Newsletter No. 324
Research-Review
July 11, 2006

 

JAPANESE-TRAINED ARMIES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

The following newsletter has been provided by Sandra R. Leavitt (Shingetsu Member No. 55), who is based at Georgetown University. Here, Leavitt offers a short book review on the topic of Japanese-trained armies in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia. For more on the Peta Army, see Shingetsu Newsletter No. 276.

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Joyce C. Lebra, Japanese-Trained Armies in Southeast Asia: Independence and Volunteer Forces in World War II, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).

This book is one of the few that details the significant influence Japan’s military has had on the formation and development of post-independence armies in Southeast Asia. Chapters cover Japan’s efforts in India, Burma, Indonesia, Malaya, Sumatra, Indochina, Borneo, and the Philippines. Below is a brief summary of the book’s conclusions.

Lebra carefully documents how the military training Southeast Asians received from the Japanese prior to and during WWII was critical to achieving independence and developing sovereign governance afterward. Southeast Asian nationalists were provided an important array of resources that they would not have had without Japan’s assistance. These include development of leadership, military discipline, organizational techniques, networks, symbols, weapons caches, intelligence-gathering techniques, communications, and trained military personnel loyal to the nationalists. In Burma and Indonesia, Japan’s efforts eventually backfired in that the armies that they created revolted against the Japanese as well.

Even before Japan’s army swept into Southeast Asia during the Pacific War, and briefly displaced the Western colonial powers, Japan was training and supporting nationalists for anti-colonial uprisings, both politically and militarily. In some cases (i.e., in Indonesia, Burma, and India) it trained independence armies to collaborate with the Japanese in initially ousting Western powers and their local collaborators. In other cases (i.e., in Malaya, Sumatra and Indochina) volunteer armies were formed during Japanese occupation. Their role was to help Japan rule during occupation and bolster Japanese defenses of their new territories.

Southeast Asians received military training in three areas from the Japanese. First, an officer corps was developed that could, in turn, build armed forces from scratch, a task considerably different than simply augmenting existing personnel and skill sets. Many who became military and political leaders in Southeast Asia’s newly independent countries after WWII were trained at the Military Academy in Japan and Manchukuo. Second, officers and soldiers were trained to fight alongside Japanese forces against re-colonizing Western powers and even to hold their own in the case that Japan had to temporarily retreat. Third, Japanese military training emphasized building and training guerrilla units. Guerrilla warfare skills were said to be decisive in the initial easy defeat of Western powers and later in suppressing internal challenges to young governments. In all cases, the Japanese stressed spirit (seishin) over technical expertise.

Japan selected and trained those who had been excluded by Western powers. In Indonesia, Japan chose those who had been imprisoned or marginalized by the Dutch and demonstrated anti-colonial convictions. As a result, the disenfranchised were brought to political and military power, including Sukarno, the first president of independent Indonesia, and Aung San, the father of modern-day Burma. Because Islam had been an important ideological, symbolic, and structural resource in Indonesia’s nationalist movement since the 1920s, the Japanese relied heavily on powerful Muslim leaders in their recruiting efforts.

As late as the early 1970s, 75 percent of the top ranks in Indonesia’s military were filled by ex-Peta officers trained under the Japanese. Others filled important ambassadorial posts, a common career pattern among the most important Japanese-trained army veterans. Still others have been instrumental in developing significant business ties between Japan and Southeast Asia. Close ties remained between the Japanese trainers and their Southeast and South Asian students.