Educational Remnants of Military Occupation: The Japanese in Indonesia

Abstract

Three months after Pearl Harbor was bombed, the Japanese forces in Southeast Asia culminated their assault on the Netherlands Indies by forcing the surrender of the Dutch army center in West Java. This event on March 9, 1942, closed an almost continuous 350-year period of Dutch domination in the archipelago and opened a three-and-one-half-year era of Japanese military occupation. During this 1942-1945 era, Japanese authorities wrought a variety of significant changes in the islands' educational system. When World War II ended, Japan's forces returned to their homeland, but many of their influences lingered on. Today, more than two decades since the Japanese retired from Indonesia, we can assess the long-term effect on education of wartime occupation and can estimate why certain Japanese educational innovations have since disappeared from the islands' schools whereas others remain intact. Our discussion is divided into three parts. The first describes changes effected by the Japanese between 1942 and mid-1945. The second briefly outlines some major socio-political events that occurred between 1945 and 1965. The third presents the 1965 remnants of the wartime educational innovations and proposes four factors which most significantly determine the long-term fate of educational changes made during short-term military occupation.