Those were the days
Indonesia is an historian’s mother lode – a vein of dazzling
riches.
From the bloodletting and intrigue of the Majapahit dynasty to
the adventures and betrayal of Prince Diponegoro through to building a nation; the
mix of mystery and fact continues to yield high quality ore. Some stories feature
European adventurers.
Probably the most famous was K’tut Tantri, aka Surabaya Sue,
aka Muriel Walker, the Scottish-American Bali hotelier who supported the nationalists. Tortured by the Japanese she became a
broadcaster and speech writer for Soekarno. and told some of her past in Revolt in Paradise. Though not all.
Less famous and less coy is John Coast though his past is
almost as fantastic. Had his biography Recruit
to Revolution (first published in 1952) not been reissued by a reputable
publisher and edited by scholar Dr Laura Noszlopy it might have been considered
suspect.
Coast’s story starts in pre-war Britain where he worked as a
bored bank clerk who loved to watch ballet. He enlisted and was sent to defend
Singapore two weeks before it fell.
As in The Lunchbox
film about the Dabbawallahs of Mumbai ‘sometimes you have to get on the wrong
train to get to the right station’.
For more than three years Coast toiled on the 418 kilometer Death
Railway linking Thailand with Burma. He
slaved with thousands of European prisoners and maybe up to 300,000 romusha, conscripted Indonesians; he
found them more likeable than the ‘blackguard’ Dutch.
Despite the appalling conditions (about a third of the
workers died) Coast spent his time usefully.
He discovered Balinese dance and organised performances to entertain the
men.
He also studied Dutch and Malay, arousing suspicion as he
had the ‘fantastic idea’ of Indonesian independence. Instead of crying in his
cups during the long sea voyage home after release he wrote about his experiences.
Railroad of Death was published in
1946 and did well. Coast mixed with Indonesians in London and assembled a Javanese
dance group to stage tours.
Coast helped his friends
agitating to get the Dutch out of the East Indies through cultural activities,
translations and lobbying. Although Independence had been declared after the
Japanese surrender the colonialists had returned and were engaged in a guerrilla
war.
During this time Coast met key players including the Moscow
go-between Suripno and the Sorbonne-educated economist Sumitro Joyohadikusumo, who
later became Minister of Finance. He and Coast were the same age – both born in
1917.
According to Noszlopy’s
introduction, Joyohadikusumo was also associated with the Socialist Party of
Indonesia. The reminder may not please
his son, failed presidential aspirant Prabowo Subianto now Gerindra Party boss.
The closest Coast could get to Indonesia was the British
Embassy in Bangkok. He was supposed to be handling public relations but spent
time developing contacts with Indonesians.
He quit after a year to work for the new Indonesian government. Coast
claimed his former employer considered him ‘unstable’ and a ‘nutcase’.
Long before security clearances and plastic name tags hampered
adventurers, oddballs like Coast could get into what he called ‘the thick of
things’. He was also a speedy learner, prepared to adapt and dilute his
personal beliefs. Keen to be seen as egalitarian in the post-colonial era he
wore shorts and walked.
A Javanese friend who understood the protocols of
appearances trumping abilities offered advice: Wear long trousers and a tie; use
a car; mix only with top officials and wear glasses to look older. The ploys worked and Coast then got treated
with respect.
His job was organising clandestine flights of goods and guns
into Indonesia past the Dutch blockade which was making the Republic a ‘dirty,
shabby, isolated, barren, vicious-minded place.’
American pilots flew old Dakotas from Thailand to
Bukittinggi and Jambi in Sumatra, and Yogyakarta. To earn money the revolutionaries exported
opium – another awkward piece to fit into the jigsaw of the nation’s history.
Coast met the leaders of the new government and was
impressed with their qualities. He formed a close relationship with Agus Salim
who cleverly organised support for the new Republic from Arab states using his
credentials as an Islamic scholar.
Coast accompanied the Indonesian delegation to the 1949
Round Table Conference in The Hague which led to the Dutch withdrawal from
Indonesia. He was then smart enough to
realise his job had been done and there was no place for a foreigner in the new
nationalism.
He moved to Bali to become a concert promoter taking an
Indonesian dance troupe called Peliatan (named
after a village near Ubud) on a successful tour to Britain and the US.
Coast wrote about his experiences in Dancing out of Bali and for some time was seen as an Indonesian
expert. He worked with people like the naturalist film producer Sir David
Attenborough on BBC documentaries. Coast’s essay on East-West relationships (http://thisibelieve.org/essay/16450/)
is as relevant today as it was when written in the 1950s.
What this book doesn’t say is that Coast had allegedly been
a pre-war fascist and Nazi sympathiser, a background only recently revealed
through the release of official papers.
The omission is strange as the information was published in
2015 – and also because Coast was later linked to left-wing activists and
causes. Although allegedly of interest to the MI5 spy agency Coast was never
arrested though some friends were jailed.
Two years ago Britain’s Express tabloid commented that ‘it
is unlikely they (Attenborough and other celebrities) would have wanted much to
do with him (Coast) if they had any inkling of the depth of his anti-Semitic
fanaticism.’
Was this true – or a Dutch intelligence smear? Fortunately
Indonesians saw the man for what he was – a genuine anti-colonialist with the
determination to help the new nation through his skills and contacts. Coast
married a Javanese (Supianti) and died in 1989, and as the conservative newspaper reluctantly notes, with his reputation
intact
Recruit to Revolution by John Coast, edited
by Laura Noszlopy NIAS Press 2016
(First published in The Jakarta Post 10 April 2017)
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