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Puppets, Profiteers and Traitors: Defining Wartime Collaboration in the Dutch East Indies, 1945–1949

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Debating Collaboration and Complicity in War Crimes Trials in Asia, 1945-1956

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Abstract

According to Philip Piccigallo, the course of the Allied war crimes trials in Asia after the war was set by national policies and interests rather than by the urge to do justice. If the punishment of war crimes served political ends, it is likely that the punishment of wartime collaboration, especially in a colonial context, was even more politicized. This hypothesis is tested by looking at the ideas of the Dutch East Indies government on the prosecution policies regarding wartime collaboration between 1945 and 1949 to determine to what extent the policies were affected by the war of decolonization. This chapter shows that the unexpected proclamation of independence by Indonesian nationalists after the Japanese surrender made the Dutch colonial government revise its ideas. A combination of political, military and practical factors made the Dutch move from a stern position to a more lenient stand on punishing collaborators, but without completely abandoning prosecution for collaboration. On the one hand, definitions and categories of collaboration were narrowed to prevent all Indonesians from being prosecuted for having nationalist feelings and to prevent population groups from alienating themselves from the Dutch. On the other hand, the colonial government created room to include in the definition crimes committed by Indonesian protagonists during the new war.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Strong criticism, as expressed, for instance, by Minear, was for long the dominant perception in Japan, as shown by Futamura: Richard H. Minear, Victors’ Justice : The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); Madoka Futamura, War Crimes Tribunals and Transitional Justice: The Tokyo Trial and the Nuremburg Legacy (London; New York: Routledge, 2008).

  2. 2.

    Yuma Totani, The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008); Neil Boister, The Tokyo International Military Tribunal: A Reappraisal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). The countries represented in the IMTFE were the United Kingdom, the United States, France, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Soviet Union, China, the Philippines and India.

  3. 3.

    See, for instance, Yuma Totani, Justice in Asia and the Pacific Region, 1945–1952: Allied War Crimes Prosecutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

  4. 4.

    Philip R. Piccigallo, The Japanese on Trial: Allied War Crimes Operations in the East, 1945–1951 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), viii.

  5. 5.

    See on the British procedures R. John Pritchard, “The Parameters of Justice: The Evolution of British Civil and Military Perspectives on War Crimes Trials and Their Legal Context (1942–1956),” International Humanitarian Law 3 (2006): 277–326; Suzannah Linton, ed., Hong Kong’s War Crimes Trials (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and in particular, Alexander Zahar, “Trial Procedure at the British Military Courts, Hong Kong, 1946–1948,” 13–69.

  6. 6.

    An impressive in-depth study on the Australian trials and procedures is Georgina Fitzpatrick, Tim McCormack, and Narrelle Morris, eds., Australia’s War Crimes Trials 1945–51 (Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, 2016); Caroline Pappas, “Law and Politics: Australia’s War Crimes Trials in the Pacific, 1943–1961” (unpublished PhD diss., University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 1998).

  7. 7.

    Georgina Fitzpatrick, “War Crimes Trials, ‘Victor’s Justice’ and the Australian Military Justice in the Aftermath of the Second World War,” The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 327–47.

  8. 8.

    Martin Shipway, Decolonization and Its Impact : A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008).

  9. 9.

    An important volume on postwar policies on collaboration in Europe is István Deák, ‘Introduction’, in István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt, eds., The Politics of Retribution in Europe : World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

  10. 10.

    According to Kratoska, Southeast Asian countries, except for the Philippines, were not inclined to try collaboration: Paul H. Kratoska and Ken’ichi Gotō, “Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia, 1941–1945,” in The Cambridge History of the Second World War, ed. Richard Bosworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 508–32. In the Philippines, 156 convictions in about 5,600 court cases: Konrad M. Lawson, “Wartime Atrocities and the Politics of Treason in the Ruins of the Japanese Empire, 1937–1953” (PhD thesis, Harvard University, 2012), 199; the British authorities decided that, except for military treason by members of the Indian National Army, it was not in the interest of the people to prosecute civilian collaborators in Asia. Civilians were tried in Malaya, though; see Denyse Tessensohn, “The British Military Administration’s Treason Trial of Dr. Charles Joseph Pemberton Paglar, 1946” (MA thesis, NUS Singapore, 2006).

  11. 11.

    For example, C.A. Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars : Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). Bayly and Harper do mention trials in the different regions, but they do not go into the administration of justice. A valuable contribution to the field is therefore Kerstin von Lingen (ed), War Crimes Trials in the Wake of Decolonization and Cold War in Asia, 1945–1956: Justice in Time of Turmoil (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), which also reflects on the Dutch case: Lisette Schouten, “Netherlands East Indies’ War Crime Trials in the Face of Decolonization”, 195–220.

  12. 12.

    Recent studies on collaboration in Asia include Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Koen de Ceuster, “The Nation Exorcised: The Historiography of Collaboration in South Korea,” Korean Studies 25, no. 2 (2001): 207–42; David P. Barrett and Lawrence N. Shyu, Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932–1945: The Limits of Accommodation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); Satoshi Ara, “Collaboration and Resistance: Catalino Hermosilla and the Japanese Occupation of Ormoc, Leyte (1942–1945),” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 60, no. 1 (2012): 33–68; an important and innovative study in which different regions are compared is by Konrad M. Lawson, “Wartime Atrocities and the Politics of Treason in the Ruins of the Japanese Empire, 1937–1953” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2012), in which Chinese, British and Philippine cases of collaboration by police and servicemen are described.

  13. 13.

    In my dissertation I attempt to fill this gap by providing an overview of the way in which the Dutch colonial government dealt with collaboration in the Dutch East Indies by studying how ideas, policies and the prosecution of collaboration and war crimes took shape and were put into practice.

  14. 14.

    This is not a definite figure. It is based on a wide range of primary sources, including trial records, clemency petitions, intelligence records, government documents and newspapers. In my thesis I will deal with figures and numbers more extensively. The number of cases was only a very small percentage of the total number of individuals under investigation, as is evident from the hundreds of intelligence and investigation records kept in the inventories of the intelligence services and judiciary in the National Archives in The Hague.

  15. 15.

    The first known collaboration trials related to the Japanese occupation were held at the TCM on Biak (Dutch New Guinea) in April 1945. One of the last judgments in a collaboration case was pronounced in public in Surabaya on 20 December 1949, only a few days before the sovereignty transfer. The defendant had worked as an interpreter for the Kempeitai in Malang and had assaulted several persons during interrogations. He was sentenced to a prison sentence of five years: National Archives, The Hague (NA), 2.09.19 Krijgsraden in Nederland en Nederlands-Indië 1923–1962 (KR), 80, Files TCM Surabaya 1947–1949.

  16. 16.

    Examples related to different population groups: Didi Kwartanada, “Competition, Patriotism and Collaboration: The Chinese Businessmen of Yogyakarta between the 1930s and 1945,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 33, no. 2 (2002): 257–77; Twang Peck Yang, The Chinese Business Élite in Indonesia and the Transition to Independence, 1940–1950 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1998); Elly Touwen-Bouwsma, “Tussen Etnische Loyaliteit En Politieke Collaboratie: De Indo-Comités Op Java, 1943–1945,” in Het Einde van Indie : Indische Nederlanders Tijdens de Japanse Bezetting En de Dekolonisatie, ed. Wim Willems and Jaap de Moor (Den Haag: Sdu Uitgeverij Koninginnegracht, 1995), 157–72, 286–88; Eveline Buchheim, “Victim, Accomplice or Culprit?: Marie-Therese Brandenburg van Oltsende’s Relations with the Japanese Occupier,” in Under Fire : Women and World War II, ed. Eveline Buchheim, vol. 34, Yearbook of Women’s History/Jaarboek Voor Vrouwengeschiedenis (Amsterdam: Verloren Publishers, 2014), 127–40.

  17. 17.

    In the literature several definitions of collaboration are used. I will use the broad umbrella definition for collaboration encompassing all sorts of cooperation with the enemy in order to follow the terminology used by the Indies government.

  18. 18.

    Brook, Collaboration, 5.

  19. 19.

    Since the 1980s, the Dutch historiography has moved away from the dichotomy of “right” and “wrong” and paid more attention to the many “shades of grey”: Chris van der Heijden, Grijs verleden : Nederland en de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Contact, 2001).

  20. 20.

    C.J. Lammers, Vreemde Overheersing : Bezetten En Bezetting in Sociologisch Perspectief (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2005), 244–59.

  21. 21.

    Heather Sutherland, The Making of a Bureaucratic Elite : The Colonial Transformation of the Javanese Priyayi (Singapore: Heinemann, 1979).

  22. 22.

    Ibid.; Ronald Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration,” in Imperialism – The Robinson and Gallagher Controversy, ed. Roger Louis (New York: New Viewpoints, 1976), 128–51.

  23. 23.

    Shigeru Satō, War, Nationalism and Peasants: Java under the Japanese Occupation 1942–1945 (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1994); Hendri F. Isnaeni and Apid, Romusa: Sejarah Yang Terlupakan (1942–1945), ed. M. Yuanda Zara (Yogyakarta: Ombak, 2008); Sutherland, The Making of a Bureaucratic Elite, 153.

  24. 24.

    Hendrajit, Hawé Setiawan and Sudarto Murtaufiq, eds., Japanese Militarism & Its War Crimes in Asia Pacific Region (Jakarta: Global Future Institute, 2011). A few Indonesians openly condemned Sukarno for his role in the recruitment of forced labourers and the maltreatment of fellow Indonesians: Het Dagblad, “Open brief aan H.M. de Koningin”, 14 January 1946. This newspaper article was an open letter addressed to the Queen by Mas Slamet, who wrote several articles in which he appealed to the Indies government to punish the nationalist leaders for their misbehaviour during the occupation.

  25. 25.

    Anthony Reid, The Blood of the People : Revolution and the End of Traditional Rule in Northern Sumatra (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979); A.J. Piekaar, Atjeh En de Oorlog Met Japan (’s-Gravenhage: Van Hoeve, 1949); Anton Lucas, One Soul One Struggle: Region and Revolution in Indonesia (Sydney: Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen and Unwin, 1991).

  26. 26.

    William H. Frederick, “The Killing of Dutch and Eurasians in Indonesia’s National Revolution (1945–49): A ‘Brief Genocide’ Reconsidered,” Journal of Genocide Research 14, no. 3–4 (2012): 359–80; Mary Somers Heidhues, “Anti-Chinese Violence in Java during the Indonesian Revolution, 1945–49,” Journal of Genocide Research 14, no. 3–4 (2012): 381–401.

  27. 27.

    The Dutch East Indies authorities used the word re-occupy in their correspondence with the British: e.g. Memo Lt-GG (Van Mook) to SACSEA (Mountbatten), 2 September 1945, in S.L. van der Wal, ed., Officiële Bescheiden Betreffende de Nederlands-Indonesische Betrekkingen, 1945–1950, [further: NIB] (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971) Kleine Serie 36, vol. 1, 79–80. Until November 1946 the Dutch East Indies stood under British military command. Fabian Klose argues that it was not the intention of the European colonial powers to decolonize but rather to recolonize and to reinstate their hegemonic position: Fabian Klose, Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence: The Wars of Independence in Kenya and Algeria, trans. Dona Geyer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2013), 47–56.

  28. 28.

    Martin Thomas, Bob Moore, and L.J. Butler, “Introduction: Constructions of Decolonization,” in Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe’s Imperial States, 1918–1975 (London: Hodder Education, 2008), 9.

  29. 29.

    The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew, Surrey (TNA), Treasury Solicitor and HM Procurator General (TS) 26/69 UNWCC, Report by Committee I on the treatment of Quislings, 28 October 1944. These recommendations were initially issued for the situation in Europe but were later also applied to the tasks in the Far East.

  30. 30.

    Brook, Collaboration, 4.

  31. 31.

    L. de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Dl. 11a: Nederlands-Indië I : tweede helft. (Leiden: Nijhoff, 1984), 670–74. Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta (ANRI), Algemene Secretarie (AS) 283, “Aanwijzingen betreffende de houding, aan te nemen door de Bestuursorganen van het land, de Zelfbesturende Landschappen, Provinciën, Regentschappen, (Stads)gemeenten, Waterschappen, Groepsgemeenschappen, Locale Ressorten en Inlandsche Gemeenten en door het daarbij in dienst zijnde personeel, alsmede de bevolking in geval van bezetting van Nederlandsch-Indisch gebied” [1941]; Idem, Letter Govt secretary to G. Beers, 14 Sept 1946. The Staatsmobilisatieraad consisted of commanders of the army and navy, the heads of the departments and the attorney general.

  32. 32.

    Original quote: “bij de verantwoordelijke instanties krachtig protest aanteekenen wanneer deze instanties zelf, of wel daaraan ondergeschikte organen of personen, handelingen plegen, welke volkenrechtelijk niet geoorloofd zijn” [Translation by author].

  33. 33.

    See, for instance, the case of a Manadonese man who worked as an interpreter for the Kempeitai: NA, 2.09.19, KR, 79 Files TCM Surabaya 1946–1948.

  34. 34.

    ANRI, AS 161, Principles concerning arrangements for civil administration and jurisdiction in Netherlands territory in the Southwest Pacific Area, 1944. In the agreement of 10 December 1944 it was laid down that Dutch or Indies officers of the Dutch East Indies Civil Administration (NICA) would handle civil affairs. See also “NICA-handboek”, [s.l., ca. June 1945]. After 15 August 1945 command was handed over to the British of the South-East Asia Command.

  35. 35.

    Original quote: “Slechts voor verraders, die eigen belang stelden boven dat van hun medemenschen, beteekent dit het ineenstorten van hun eigen korte en valsche glorie.” [Translation by author]: Radio speech by H.J. van Mook on 15 August 1945, as published by Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP)-Aneta, in NIB, vol. 1, 42–43n.

  36. 36.

    Van Mook initially shared this opinion. Memo Lt-GG (Van Mook) to acting Director Internal Administration (BB) (Van der Plas), 26 August 1945, in NIB, vol. 1, 56–7; Memo Lt-GG (Van Mook) to SACSEA (Mountbatten), 3 September 1945, in NIB, vol. 1, 82–3; Tom van den Berge, H.J. van Mook : 1894–1965 : een vrij en gelukkig Indonesië : biografie (Bussum: Uitgeverij Thoth, 2014), 198–201.

  37. 37.

    Van Mook spent a considerable amount of time during the war in London with the Dutch government-in-exile. Most other Indies government officials stayed in Melbourne and later at Camp Columbia near Brisbane.

  38. 38.

    Code telegram no. 25 Lt -GG (Van Mook) to min. Overseas Territories(OT) (Logemann), 25 August 1945, in NIB, vol. 1, 55–6.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., note 6.

  40. 40.

    In 1940 the population of the Dutch East Indies totalled about 70 million people, of which 50 million lived on Java. About 300,000 inhabitants were of European or Eurasian descent. If only a fraction of the Indonesians was considered collaborators, the colonial judicial system would not have been able to process them all.

  41. 41.

    Sutan Sjahrir, Our Struggle, ed. Benedict R.O’.G. Anderson (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, Department of Asian Studies, 1968). Also the Indonesian member of the Dutch Parliament, L.N. Palar, was of the opinion that Sukarno should resign because of his collaboration with the Japanese, although he did not consider him a traitor: Het Vrije Volk, ‘Zeven getuigenissen over Indië’, 8 October 1945.

  42. 42.

    ANRI, AS, 288, Letter of Dutch Ambassador to Washington (Loudon) to min FA (Van Kleffens), 10 December 1945.

  43. 43.

    Penal code for Dutch East Indies: Willem Engelbrecht, ed. Edwin Engelbrecht, De Nederlandsch-Indische wetboeken benevens de Grondwet voor het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, en de belangrijkste in Nederlandsch-Indie geldende algemeene verordeningen en besluiten, met verwijzing naar de op elk artikel betrekking hebbende Nederlandsch-Indische, Nederlandsche en sommige Fransche wetsbepalingen (A.W. Sijthoff’s Uitgeverij, Leiden, 1940).

  44. 44.

    Decree of 21 September 1945, “Definitie hulpverlening vijand en straffen”, published in Staatsblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië 1945 no. 135 [translation by author].

  45. 45.

    Ibid.

  46. 46.

    Discussions and explanations on the changes and interpretation of the articles are found in ANRI, AS, 230.

  47. 47.

    Revised Judicial Procedures of the Army (Herziene Rechtspleging bij de Landmacht) Staatsblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië 1945 no. 112, 11 July 1945, revised by Staatsblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië 1945 no. 126, 29 August 1945 and Staatsblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië 1946 no. 57, 18 June 1946.

  48. 48.

    NIOD. Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam (NIOD), 400 Indische Collectie (IC), 487 “Instructie inzake de nasporing naar oorlogsmisdaden”.

  49. 49.

    Studies dealing with the TCMs in the Indies are mostly related to the Japanese war crimes trials and refer, if at all, only to a very limited extent to the collaborator trials: Peter Post et al., eds., The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War, in cooperation with Nederlands Instituut Voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010); L. van Poelgeest, Japanse Besognes: Nederland En Japan 1945–1975 (Den Haag: Sdu, 1999); L.F. de Groot, Berechting Japanse Oorlogsmisdadigers in Nederlands-Indië 1946–1949: Temporaire Krijgsraad Batavia, 2 vols. (Den Bosch: Art & Research, 1990); Idem, “De Rechtspraak Inzake Oorlogsmisdrijven in Nederlands Indië (1947–1949),” Militair-Rechtelijk Tijdschrift 78 (1985): 81–90; 161–72; Idem, “De Rechtspraak van de Temporaire Krijgsraad Te Batavia (1947–1949),” Militair-Rechtelijk Tijdschrift 78 (1985): 248–57; 361–76; Fred L. Borch, “‘In the Name of the Queen’: Military Trials of Japanese War Criminals in the Netherlands East Indies (1946–1949),” The Journal of Military History 79 (2015): 93–125; Lisette Schouten, “Colonial Justice in the Dutch East Indies War Crimes Trials,” in Trials for International Crimes in Asia, ed. Kirsten Sellars (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 75–99; L. de Jong, Het Koninkrijk Der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Dl. 11b: Nederlands-Indië II : Eerste Helft (Den Haag; Amsterdam: SDU Uitgeverij Koninginnegracht; Boom, 1995). In several paragraphs throughout the five volumes, De Jong points out specific cases of collaboration. He was criticised for condemning the collaboration by the Indonesian nationalists: Idem, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Dl. 14: Reacties: tweede helft (’s-Gravenhage: SDU-Uitgeverij, 1991), 820–25.

  50. 50.

    Confusion exists about the number of TCMs, because not all Dutch courts-martial were in the Dutch East Indies, not all courts dealt with the same types of cases (war crimes, collaboration, military cases) and not all were in operation during the whole period 1945–1949. The confusion existed at that time as well: ANRI, AS, Judge Advocate field court-martial (Bonn) to Govt Secr., 2 January 1948.

  51. 51.

    The state of siege was in force in the Dutch East Indies starting on 10 May 1940. Cases of instigation of insurgencies or revolutionary violence committed after the Japanese surrender could be tried by a TCM. Disciplinary cases in which Dutch or KNIL soldiers were involved would be brought before a field court-martial (Krijgsraden te Velde) KL or KNIL but were, for pragmatic reasons, occasionally brought before TCMs. Serious cases of collaboration with the enemy by KNIL servicemen were generally dealt with by a TCM. At a later stage of the decolonization war special courts-martial (Bijzondere Krijgsgerechten) were installed to deal with cases in the field: Rémy Limpach, De Brandende Kampongs van Generaal Spoor (Amsterdam: Boom, 2016), 468–530.

  52. 52.

    The pre-war judiciary consisted of about 300 persons. At least eighty-one members had died during the war, and a substantial number were considered unfit to return to their positions: NA, 2.10.14 AS, 4631, Report to Director of Justice regarding members of the judiciary, October 1945; “Lijst van overleden juristen (rechterlijke ambtenaren, advocaten en procureurs en ambtenaren van het departement van justitie)”, Tijdschrift voor het Recht no. 1 (1947): 6–7.

  53. 53.

    The intelligence services and Netherlands War Crimes Investigation Teams were also instructed to collect information and intelligence about the period after August 1945: NIOD, IC, 442 Report Director Netherlands War Crimes Section (Benders), 8 March 1946. This implication was again stressed by Felderhof in NA, 2.10.17 Procureur-Generaal bij het Hooggerechtshof van Nederlands-Indië, 1945–1949 (PG), 52 Circular AG (Felderhof) to Judge Advocates, 8 April 1946.

  54. 54.

    Government statement, 6 November 1945, in NIB, vol. 1, 588–92; Het Dagblad, “Voorstel der Ned. Regering aan Indonesië”, 7 November 1945.

  55. 55.

    NA, 2.10.62 Marine en Leger Inlichtingendienst, de Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service en de Centrale Militaire Inlichtingendienst in Nederlands-Indië (MLI), 2145, Memorandum Director BB (Van der Plas) to Blom, Van Bylandt, Spoor and Abdulkadir, 10 February 1946.

  56. 56.

    NA, 2.10.14 AS, 3313, Notes of the Department of Justice concerning amnesty, 25 February 1946.

  57. 57.

    Het Dagblad, “De collaborateurs. Uiteenzetting van de regeering”, 1 March 1946.

  58. 58.

    NA, 2.10.17 PG, 52, Circular AG (Felderhof) to all CO AMACAB/CONICA, JAGs and substitutes, and prosecutors, 8 April 1946.

  59. 59.

    Leo Jansen, introd. Gerrit Knaap, In deze halve gevangenis: dagboek van mr dr L.F. Jansen, Batavia/Djakarta 1942–1945 (Franeker: Van Wijnen, 1988); NA, 2.10.62 MLI, 2660 Ritman.

  60. 60.

    As described in article 124 2nd lid sub 6º and 7º W.v.S.

  61. 61.

    Lawson, “Wartime Atrocities”, 22.

  62. 62.

    NA, 2.09.19 KR, 178 TCM in Hollandia, Plea by Aoki Naokichi in case of Matsumoto Kyoshi c.s., 16 March 1948; NA, 2.10.17 PG, 37, Letter Judge Advocate Tarakan to AG, 27 July 1945. See also Kaori Maekawa, “Heiho During the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia”, in Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories, ed. Paul H. Kratoska (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2005), 179–96, 382–88.

  63. 63.

    Richard Chauvel, Nationalists, Soldiers and Separatists: The Ambonese Islands from Colonialism to Revolt : 1880–1950 (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1990), 213–14; NA, 2.10.17 PG, 34 Heiho on Tarakan.

  64. 64.

    This was the case with the Sultan of Bima, who was considered “the only competent administrator” and his questionable role during the war was therefore forgiven: Leiden University Libraries, Leiden (UBL), 59 Collection B.J. Lambers, 28 Memorandum Lambers to AG (Felderhof), 29 May 1946.

  65. 65.

    NA, 2.10.17 PG, 44 Economic collaboration and execution.

  66. 66.

    Kwartanada, “Chinese Leadership and Organization in Yogyakarta during the Japanese Occupation,” 69.

  67. 67.

    Peter Post, “The Oei Tiong Ham Concern and the Change of Regimes in Indonesia, 1931–1950,” in Chinese Indonesians and Regime Change, ed. Marleen Dieleman, Juliette Koning, and Peter Post, (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 169–99.

  68. 68.

    NA, 2.10.17 PG, 44 Economic collaboration and execution. Judge advocates stated that only a limited number of cases was processed for prosecution.

  69. 69.

    For instance on Sumatra: NA, 2.10.17 PG, 44, Letter AG (on behalf, Van Maanen) to subst. Judge Advocate Palembang, 7 October 1946.

  70. 70.

    An Allied War Crimes Investigation Team was ambushed near Bogor on Java in April 1946. Three Australian investigators were killed. See, for instance, Advocate, “Australian officers ambushed by Indonesians. Shot from range of five yards”, 22 April 1946. In Batavia Chief Assistant of the Attorney General B.J. Lambers was driven around by the driver of the Department of Justice with two armed soldiers. Private collection of B.J. Lambers, Letter Lambers to his wife, 29 August 1946.

  71. 71.

    NA, 2.10.17 PG, 20, Letter AG (Felderhof) to CONICA Banjarmasin (Ablij), 27 March 1946.

  72. 72.

    ANRI, AS, 37, Draft minutes meeting Council of Heads of Departments, 7 February 1947.

  73. 73.

    ANRI, AS, 277, Memos on the desirability of extraordinary clemency.

  74. 74.

    Decree Lt-GG 7 May 1947 no.14: Amnesty Decree, Staatsblad voor Nederlandsch Indië 1947 no. 79; NA, 2.05.117 Code-archief van het Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, 1945–1954, 20903, Copy of telegram Lt-GG (Van Mook) to min OT (Jonkman), 11 February 1947.

  75. 75.

    See, for instance, the case of a Eurasian camp guard who had served in several internment camps where he would have maltreated and abused many internees. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment: NA, 2.10.62 MLI, 2567 Dinkelaar. A similar decree was issued in the Philippines in 1948: Konrad M. Lawson, “Universal Crime, Particular Punishment: Trying the Atrocities of the Japanese Occupation as Treason in the Philippines, 1947–1953,” Comparativ | Zeitschrift Für Globalgeschichte Und Vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 23, no. 3 (2013): 57–77.

  76. 76.

    ANRI, AS, 37, Draft minutes meeting Council of Heads of Departments, 7 February 1947.

  77. 77.

    Ibid.

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Zwinkels, E. (2017). Puppets, Profiteers and Traitors: Defining Wartime Collaboration in the Dutch East Indies, 1945–1949. In: von Lingen, K. (eds) Debating Collaboration and Complicity in War Crimes Trials in Asia, 1945-1956. World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53141-0_5

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