Geoffrey C. Gunn
Timor Loro Sae: 500 Years
Macao, Livros do Oriente
1999.
Book Extract:
While the combined Japanese Navy-Army thrust
into Dutch Timor on 19 February 1942 met with little native resistance,
a success that can be attributed to careful intelligence preparation by
Japanese agents prior to the event, as much adroit propaganda cultivation
of an "older brother" image, the situation was more complex in Portuguese
Timor owing to both the status of Portugal as a neutral as much as the
presence in situ of a combined Dutch-Australian force. Whereas Allied forces
were badly defeated in the attempted defence of Dutch Timor, where they
became either prisoners ofwar or the subject of Japanese massacres, in
Portuguese Timor military actions against the Japanese by the guerrillas
were entirely useful to the Allied cause and proceeded according to the
textbook. Needless to say, the Japanese invasion of Portuguese Timor was
treated by the local Portuguese authorities with the same disdain as the
earlier Dutch-Australian intervention. Not surprisingly in these circumstances,
Portuguese-Japanese relations in Timor came under severe strain as the
occupation progressed. But, as this chapterseeks to expose, the wartime
occupation of Timor by Allies and Japanese alike left the Timorese drained
and exhausted by war end, abject victims of a cynical intra-imperialist
struggle played out in Tokyo, Washington, Canberra, London and even Berlin.
A sub-theme concerns the way that the wartime intervention opened up old
wounds and rekindled atavistic tendencies reminiscent of the ancient Timorese
funu.
On 21 June 1946 Major Quinton of the War Crimes Commission arrived in Dili. With the agreement of the Governor, who in turn communicated with Lisbon, a committee was formed including Quinton, Manuel Metelo Raposo de Luz Teixcira, the Administrator of Bobonaro, and Captain Pos of the RNEIA, attached to the U.S. Prosecutor of Major War Criminals in Tokyo. While, once again, the Australians sought joint investigation, they were obliged to confine their activities to Australian victims. In a memo to Charles Eaton, the first postwar Australian Consul in Dili, Quinton complained of "obstinacy" and even of "cover up" by Portuguese officials in revealing the names of those who collaborated with Japanese prior to and during the war. But it was also the case that the Australian War Crimes section felt that war crimes investigations "should not be left in the hands of neutrals". The theme of blaming the Portuguese for their own misfortunes was one that would recur in official Australian attitudes towards Timor.
A scrutiny of the relevant offcial documentation on war crimes investigation in Timor reveals, first, real reason for concern, second, a certain zealousness on the part of investigators to come up with the smoking gun, and third, grave difficulties in bringing about prosecutions owing to conflicting evidence, vague testimony, difficulty in identification of individuals in the various military units that rotated through Timor and even in tracking down the guilty parties who had already re-entered civilian life back in Japan. For the historian, the problem of reconstruction is exacerbated by the fragmentary nature of the remaining and available documentation.
The following incidents as well as judgements
are well documented, however; torture of members of "Z" Special Force comprised
of groups of special commandos inserted in Timor in September 1943, and
April and August 1944, following the withdrawal of the 2/40 and the 2/2.
[At war crimes trials held in Darwin in May 1946, three Japanese were handed
down one to three month prison sentences, while six accused persons were
acquitted]; execution of 24 Australian and Allied persons discovered in
a mass grave near Kupang; the detention of Australian and other Allied
personnel in the appalling Oesapa Besar POW camp near Kupang until evacuated
to Java in August-September 1942; and atrocities committed by the Fukumi
Butai corps against a party of 16 men of the 2nd Independent Company on
23 February, the morning of the Japanese Navy assault on Dili. In this
affair, 16 men of the 2/2 were captured, four were immediately shot and
the rest bar one executed by sword. Many fingers point to the nefarious
activities of an organization called Ortori, linked with the Kempetai.
One of the Australian commandos survived his bayonet wounds to tell the
story. Although the prime subject committed suicide following interrogation,
at a subsequent war crimes trial, two Japanese were sentenced to death
by hanging, two were handed down life sentences and one was given fifteen
years imprisonment.
It is clear that the Australian War Crimes investigators were only interested in investigating crimes against the Australian commandos, not against civilian Timorese or Chinese victims who suffered most from Japanese regime of terror. While Australian investigators collated a mass of oral testimony as to atrocities committed against Portuguese, Chinese, and Timorese, no action was taken in these cases. While Japanese crimes against the Portuguese were actually commemorated in stone in a splendid and surviving monument in Aileu it also has to be said that ordinary Timorese were prime victims of Japanese excesses and recriminations. Equally, it was ordinary Timorese who suffered most from draconian labour details not to mention the economy of scarcity imposed by wartime conditions.
It also cannot pass without mention that alone among the peoples and countries occupied by Japan during the Pacific War, Portugal's oceanic colony was not a beneficiary of war reparations as set down at the 1951 San Francisco Conference as Portugal was not, technically, a belligerent in this war. As a visiting private Japanese consortium learnt at first hand in Timor in the 1970s, neither had Japan seen fit to redeem military script issued during the war, the basis upon which the Japanese army financed its occupation of the country. The issues of Japanese wartime compensation including the claims of so-called "comfort women" or sexual slavery in Timor first became public in 1997 but only in the Macau media where it was taken up by Jose Ramos-Horta speaking on behalf of the Timorese people.
No less, as we have seen in this chapter, the disruptive actions of outsiders awakened in familiar pattern the atavisticianu of the Timorese fuelling violence to dangerous levels. Without question, the manipulation of ancient animosities by the Australians and, especially, Japanese in their own version of intra-imperialist struggle imposed a heavy price upon the Timorese as victims.
(c) Copyright 1999
Available from AETA: Australia-East Timor Association:
Current
AETA Resource List (Australia-East Timor Association)
Resources on ETimor added Apr 26
AETA
(Melbourne) provide a community-based non-profit service that includes
the provision of books, educational materials, Tetum language books/kits
and music CDs/cassettes. This diverse collection of resources includes
materials that are otherwise difficult to obtain. - BD
See also:
Jun
30 JCCJP: Japanese church leaders oppose Japanese troops in East Timor
Position statement added July 10
"Most Japanese people want Japan to contribute
to world peace first and foremost by strictly adhering to its war-renouncing
“peace constitution.” ... The present government plan to send the SDF to
join a peace keeping operation in East is directly opposed to theses, the
fervently held wishes of our people. Furthermore, this newly planned dispatch
of Japanese troops to East Timor is particularly callous in light of the
Government’s refusal to this day to fully acknowledge, apologize for, or
compensate the army’s sex slaves and other victims of Japan’s occupation
of East Timor during the Pacific War." Japanese Catholic Council for Justice
and Peace
Feb
12 Xanana: Symposium on “Reconciliation, Tolerance, Human Rights and Elections”
Speech added Feb 15
"We believe that after the rebellion of
the Manufahi, the Timorese People, obviously still divided by kingdoms,
lived an era of a better relationship among themselves until the period
before the Japanese invasion. The Japanese invasion, from 1942 to 1945,
was another test to the courage of the Timorese people which concurrently
managed to live with the invaders while maintaining a determination to
fight its presence. I am from the generation post-Japanese invasion. From
this period until the Indonesian invasion 30 years went by." President
Xanana
Dec
10 2000 KY: ETimor: 2 ex-sex slaves break silence at NGO tribunal
Added Dec 11
"Two East Timorese women broke over half
a century of silence Sunday and told of their ordeals as sex slaves of
the Imperial Japanese Army at a mock tribunal to try the Japanese government
over its responsibility for the recruitment of so-called ''comfort women''
before and during World War II." Kyodo
Dec
8 2000 DPA: Women demand apology & compensation for War-time Japanese
mistreatment Added Dec 9
"The Japanese government, which failed
to respond to the tribunal's invitation to participate in the event, continues
to deny any legal responsibility for the suffering of the former comfort
women. Sexual violence committed by the Japanese Imperial Army was hardly
touched by the 1946-1948 International Military Tribunal for the Far East
in Tokyo, set up by the Allied Forces after the war." Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Sept
27 1999 Noam Chomsky: East Timor Retrospective - An overview and lessons
Analysis added Dec 28
"The story does
not begin in 1975. East Timor had not been overlooked by the planners of
the postwar world. The territory should be granted independence, Roosevelt's
senior adviser Sumner Welles mused, but "it would certainly take a thousand
years." With an awe-inspiring display of courage and fortitude, the people
of East Timor have struggled to confound that cynical prediction, enduring
monstrous disasters. Perhaps 50,000 lost their lives protecting a small
contingent of Australian commandoes fighting the Japanese; their heroism
may have saved Australia from Japanese invasion. A third of the population
were victims of the first years of the 1975 Indonesian invasion, many more
since." Noam Chomsky