JOHN COAST'S STIRRING STORY

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)                                                                                                                                  

ROESLAN ABDULGANI: 'Supersemar exists'

(Above: Dr Abdulgani's daughter, Retnawati Abdulgani-Knapp and fellow historian Dr Frank Palmos in November 2011)

SURVIVING THE KLEPTOCRAZIES:

First published in Inside Indonesia Edition 77 Jan-March 2004, but now curiously absent from the magazine’s archives. Republished here to make it more accessible following the publishing of Frank Palmos' thesis on the Battle of Surabaya (see stories below). Dr Abdulgani died in 2005.

Reflections from former Foreign Affairs Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Dr. H. Roeslan Abdulgani.

Duncan Graham

“Supersemar does exist. I have seen it. It is still in the hands of

Harto. [Suharto, Indonesia’s second president.] But it was

misinterpreted by him to remove Sukarno”.

Supersemar (Surat Perintah Sebelas Maret), or Letter of 11 March) was a

letter allegedly written by Sukarno requesting that Suharto impose order

following the 1965 coup. It was used as the legal authority transferring

power to Suharto — but a copy has never surfaced.

There are probably as many anecdotes about the mysterious document and

the events surrounding it as there are Indonesians. Very few who were

close to the action are still alive and remember with clarity their

experiences first hand.

The anecdote quoted above is by former Foreign Affairs Minister and

Deputy Prime Minister Dr Roeslan (also known as Ruslan) Abdulgani, whose revolutionary and

founding father credentials are stainless. They include a badly damaged

right hand, the result of being strafed in 1948 by a Dutch plane. At the

time he was riding a bike through Yogyakarta trying to save the young

republic’s critical documents. He was treated by a Dutch doctor, and

then imprisoned in hospital.

Now almost 90 and frail, he still has a sharp mind (“age is

opportunity”), a powerful command of English, and some certainties not

eroded by time. These include his belief that the American Central

Intelligence Agency was also involved in the 1965 coup in which six

Indonesian generals were killed, precipitating the fall of Sukarno.

According to official Indonesian history, the killings were the result

of a communist putsch.

Dr Roeslan claimed Sukarno had no foreknowledge of the coup. “He was

very naive though not with women. He was a politician, not a military

man. He thought he could make communism in Indonesia nationalistic and

this infuriated Russia and China”.

Although 14 years younger, Dr Roeslan was closely aligned with Sukarno

personally and politically, calling him ‘Indonesia’s George Washington’.

Despite this, Dr Roeslan survived the change of government and was sent

to New York by Suharto’s New Order government to negotiate Indonesia’s

re-entry into the United Nations.

He also grew to admire Suharto’s early reforms, but despised the later

excesses of the president’s family and friends: “He [Suharto] said there

could be no prosperity without security and stability — and in this he

was right”. Through his daughter’s biography Dr Roeslan is quoted as

describing Suharto as ‘a responsive and decent human being when free of

family greed’.

KLEPTOCRAZIES

Dr Roeslan retains an intellect nimble enough to dance around awkward

questions. So when asked about the qualities of current president

Megawati, daughter of his former colleague, he replied: “What is good,

what is bad?” Later his criticisms were hard but circumspect, preferring

the general to the specific.

“This present generation does not know what we fought for, and that is

the tragedy. There is so much waste. We are rich, but so many people

have been stealing from the nation — it is a sickness, like kleptomania.

We have become klepto-crazies. There are two and a half million

super-rich in Indonesia. They go to Singapore for their health and

shopping, not to their own country”.

Like most former politicians who have struggled with nation building, he

despises the indulgences of modern bureaucrats and their reluctance to

forego the plunder of power for the sake of the nation. He is also

miffed that his good relations with President Megawati have not led to

her following his advice on communicating more and spending less.

And for those less interested in moralising, Dr Roeslan has enough

personal anecdotes of the founding president to entertain kampong

gossips for a decade:

“He used to like to say there were two Sukarnos, but in reality there

were three. And I told him so. The first was the ideologist. He knew the

strength and weakness of the colonialists and our strengths and

weaknesses. That was good.

“The second was the politician, forming and using power, sometimes cooperating with the Japanese or the Islamists or the Nationalists. Then he would hit them. That was dangerous.

“The third was Sukarno as an individual. That was not so dangerous. He

used to say: ‘I can hate, I can love, I can be soft, I can be strong’.

“But you are making a mistake if you think his love was erotic. His love

was for beauty, in women, in the beach, in mountains and trees, in the

colours of the waves, the beauty of nature. He saw God in the smile of a

young girl, and in the suffering of people’”.

Apart from his status as a revolutionary hero who also survived a 1956

coup attempt, Dr Roeslan is a historian. His books include Seratus Hari

di Surabaya (One Hundred Days in Surabaya) a history of the 1945 battle

in the East Java capital in which he played a major role negotiating

with the invaders. The bloody clash was between nationalists and British

troops trying to liberate Allied prisoners of the Japanese and help

reinstall Dutch rule. /The Bandung Connection/ is an account of the 1955

Asia Africa Conference where 24 so-called non-aligned nations came

together in a bid to counter Western power. A collection of Dr Roeslan’s

essays was published in 1994 to commemorate his 80th birthday.

Dr Roeslan was born in a Surabayan kampong on 24 November 1914, the

son of a wealthy shopkeeper. Academically bright and an avid reader,

Roeslan married up into a priyayi (upper-class Javanese) family. He

was expelled from a teachers’ training college for political activities,

studied law, became an active nationalist and a skilled administrator.

PHAR LAP’S HEALTH

An infrequent visitor to Australia, he retains good impressions, though

corroded by recent events. Highlights include sitting alongside cab

drivers (‘I was flabbergasted!’), calling people by their forenames,

preserving the heart of a racehorse — these and other small incidents

are revived with glee. But not enough to mask his disquiet about

Australia’s perceived political shift in international alliances.

“I used to have great admiration for Australia because you are already

competing with Leiden (in Holland) in Indonesian studies”, he said.

“But this talk of pre-emptive strikes [against terrorists] is nonsense.

The lesson for Australia is not to look back to Europe and the United

States. Australia should not be a part of Europe — you should be part of

Southeast Asia.

“I should keep my mouth shut, but I tell you the most dangerous man is a

Javanese who is silent. So here’s one last message for Australia: Keep

preserving Phar Lap’s heart. I like that”.

##

SURABAYA 1945 - SACRED TERRITORY

They helped shape Indonesia: Veteran Ibdul Hamid Purna W (above) and his colleagues.

THE CITY THAT CREATED A NATION

The plot is Shakespearian. So are the characters. The flywheel of time, heavy with history and greased by blood, spins on. Old men, blind with prejudice, fumble for the invisible brake. Leaders vacillate. The young seize the moment.

There’s cowardice and bravery, butchery and vision, leadership and deceit. We, the audience, knowing the end, shout ’enough, enough’. The players are deaf. This is Arek Soeroboyo. It’s a tragedy. And a triumph.

Synopsis: It’s late 1945. The Japanese have been atomised into defeat. The Allies arrive in East Java to restore the colonialists. The tough locals resist, but the invaders win. It’s a Pyrrhic victory.

The last scene comes four years later when the stubborn Dutch finally accept the inevitable and leave. A new nation has been born.

Journalist Frank Palmos has produced a doctoral thesis Surabaya 1945 – Sacred Territory that will form the basis for a set of new histories about the Battle of Surabaya. These are expected to be published next year with schools in mind.

Palmos first came to Indonesia 50 years ago to learn the language, then returned as Australia’s youngest foreign correspondent for the Year of Living Dangerously. He interpreted Soekarno’s speeches. He was befriended by Roeslan Abdulgani who was actually in the battle. When the former diplomat died Palmos was given the freedom fighter’s personal papers.

These have become the cornerstone of his research along with scores of personal interviews with veterans. He’s also had access to the Indonesian Army’s historical accounts and has burrowed deep into the war archives, particularly in Britain.

His work won’t please all. Accounts written by lazy hacks, or produced to a political script, have been hardened by age, so acceptance of the new version may be hampered by prejudice.

The counter argument is that Palmos is not a thunder-thief, but a window-opener, exposing the words of those who were there but who haven’t been heard, cleaning out the rubbish, setting the story in its proper order. His contribution to a balanced understanding of the past deserves promotion, not rejection because he’s an outsider.

Indeed, who better to do the job? An ethical foreign journalist who knows Indonesia from the inside, is sympathetic but not partisan, and has seen war close up in Vietnam may be the best man for the job.

Palmos is particularly scornful of the work of Idrus, whose account of the war was given credibility through inclusion in US scholar Benedict Anderson’s seminal Java in a Time of Revolution.

“No authoritative Indonesian source used Idrus,” writes the iconoclast – and the italics are his. “This was a fictional reconstruction by Jakarta writer Idrus who pretended he was an eyewitness. He had never been to Surabaya”

Another writer, Louis Fischer whose The Story of Indonesia was used by incoming foreign diplomats as essential reading, recounts an Indonesian attack on the British that Palmos says never took place. Fischer also added Achmad to the president’s name to suit Western nomenclature.

Then there’s the doctoring of the famous photo of Rebel Radio’s Soetomo whose Che Guevara-style image still appears in posters.

According to the author, the fiery broadcaster did not use a weapon and rarely went into the streets. The original photo was taken under a Malang holiday hotel umbrella in 1947 then doctored with the addition of bomb blasts.

Notes Palmos dryly: “For Bung Tomo’s followers the past becomes rosier with every passing year.”

Palmos has been thorough. He’s turned every available page to build a clear picture of what happened, uncovering much unpublished material, some of it funny.

After the 17 August proclamation the radio announcer slipped the news past Japanese censors by using Madurese. Dutch speaking medical students posed as ill-educated waiters to eavesdrop dinners and bugged meetings with hidden microphones. A teenager who tried to shoot a Sikh soldier with an empty weapon was disarmed and told to go home to his mum.

Women were also prominent in the conflict, feeding the fighters and nursing the wounded. Calls for reinforcements were met by thousands flooding in from the hinterland to cook and care. I’d like to know more of their stories.

Not all was benign or glorious. The chaos was used to settle personal vendettas, slaughter civilian internees, spy on colleagues and plunder the 20,000 refugees fleeing the city every day. Some Chinese supported the pemuda – others were spies. War brings out the best and worst.

For historians there’s an uneasy relationship between academics and journalists. The latter write to be read, the former to be footnoted. Fortunately Palmos has retained his ability to tell a good yarn while maintaining the annotations.

The lead up to the start of the main conflict on 10 November was menjelang datangnya – awaiting the hurricane. An earlier three-day battle of awful brutality had ended with a cease-fire brokered by Soekarno, who’d been called in by the Allies. His action went against the advice of the local leaders who had their enemies on the run and suspected foul play.

They were right. The British used the interregnum not just to evacuate the Europeans who’d been held in Japanese concentration camps, but also to bring in thousands of well-equipped reinforcements.

Like a modern thriller, Palmos takes us, step by muffled step, through the nightmare wait for the inevitable doomed clash of untrained schoolboys against bombers, pushbikes versus tanks.

It took 99 days for the British to drive the exhausted and outgunned fighters, seriously hampered by a lack of radios, into the hills. There they continued guerrilla warfare when the Dutch returned in early1946. The pemuda never surrendered. Their kampong warfare tactics set the pattern for street fighting in Indo-China and their spirit stoked independence in India.

Could it have been avoided? Probably not. When the British cheated on the ceasefire conditions, concrete positions had set. The Allies were determined to crush the ‘terrorists’ and ‘insurgents’, grossly misreading the mood. Earlier they’d showered the city with pamphlets featuring Queen Wilhelmina and talked of Indonesians’ ‘love’ of the Dutch, then shelled Surabaya from warships.

On the other side was a city daubed with revolutionary slogans, bedecked with red and white flags, and a radio station blaring Merdeka atau mati - Freedom or death. The hardy citizens had already proved their worth by disarming the Japanese, seizing 400,000 weapons and competently taking over civil administration.

Their spirit in confronting the overbearing Dutch desperate to recover their plantations and prestige should have jolted anyone prepared to look and listen. If such sages existed they don’t feature in this book.

Palmos rightly makes much of the tension between the Revolutionary command fiddling in Jakarta and the fighting Surabaya pemuda (literally ‘youth’, but to become the word for action and attitude) – a tricky subject for local writers to handle.

Although Soekarno was heavily criticised the people stood by their President, always teetering on the cliff-edge, forever expecting to be arrested and charged as a collaborator. Among his own people he was suspect for allegedly helping the Japanese recruit romusha (slave labor) and feared assassination.

For anyone wanting to understand why Indonesians – and particularly Surabayans - are such ferocious patriots, this book explains all. Like the French and American Revolutionaries the Arek Soeroboyo fought for a universal principle – freedom to decide their own destiny – and paid terribly with maybe 100,000 casualties and a scorched and almost empty city. Never wonder why the flag is half red.

Why haven’t local writers been more active? They were certainly restricted under the first two presidencies. Comments Palmos: “Indonesian historians are now perhaps a little indolent, certainly too modest, about their nation’s remarkable history. The world expects much more from them before time wipes clean the last traces of their glorious earlier years.” He particularly wants a higher profile for Governor Surio’s outstanding leadership and “Churchillian” speeches.

Finally Palmos raises the issue of special recognition for those who fought in Surabaya, before the army was formed. “At the time of writing (2011) there were no battle ribbons, no medals for bravery struck, and Veterans were still pushing for those who fought in the Battle.”

Maybe a foreigner’s book will spur the Government to put things right.


(First published in The Sunday Post, 4 December 2011)