying to shape an Indonesia for the future. They can help Indonesia to create a new Pacific nation, free of the past, free of greed and listening to what their forefathers said Pancasila.

On the shoulders of their ancestors, a new nation of 238 million people stands. Let us all in the Netherlands learn to rejoice with the Indonesian people on Aug. 17.

Joty ter Kulve
Wassenaar, the Netherlands

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