By: Prabowo Subianto [taken from the Book: Military Leadership Notes from Experience Chapter I]
I am very impressed with the life of Hario Kecik. I aspire to turn his life story into a box-office movie one day, especially his role in the Battle of Surabaya.
I am impressed that someone without a military education background could have the confidence to fight the winner of World War II.
His kind of confidence enabled us to pass the first test of our independence and turned us into a nation. The battle of Surabaya was perhaps the toughest test that came after the proclamation of independence.
After Governor Suryo and Bung Tomo, I want to tell you about Hario Kecik. After reading his diary in 2015, Hario Kecik’s Memoir: The Autobiography of a Student Army, I was very impressed with his life’s story.
He was a medical student who did not understand politics and yet ended up being a fighter. He was one of the main figures in the Battle of Surabaya. He was part of the Indonesian Student Army (TRIP) and was the commander of the East Java Student Corps (CMDT).
Hario Kecik’s story is very interesting. I strongly encourage every young Indonesian to read his memoir. Especially regarding his role as a student, then a medical student, a fighter and eventually a high-ranking TNI officer.
He was briefly suspected by his associates in his life, and especially by the New Order regime. Perhaps because his views were typical leftist; because of his populist soul, shaped by his experience in the early struggle for Indonesian independence, especially in the Battle of November 10th in Surabaya.
As a young fighter, his friends chose Hario as their commander because he was good at school and was fluent in Dutch and English. He fought against the Allied Forces in critical and decisive moments, from October to November 1945.
He led only a few dozen people but was involved in dramatic events in the Battle of Surabaya, which was the fiercest and bloodiest battle ever fought by the Indonesians in the war of independence.
After the proclamation of independence on August 17, 1945, arek-arek Suroboyo, including Hario Kecik, took over Japanese rifles, guns, machine guns, and cannons. Some of them did not even know how to fire those cannons. However, we know that a lot of Japanese soldiers were helping them. Some Japanese soldiers abandoned their army and joined the freedom fighters.
They were the ones who helped train our youths to use weapons such as SMR, SMG, and cannons. Also, anti-aircraft guns. It was all told in Hario Kecik’s memoir.
On October 1, 1945, he wrote that a group of people and soldiers from the People’s Security Agency (BKR) besieged the Kempeitai (the Japanese military police) headquarters in Surabaya. They intended to seize Japanese weaponry.
Hario describes the conditions then:
At that time, I was fully aware that I was no one, just one of the privates amid a large and daring mass. There was no commander or leader. There was only the intention of advancing together to defeat the enemy. We were all youths from villages. Our clothes showed just how poor we were.
After having seized the weapons, Hario Kecik established the People’s Security Army Police (PTKR), the forerunner of the TNI Military Police corps.
The events of November 10, 1945, which began from the third and fourth week of October 1945, were a test for the Indonesian independence’s proclamation.
True, the independence on August 17, 1945, was proclaimed in Jakarta. However, the Allied Forces tested the resilience of the proclamation in Surabaya during the Battle of Surabaya. It tested whether the Indonesian people fully supported the proclamation of independence.
In the battle of November 10, 1945, at least 30,000 Indonesian perished. It is estimated that more than 5,000 British soldiers were killed and injured.
We had 30,000 victims mainly because of the British Forces’ superiority in modern weaponry. The British fielded more than one division, which was approximately 35,000 people. They were supported by aircraft carriers, fighter planes, cruisers, and cannons. You can imagine their strength and superior firepower compared to the Indonesians, the arek-arek Suroboyo.
If we study the history of the event, we can see that everyone on the Indonesian side was united. The youths united with the ordinary people, pedicab drivers, farmers. Everyone came together. They seized weapons from the Japanese forces and organised themselves in resistance units. Some have joined the battalions that would eventually form the TNI. Several troops formed the nucleus of TNI on October 5 under the name TRI (The Republic of Indonesia Army). So, several troops had organised themselves into official battalions. They were former PETA battalions. PETA was the Japanese-organized volunteer army, short for ‘Defenders of the Homeland’.
There was also the National Police of the Republic of Indonesia. There were also youth fronts, grassroots troops from various communities. Some consisted of madrasa (Islamic school) students from Surabaya and from all over East Java. There were also groups consisting of students, including Hario Kecik and his compatriots. It is very interesting to learn the group dynamics back then.
Coming back to Hario, I am impressed that someone without a military background could have had the confidence to fight the victors of World War II. In his memoir, ahead of the November 10th attack, Hario wrote:
We were ready to face whatever the enemy had to offer. We were not military experts or professional soldiers. We just wanted to stay free.
We took the decisions mentioned earlier and determinations in an atmosphere that was difficult to describe. I cannot easily explain the tension, the optimism, the passion, the spirit, the raw anger in the hearts of the youths gathered at the place only with words.
At that time, I was also carried away by the atmosphere. It had started when I was together with the youths, digging defensive trenches in the courtyard of our base in Pasar Besar, by the time we heard the British warships arriving in the waters of Tanjung Perak [port of Surabaya].
My rational mind, or precisely, my ‘intellectual mind’, said that our base was difficult to defend against enemy attacks because of its location, weak fortification, and other factors. But the youths were determined to defend the base to the point of exhaustion.
Finally, after my ‘intellectual mind’ succumbed to my ‘emotion’ or ‘spirit’, I agreed with them. We only had a few hours to prepare.
That night we did not discuss command lines, logistics, etc. We were prepared, and none of us had a sliver of doubt.
We funnelled the complicated strategies into one motto: Merdeka atau mati. No one questioned the enemy’s strength, and no one questioned our strength. Perhaps subconsciously, we all quickly decided that it was too late to worry about it. We had to fight against the enemy the next day anyway.
Reading this memoir gave me goosebumps. Such was the spirit that enabled us to defend our independence. Such was the spirit that enabled us to pass the first test of our independence and unified us into a nation. It was perhaps the toughest post-independence test.
I always imagined what it would have been like if I could have been in Surabaya at that time. Would I have been as brave as Hario Kecik? Would I have been as spirited as Hario Kecik and his friends? Those are some questions I always ask myself.
Therefore, whenever I give lectures or train the younger generation, I always use Hario Kecik as an icon of exemplary Indonesian youth.
The heroism epitomised by Hario Kecik is obvious. He set an example for the next generations, an example for every Indonesian.