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Collaboration with the Japanese and resistance both provided benefits to Southeast Asian nationalists in their pursuit of independence. Collaboration allowed nationalists to gain military support and training from the Japanese, helping to strengthen their position for negotiations after the war. It also provided opportunities to promote their nationalist messages to large audiences and build mass support. However, resistance also enabled some groups to receive military aid from Allies and demonstrate their anti-Japanese credentials to gain the goodwill of returning colonial powers. Overall, a willingness to use both collaboration and resistance tactically provided the most advantages to nationalist movements in the region.
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Collaboration during Japanese Occupation History Essay
Collaboration with the Japanese and resistance both provided benefits to Southeast Asian nationalists in their pursuit of independence. Collaboration allowed nationalists to gain military support and training from the Japanese, helping to strengthen their position for negotiations after the war. It also provided opportunities to promote their nationalist messages to large audiences and build mass support. However, resistance also enabled some groups to receive military aid from Allies and demonstrate their anti-Japanese credentials to gain the goodwill of returning colonial powers. Overall, a willingness to use both collaboration and resistance tactically provided the most advantages to nationalist movements in the region.
Collaboration with the Japanese and resistance both provided benefits to Southeast Asian nationalists in their pursuit of independence. Collaboration allowed nationalists to gain military support and training from the Japanese, helping to strengthen their position for negotiations after the war. It also provided opportunities to promote their nationalist messages to large audiences and build mass support. However, resistance also enabled some groups to receive military aid from Allies and demonstrate their anti-Japanese credentials to gain the goodwill of returning colonial powers. Overall, a willingness to use both collaboration and resistance tactically provided the most advantages to nationalist movements in the region.
Collaboration with Japan brought greater benefits to Southeast Asian
nationalists than did resistance. How far do you agree with this view?
The Japanese Occupation was a significant episode in many of the
Southeast Asian nations where they observed a dramatic transformation of the political climate that enabled the nationalists to realistically aim for the achievement of independence for the first time. However, the way they perceived the arrival of the Japanese can be said to be the turning point in the benefits, in which the level of achieving independence they managed to obtain. For the nationalists who collaborated with the Japanese, they took it upon their advantage to use their latters resources to train the former and form formidable armies as well as support from them to garner the support of the masses while learning how to run the government. Compared to the nationalists who chose to resist the Japanese, they managed to garner better materials for building an army from the Allies, securing the goodwill of the returning colonial powers with their anti-Japanese movements and the popular support from the masses, which increased the nationalist leaders credentials. This essay seeks to argue that collaboration with Japan brought about greater benefits to the Southeast Asian nationalists than did resistance to a large extent as they were able to gain the trust of the Japanese first rather than just oppress them and not being able to further their nationalist stance. Collaborating with the Japanese provided an opportunity for the radical nationalist leaders to gain access to the masses under the pretext of garnering support for the Japanese war effort. This enhances their credentials and prominence as nationalist leaders. An example can be seen in Indonesia, where the Japanese had permitted the use of national symbols and the use of Bahasa Indonesia in the administration, instead of imposing the Japanese language on them, which helped to increase the sense of national identity among Indonesians. They also allowed PUTERA (1943) and subsequently Jawa Hokokai (1944) to establish a network of radios linking Java and the outer islands, enabling Sukarno to broadcast his speeches and reach out to an unprecedented number of Indonesians to promote the nationalistic cause. This enabled Sukarno to gain mass support, even in the rural areas, so they can unite to overthrow the Western Colonial powers in their fight for independence. Similarly in Burma, the Thakins open collaboration with the Japanese gave them access to the Burmese masses, utilising the nationalist slogans such as Burma for Burmans, to whip up popular enthusiasm for the Japanese Occupation and using the Burma National Army to promote the nationalist cause without fear of Japanese suppression, inculcating a common sense of national identity. This mass support allowed the nationalist leaders to cultivate and instil a sense of belonging in the masses to garner their
support in pursuit of independence, hence benefitting them from
collaboration with the Japanese. Collaborating with the Japanese had also allowed the opportunity for the nationalist movements to acquire organised, well-trained and modern military forces with the support of the Japanese, giving them a dramatic boost to the feasibility of revolutionary tactics. For example in Indonesia, the Japanese sponsored the establishment of Pembela Tana Air (PETA) in 1943 which was a well trained paramilitary force of 65,000 which would then become the backbone of the Indonesian Republican Army after the Japanese defeat. They also created the Barisan Hizbullah in 1944 which was the military wing for Masyumi. Similarly in Burma, we see the creation of the Burma Independence Army which later served to form the 10,000strong Burma National Army in 1943 led by General Aung San. Furthermore, the acquisition of a strong military arm greatly improved the nationalists negotiating position with the returning colonial powers in their struggle to achieve independence after 1945 instead of continuing the never ending futility of an armed revolt due to the greater superiority in terms of weapons the colonial powers possessed. Like the 1926-1927 revolts by the Partai Komunis Indonesia as well as the Saya San rebellion from 1930-1932 in Burma. Resisting the Japanese also brought about benefits to the nationalists. This is because e they had the opportunity to acquire an organised, welltrained and modern military force with the support of the Allies, mostly the US. For example, in Vietnam, the Japanese Occupation had served to strengthen the communists militarily since the Vietminh obtained vital economic and military aid from the Allies to fight the Japanese. They saw the creation of a well-trained and well-equipped Vietnamese guerrilla army that numbered 5000-strong by September 1944 under the strong leadership of the Indochinese Communist Partys Vo Nguyen Giap, and would form the bedrock of the post-war anti-French resistance movement seeking to achieve independence for Vietnam. Similarly in the Philippines, the Japanese occupation had served to be a golden opportunity for the Communist Party of the Philippines to collage the pre-war political dominance of Partido Nacionalista with the formation of its military arm, Hukbalahap in 1942 under Luis Taruc. They received substantial US military assistance and hence was the best, most organised and most effective anti-Japanese resistance force in Southeast Asia. Thus, they were able to gain the military arm that would prove to be useful in resisting against the Japanese from colonising their countries and subsequently, the returning colonial powers.
However, these nationalist movements will still be suppressed after the
Japanese Occupation as they are largely the communists, which led to the colonial powers especially USA itself, to supress and try to remove them from the ruling power as part of the Cold War element, where communists had to be contained to avoid the spread of the communist ideology. Thus, their credibility was undermined in this case. In addition, with resistance of the Japanese, the nationalist leaders were able to secure the goodwill of the returning colonial powers in view of their anti-Japanese resistance efforts, which was a boost to the negotiating positions of the nationalist leaders. For example in Indonesia, covert resistance by Sutan Sjahrir and Amir Sjarifuddin where they tried to create an underground anti-Japanese resistance movement, supported by Sukarno and Muhammad Hatta, which boosted their anti-Japanese credentials in the eyes of the Western colonial powers which deemed to be politically useful after the Japanese defeat in 1945. Similarly in Burma, the covert resistance movement against the Japanese had laid the foundation for the creation of the Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO) in 1944. Thus, with the covert resistance put up by them, it further enhanced their negotiating positions towards the returning colonial powers where they would be more willing to grant independence to the respective countries after the Japanese Occupation. However, the willingness of the nationalists to collaborate with the Japanese provided a platform for them to subsequently switch to use of resistance tactics, depending on circumstances to best advance their nationalist agenda of achieving independence. Thus, starting with resistance would just mean that they would straight away be repressed by the Japanese without them making full use of what the Japanese can afford to give them in essence of supporting the full use of what the Japanese can afford to give them in essence of supporting the Japanese War effort. This can be seen exceptionally well in Burmas case as Thakins had collaborated with the Japanese to make use of the Japanese support to advance their primary nationalist objectives of achieving independence, only to turn against the Japanese after 1944 in view of Japans declining military fortunes using their positions in the Ba Maw government as cover while organising anti-Japanese activities.