A Covert Affair (24 page)

For her part, Jane thought the newly liberated Dutch soldiers were “truly clinically crazy.” (“Who wouldn't be, considering that they had all been prisoners of the Japanese?”) They were so jumpy they let fly when they heard a twig snap. The British and Indian troops who had been sent in to keep a lid on things until the Dutch took over made no secret of the fact that they hated their jobs and could not wait to leave. Jane kept radioing back that Washington needed to know there was absolutely “no chance of a compromise.” The Dutch expected to get back their most valuable colonial possession
“status quo ante bellum.”
The State Department response was to tell the Dutch “to paint out the ‘U.S. Army' markings on our trucks.”

There were almost daily reports of ambushes, clashes, and search and seizures. The Indonesians understood that these tactics were designed to humiliate and intimidate their people with an eye to stirring up unrest in the native population. On the morning of October 9, Sukarno and Hatta, along with a contingent of cabinet ministers, came to the American headquarters to see Crockett. They were accompanied by Mohammad Diah, editor of the newspaper
Merdeka
, and his wife, who served as interpreters. Sukarno demanded to know whether the United States was prepared to do anything. When the major tried to sidestep the question diplomatically, saying he had
“no information as to the official U.S. attitude,”
Sukarno put to him a question he could not easily answer:

“But do you, personally, Major Crockett, think it is fair of the Dutch
and the British to continue to expect no resistance from our people when we have been provoked almost beyond endurance by their tactics?” What Sukarno and Hatta wanted was what the United States had given the Philippines: an assurance of future independence, with a set date and a program for achieving that goal. At the very least, they felt they had a right to state their case to the United Nations.

Bob Koke, who was just back from Singapore, took the opportunity to ask about the notorious Bali hotel proprietress turned radio propagandist Surabaya Sue, who seemed to be working as a spokesperson for his administration. Sukarno responded that she might have to be sacrificed in the event a settlement was reached.
“Her days were numbered as an employee of his government because she would be of no value broadcasting against the Dutch and British [from] whom at that time he wanted some sort of recognition,”
Koke recalled. Sukarno went on to say that if he and his party did not get some voice in the government, or some recognition, they would have no choice but to fight. Jane turned away. How sad that Manxy, who had somehow found her way from that backwater in Bali to a position of some prominence in Indonesia's independence movement, would end up a victim of her own romantic dreams—a vision of herself as some kind of noble revolutionary avatar.
*

Two hours after the meeting, they were returning to their headquarters after lunch when they heard the single sharp retort of a car backfiring. In the next instant, Jane heard a burst of machine-gun fire from across the street. She ran to the door and was just in time to see a fat Dutch guard emptying his submachine gun into an old jalopy with its top down, spraying the car and its four occupants with bullets. Just as she rushed out, the car veered off the street and slowly came to rest against a tree.

As she approached the car, she could see two young Indonesian
boys covered in blood. But the Dutch guards had not finished their target practice. She vaguely registered what
“sounded like the buzzing of a swarm of bees”
overhead when Koke yelled, “For Christ's sake, Jane! Hit the ground.” Van Oyen's guards were still punishing the stalled car with submachine gun and automatic rifle fire. Koke was yelling at her, “Crawl on your stomach and get behind that tree!” Jane obeyed “mechanically” but in her panic got turned around and ended up stumbling behind a big banyan tree facing the Dutch yard. Koke shouted, “You dummy! Crawl to the window and jump in!” Covered with mud and blood, she made a mad lunge for the headquarters window and heaved herself over the three-foot-high ledge, landing hard on the stone floor and painfully skinning her hands and knees—her first
“war wounds,”
as she ruefully called them.

It was all over in a matter of minutes. A lieutenant from the British garrison came out and confronted the Dutch colonel in charge.
“What the hell do you think you're doing?”
he demanded. During an angry exchange, the details of the incident were unraveled. The lieutenant established that it was a car backfiring, and not a shot, that had instigated the shooting spree. The absence of weapons in the car confirmed what they already knew—that unarmed civilians had been gunned down. The boys' crime had most likely been their proudly displaying the red-and-white flag of the Republic of Indonesia; it was still flying from their battered little car.
“The lieutenant insisted, with considerable heat, that the guards hold their weapons at parade rest,”
Crockett recalled, but as soon as he left they returned them to “the alert position.” An ambulance came and took away the wounded boys, one of whom clung to life until the next morning. Their two friends in the backseat miraculously escaped without injury.

Five days later, martial law was imposed. The Allied Military Administration of Batavia, as it was known, was established on October 14, and it imposed heavy penalties—including death—for anyone possessing arms, striking, or rioting. The only people allowed to carry arms were “members of the Allied forces.” In order to avoid further violence, Sukarno ordered all Indonesians to stay off the streets after dark. By 8:00 p.m., Batavia was a ghost town except for the roving Dutch guards.
To be out past curfew was tantamount to suicide. Machine-gun fire ringed the town at night, and the next morning the bodies of the dead floated down the wide canal that ran through the center of town. Each side accused the other of atrocities. The Western press corps, which as far as Jane could tell spent their days holed up at the hotel
“swilling whiskey and never going out to see anything for themselves,”
filed stories based on handouts from the British and Dutch reporting that a Red revolution was going on and the streets of Batavia were running in blood. The last part was true enough, Jane observed, “but it was Indonesian blood only.” Realizing that the newspaper stories would terrify her parents, she radioed the State Department asking someone to call and reassure them with whatever stock phrases they used in these eventualities.

The State Department sent over a Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Kennedy from military intelligence to assess the situation in Java
“in light of the Indonesians' ability to resist the return of the Dutch authority.”
Jane arranged through her underground channels to visit the Indonesian president in hiding and acted as Kennedy's secretary and interpreter to conceal her OSS connections, but noted in her report,
“we are of the opinion no one was fooled.”

After meeting secretly with members of the Indonesian cabinet, Kennedy reported that Sukarno and his followers were willing to cooperate with Allied forces as long as no Dutch troops were landed but that if even “a single Dutch unit” was included, the Indonesians would “immediately and violently oppose them.” His findings echoed Jane's as to the attitude of Sukarno and his cabinet toward the Allied occupation, their commitment to independence, access to small arms and some military training from the Japanese, and determination to fight the Dutch. Kennedy, however, did not see the situation in Java to be as dire. He concluded that while the Dutch would face “some sporadic fighting,” it would be largely the work of “extremist elements seeking to encourage the lawless elements of society.” He did not believe the Indonesians were sufficiently trained to offer “serious resistance to a modern army,” though he indicated that the Dutch were in over their heads. “It is the opinion of the Observer that unless some third power aids
the Dutch in repressing the revolt it will be impossible for the Dutch to defeat completely the forces of the Indonesian Republic.”

Meanwhile, there was a serious food shortage in Batavia. Jane and her OSS colleagues were subsisting on C rations and booze. Bizarrely, while there was little in the way of fresh fruit or vegetables, the market stalls were stuffed with the most magnificent flowers. If only the blooms were edible! Sukarno had declared an embargo on all foodstuffs entering Batavia and intended for the Allies. He had paid a courtesy call to American headquarters to explain that the embargo was intended to send a message to the British and Dutch that the Indonesians wanted their independence. He added that they had nothing against the Americans and would be happy to make an exception in their case. Jane, acting as translator, had communicated his message to Crockett. Although
“salivating at the thought of fresh food,”
both she and Freddie agreed they had to refuse his offer. The major had politely declined, explaining that they were under British command and it might prove politically awkward.

The embargo was extremely effective because the port was desperately short of food, and while the Allies held Batavia and most of the other cities, the countryside, along with most of the roads, was in the hands of the nationalists. Officials of the Republic of Indonesia reported growing restlessness and impatience on the part of the masses, particularly the youth movement, who were anxious to retaliate against the Dutch, and feared that their people would soon “get out of hand.” It was impossible to know whether this was a threat to force negotiations or the truth.
“Incidents continue at a great pace,”
Jane wrote in a classified OSS situation report on October 15. “Soekarno [the spelling then in use] is reported to be spending most of his time traveling around the island endeavoring to calm and hold back the people.”

General Christison, who had taken over the Governor-General's Palace for his own use, invited her for tea in her former elegant digs. The invitation turned out to be
“an undisguised request for information concerning the nationalists.”
Nevertheless, she found him to be a charming man, and he listened with interest as she told him that negotiation was the only way to avoid conflict. He was
“quite appalled at the deception of
the Dutch,” Jane recalled, and appeared to have “complete contempt” for their conduct and lack of realism. As he later put it, “the Dutch remedy [was] force and still more force, to teach the ‘natives' a lesson.”

The following day, she was asked to brief General Slim, commander of the Allied land forces in SEAC, upon whom Christison clearly wanted to impress the strength of the nationalist movement and urgency of the situation. As Jane later noted in her report, the British “knew all too well of the Dutch provocations” (the use of American and British equipment and uniforms, etc.) and desire to involve the British deeper so that they would commit more troops to the area. The Dutch did not have enough men to take their errant colony by force. They needed the British to help prolong martial law in order to give them time to ship in more troops from the Netherlands, and hoped that in the interim the independence movement would lose steam or even collapse from exhaustion.

She concluded her secret report to Washington by stating that in her opinion the situation in Indonesia had reached
“a complete stalemate”
and that time was essential:

[The nationalist movement] is well-organized, disciplined, armed at least for guerilla warfare, and above all, unified. The economic weapons at their command are enormous and they are well aware of them. It is the culmination of twenty years of rising nationalist spirit and the Japanese merely gave it an impetus and opportunity. If the movement is put down by force it will rise again…. It is no longer a matter of military occupation for the surrender of the Japanese and the release of POWs and internees; it is a serious political situation which may have far-reaching consequences for the United States. It may be that the impasse has gone too far even now, but certainly the only chance of a peaceful solution is recognition of the problem by the United Nations.

Jane's grim view was underscored by Crockett, who provided Washington with his own blunt assessment of the volatile situation
in Java. He blamed the Dutch administration's
“brutal conduct”
and bungling efforts to restore colonial rule for squandering any possibility of compromise or a solution. Days after he left, the British ordered the Japanese to wrest control of the city of Bandung, seventy-five miles southeast of Batavia, from the nationals. This meant the disarming of the Japanese was moved still farther into the future, and the out-of-control fighting would continue to spread across the country. It took almost three weeks for British and Indian troops to quell ferocious Indonesian resistance and reoccupy Surabaya in November. The intransigence of the Dutch officials spelled inevitable disaster. “The situation could obviously go nowhere except from bad to worse,” Crockett later wrote in a scathing indictment of the United States' policy of noninterference published in
Harper's Magazine.
“Without mediation, there is usually violence. One Javanese town was wiped off the map. When that didn't produce the desired results, the British tried again with another town. Presumably, the process could go on endlessly.” The problem, simply put, was that no one wanted to get involved.
“The peoples of Southeast Asia are now looking to the United States—and to the United Nations organization. The chips are down. What they are waiting to find out is: were the lofty pronouncements of the Allied war leaders about self-determination and independence promissory notes, or were they propaganda?”

The truth was, the revolution was on before Crockett's plane cleared the island. The remaining members of the small OSS unit had moved into the house of a prominent business executive, but the shooting in their neighborhood grew worse with every passing day. Washington sent orders that Jane had to be transferred someplace safe. She moved into a hotel and was assigned a second-floor room that was guarded by Dutch soldiers around the clock. She could hear
“the rattle of machine guns and the boom of mortars all night long.”
Before returning to their base in Ceylon to report, Crockett had instructed her,
“Jane, have your pistol with you at all times and sleep with it under your pillow.”
She could not help being reminded of the classic scene in old black-and-white films about the British Empire, “when the ‘natives' go on a rampage and a white planter says, ‘Take this gun, Sybil, and save the last bullet for yourself.'”