Feb 5, 2026
My late father-in-law, Sukro Harsono, was born in Purwodadi, Central Java, in 1927. For brevity I'm just going to refer to him as Bapak from now on. When Japan invaded he was forcibly conscripted into the Japanese military. I don't have any records of his service, so I'm not sure if he was officially a member of the Heiho auxiliaries, or PETA (Pembela Tanah Air - defenders of the homeland), or had a more casual status than that. He would have been quite young, probably too young for formal military service. The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy had an inharmonious relationship, and divided the country between them to reduce friction. The army got Java and Sumatra, while the navy got the eastern islands, so I presume it was actually the army that conscripted him in the first place.
His first job was looking after the horses of Japanese officers. He told me the two challenges of that job were dodging the streams of horse urine, and developing tough cheeks due to frequent slapping by Japanese soldiers. This was a common complaint of Javanese conscripts - touching someone's head without permission is just not done in Javanese culture, whereas to the Japanese it was just the normal way of encouraging discipline and they didn't understand it as a humiliation.
Later on his task was to crew a boat, carrying rice to supply the Japanese military, and his base was in Ambon, Maluku. This was in Imperial Navy territory, so presumably he was transferred from the army to the navy at some point, but I don't know the details. The end of his rice boat career happened in the Bali Strait, separating East Java from Bali. The crew spotted an American submarine on the surface just beginning to dive. It was diving as it got closer to them, but still had some part of its hull out of the water when it collided with them. Submarine versus rice boat was no contest - their boat was cut in two and they all ended up in the water. Bapak clung to some floating wreckage for most of a day and eventually washed ashore on the Java side of the strait. As far as he knew there were no other survivors from the boat. Fearing being shot for desertion if he returned to the Japanese he hid in a local village for a long time.
This is such a good story that I'd love to be able to fill in some details. The records of US submarine patrols are hosted at https://maritime.org/doc/subreports.php (updated: found them here, other sites that used to have them seem to be down, but this one is still going). I've read a large number of them, and while I didn't find a log that says "collided with rice barge in the Bali Strait" or anything that specific, there were some reports of having sunk a "sampan" and similar, so the general idea is confirmed.
After losing the use of bases in the Philippines, US submarines first transferred to Brisbane. A few years ago I had brunch at a cafe in New Farm, Brisbane, and later learned it was the site of the Capricornia Wharf US submarine base. The submarine fleet mostly moved to Fremantle after a short time based in Brisbane, as the west coast was slightly closer to the focus of operations in Southeast Asia, with alternative basing at Exmouth a bit further north. The general pattern was sail north, cause trouble for Japanese shipping, then return to Australia for resupply and maintenance.
I forgot to ask Bapak why he was so sure the submarine was American - there were also a small number of Dutch and British submarines operating in those waters, and as far as I'm aware submarines didn't fly flags when submerging. There certainly were more American vessels, so even if he didn't make a certain identification the odds are that he was correct.
I'm a little puzzled that the submarine was operating in the Bali Strait. I've crossed that strait by ferry a couple of times - the water at the narrowest point is quite shallow. It's not good submarining water - too easy to be spotted. The patrol logs I read had submarines using the more obvious channels, the Lombok Strait, Sunda Strait, or further east near Papua, where the water is much deeper. I didn't find any that recorded a run through the Bali Strait - which doesn't mean it didn't happen of course, I haven't (yet) read all the logs, and some of the logs are very concise and may not mention the route in that much detail. The closest alternative to the Bali Strait would be the Lombok Strait which is known for strong prevailing currents, probably not a good place to sail a laden small boat. A bit south of the ferry crossing the water is much deeper, so it is certainly plausible a submarine was operating there even without using the strait to transit to the Java Sea.
Some time after this mishap Bapak ran into one of his fellow conscripts, who was astonished to find him still alive, having heard news of the boat sinking.
Japan officially surrendered on August 15, 1945, and on August 17 Soekarno and Hatta declared the independence of Indonesia. As the Dutch weren't willing to cede their colony voluntarily the Indonesian Republic assembled an army to press the issue. Bapak became a second lieutenant - presumably his experience with the Japanese military was considered enough to qualify him for rank. His unit was poorly equipped - they had to take it in turns on the small number of rifles, and walked everywhere, no vehicles being available. Java is seriously mountainous, so walking everywhere is not easy. They were present at the famous "Serangan Fajar" action at Yogyakarta. President Soeharto used to make all the TV stations broadcast the movie based on the event every Independence Day to highlight his role as a Lt Colonel during the action. According to Bapak, it was a non-event and not at all as depicted in the movie as the KNIL Dutch colonial troops had withdrawn and the Indonesian troops just had to take over the vacated positions. Many of the KNIL troops were sympathetic to the independence movement, and were in the habit of leaving behind spare ammunition when they left a position, ammunition being easier to avoid accounting for than actual guns. This didn't help the Indonesians much, however, as the Dutch-issued weapons used a different caliber to the mostly Japanese weapons used by the Republican forces. When Bapak received orders to march his men to attack Semarang he pretended not to understand, as he strongly suspected it would be an expensive loss of life. Men he knew who did go didn't come back.
When the war ended Bapak was asked to stay on in the army, but left as soon as he could. He'd had enough. He was particularly sad for his comrades who were disabled by their war wounds - there was no support available for them, just a letter of commendation appreciating their service. You can't eat a letter, he told me, with some bitterness.