6.6 A Thousand Books and Grenades (interview)

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Description

During the colonial period, Mr Sosrosuwarno attended a Dutch Native School (Hollands Inlandse School, HIS). But it was at home where he learned about the distinction between Indisch history which focused on the Netherlands and Indonesian history. He was also a keen reader from a young age of the works of Multatuli, a famous Dutch author of the nineteenth century who criticized Dutch colonialism. The capitulation of the Dutch East Indies after the Japanese invasion made a deep impression on Mr Sosrosuwarno. It seemed the Dutch were not as invincible as the schoolbooks said. He galvanized young people for the independence cause by pointing them to the work of Indonesian intellectuals such as Sukarno and Sjahrir. During the war of independence, Sosrosuwarno started his studies at a recently founded Indonesian university. He also joined Laskar Kere, the student troops of the Republic of Indonesia. Armed with Japanese weapons, they fought the British army’s Gurkha troops between Solo and Semarang. Mr Sosrosuwarno talks about how he combined fighting and his university studies.

Interview with Mr S. (Suhendro) Sosrosuwarno. SMGI 1466.2 (4). Hilversum, 1999.

Transcription

I: “You must pretty much have stopped going to school?”

S: “Well, after we fought at the front we went back to school. We got the lesson material we had to catch up with from our classmates. When we were at the front, we took our books with us to study. You had to make the best of a bad job! When I was wounded, I got a hero’s welcome. I began to write with my left hand: I thought perhaps I’d lose my right hand.”

I: “How did you get involved in that fighting?”

S: “Laskar Kere was in Salatiga and I went there. I wanted to join the fighting. One of our teachers spent the whole night trying to persuade me not to. ‘Don’t join the fighting, young man, carry on with your studies. Because you’re our country’s future.’ But I was determined to join the fighting. So then I got a lift with a truck to Salatiga and I joined Laskar Kere. I’d never fired a shot with a gun in my life before. I shot at Gurkhas for the first time in one of the battles there in Tuntang. Over time, I got better and better and better at it.”