Conferentie 22

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and dear old friends,

These exceptional times call for utmost flexibility and creativity; as you may appreciate, it has been really challenging for us to continuously adapt the programme to the latest circumstances, going from an approved audience of 100 to no audience at all and finally no physical gathering in the CT church.
However, thanks to innovative technology, and the invaluable support of the leaders of our dialogue sessions and our advisers, it is with great pleasure that I welcome you all on behalf of Dialogue NJI on our 22nd dialogue conference. I also take the opportunity to thank the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports for their continuing great support, which enables us to hold this conference.
We are also grateful to Japan’s public media organisation, NHK, for their filming of the speech of Yukari Tangena- Suzuki, our chairperson, who due to personal circumstances, is still in Japan and for paying attention to our conference in the Japanese media.

Since we considered it too straining to follow our usual conference format with a morning and an afternoon programme, the programme of today will only cover the speeches and the round table discussion. In between the speeches there will short breaks to allow you to get away from your screen. This will also enable you to post some clarifying questions to the speakers, which will be compiled by us and addressed before we go into the table discussion. Could you please email these to us by using the same email address through which you received the link to the conference and not use the chatbox? The music in the pauses is from Malle Babbe, I’m sure many of you will recognise them.

Having the conference on line, offers the great opportunity to go beyond borders and to allow our partners in Indonesia and in Japan to join us. This also goes for our friends in Australia and in the US and other European countries!

Tomorrow’s programme is entirely dedicated to the dialogue sessions and will take place in the afternoon. Those who registered received a special communication on how to access the dialogues sessions. For those hose of you who are not familiar with our conferences, in our dialogue sessions we provide the opportunity to share personal experiences in small groups and in a safe environment. These are not to conduct a political or social discussion, but have the aim to really listen to the other and try to understand the other. It is during those sessions, that people often also get more in-depth insight in their own experiences and feelings. It is because of the necessity to create a save environment for people to express themselves, that we work in small groups with experienced session leaders. And why these sessions are not streamed and not kept on video.

This year is of special importance to us; not only does it entail the 75 years benchmark after the second world war, it also marks the twenties anniversary of the dialogue conferences that we have organised since the year 2000. Initiated by professor Takamitsu Muraoka, who will say the closing words today, these gatherings offered a platform to participants with very different backgrounds and in different generations from the Netherlands and Japan. All of them were in a way involved in world war-2 in Asia, and its aftermath. Since it’s our mission to conduct fruitful and successful dialogue, or rather a trialogue between stakeholders from the Netherlands, Japan and Indonesia, the I was added to our name. In 2015 we registered as the Foundation Dialogue Netherlands, Japan, Indonesia.

In 2014, with the support of the Netherlands embassy, we started to work towards building bridges and reconciliation in Japan through yearly dialogue conferences. In the next session, Yukari Tangena- Suzuki will elaborate on our experiences and the lessons we learned in Japan.

This conference is the steppingstone towards building bridges in Indonesia as part of a three- year project that also includes a symposium in Surabaya towards the end of next year. The momentum seems to be there to explore whether what once separated us can now connect us and we want to take the opportunity to use research as a starting point for meaningful interaction.

Collaboration with the Airlangga university in Surabaya and with ARQ National Psycho-trauma Centre, and researchers involved in the so called “decolonisation research”, creates a unique opening to give voice to history in another way; not in a polarising and a judgemental manner, but by reporting and dialogue where the stories of people’s lives can be told and heard; most importantly from first generation people that were involved in some way or another. Essential here is also the interaction between the generations, older and younger. The dialogues may lead to mutual understanding and useful inputs to fill the blank pages in our common history. Which then in turn could be used to enrich educational materials in the Netherlands, Indonesia and Japan.

But how do we start, how do we pay tribute to the complexity of a dialogue between people coming from such different backgrounds and history, people who witnessed atrocities and others who are second or third generation, in different countries, one the coloniser, the other the colonised? What language do we use, is it possible at all to find one common language and navigate through polarised discourses at different levels and in different times and different cultures? What words will be appropriate, words as revolution, decolonisation and from which perspectives: ‘the’ Indonesian perspective, ‘the’ Dutch perspective? Do they exist? How do we start listening to each other and how to really understand each other?

We are very happy that our next speaker, Professor Fridus Steijlen will shed some more light on these complex issues. Not only is he with the faculty of social sciences of the Free University in Amsterdam, he is also senior researcher at the KITLV and involved in the Research on ‘ decolonisation, violence and war in Indonesia, 1945-1950’.

This will be followed by a co-presentation of an Indonesian and a by origin Moluccan historian, Mr. Ody Dwicahyo and Mr. Ron Habiboe. Their personal stories will illustrate the complexity of our common history.

Last but not least Dr. Nicole Immler, with the University of Humanistic Studies of Utrecht, will speak about historical injustice, recognition and the art of dialogue. She will elaborate on the reflections of Fridus Steijlen on the use of language in discussing the colonial past as a shared history and what the concept of dialogue may offer in this regard. She will use her own research project to illustrate how to achieve such a shared language.

After the speeches, and before going into the table discussion, there will be the opportunity to provide short clarifications to your questions. Mr. Wim Manuhutu, historian, researcher and curator, with excellent experience as a moderator, will take the lead in this session and in leading the round table discussion. He will also provide the wrap-up of our dialogue sessions tomorrow.

May I wish you all an interesting and enjoyable morning and welcome Yukari Tangena- Suzuki who will now speak to us from Japan.

Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen and my friends,

We are addressing you from the CT Church and you can see and hear us from your loudspeakers and on screens. The corona-measures are for the health of all of us. That is why we choose to organize the conference on-line with only the speakers present.
Thank you very much for joining us today at the 22nd Dialogue conference despite this time when the Covid 19 is still depriving us of our freedom. As Janneke just introduced me I am Yukari Tangena-Suzuki, the chair of the Stichting Dialoog Nederland-Japan-Indonesië. As you might be able to see I am still in Japan since my return flight is cancelled. So I must confess I owe my colleagues, Janneke Roos, Rob Sipkens, Ton van Zeeland and our apprentice, Inge Dunpel the most of the work to realize this conference on stream.
This dialogue meeting is the first conference of a series of three conferences to think about one theme “75years Freedom?(with a big question mark)”. The next dialogue meeting, which is a big challenge for us, will be held in Surabaya, Indonesia. It is also an unknown territory for us that we try to talk directly with citizens in Indoneisa . Therefore, it is essential that we need to look closely at our own foothold today to confirm the clear motives for going out to Indonesia and also try to see what kind of consciousness we need to go out there.
As I said earlier the theme for today’s conference is the public theme of “Freedom, 75 years” with a big bold question mark. This question mark has two meanings. One is the question of whether the Netherlands was really free 75 years ago, and the other question is whether we feel really free after 75 years of the World War. It will be certainly meaningful for us to dwell on thinking these questions to others and also to ourselves.
We thank the ministry of VWS for the subsidy that makes our work possible for the next 3 years. It is also an encouragement for us to go on with our work. As a small Stichting, we are 5 people and we always seek cooperation with others, mainly for reasons of content and broadening the views. For this conference we are very grateful that ARQ National Psychotrauma Center contributed a lot for us.　　
Today I would like to share my experiences in organizing various activities in Japan – what kind of activities the Stichting Dialogue has been doing in Japan, and if there is anything we can learn or adopt in our program in Indonesia. I also tried to summarize what we should be careful about to organize a conference there.
I wonder how many of you know that we are also active in Japan but this activity actually started in 2013. After Professor and Mrs. Muraoka retired from the dialogue working group in 2011 I took over organizing the conferences with Hans Lindeijer which is also called reconciliation conference. While continuing the conferences, I came across what I really need and want to do to continue this reconciliation work. It was also a strong urge that came from my personal experience.
I married a Dutchman in 1977 and started living in this country, but forty some years ago, the Netherlands was by no means a comfortable country for Japanese people and its atmosphere was still filled with anti-Japanese and anti-German. Through various sad experiences, I gradually came to know the history of my country that I did not know. And I was very shocked and embarrassed that I didn’t know it at all. From that experience, I strongly wanted my compatriots to learn the other side of the history of war, which is still hardly known in Japan. At the same time, I wanted to connect with people who are engaged in reconciliation activities in Japan and to introduce them and their work to the Netherlands. Because I realized that dialogue will not establish if one group sticks to their own perspective. Wars are common history for those who fought the wars but one must realize there are various perspectives in each countries as I also mentioned in our last conference. And more importantly, I didn’t want to hurt the Dutch war victims once again by letting them know that we do not know anything about their sufferings.
Now, let’s take a brief look back at what kind of activities have been carried out in Japan, but before that, I must first tell you the current political situation in Japan. After the war, Japan unveiled a new constitution which is often called the Peace Constitution, which declared that Japan will have no military and remise a war. It is also written here that this country does not have an army and does not send troops abroad. On August 15, 1995, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary 0f the war’s end, Prime Minister Murayama gave a statement, in which he stated:
” through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my deepest remorse and state my heartfelt apology. “
In the Netherlands, many people say that Japan has never apologized for the war but it is not true. However, Mr. Abe, who recently resigned, desperately tried to revise the Peace Constitution during his tenure as Prime Minister for seven and a half years from 2012. Fortunately he did not succeed in this but he and Liberal Party forced new bills to pass to bring the Self Defense Force to the military organization and sent it overseas to be a good partner of the USA. The Self Defense Force is very limited to contribute to peace projects abroad. Also with regard to education, textbook censorship has become stricter, especially the description of war in history textbooks has become even more ambiguous than the one we used 50 years ago, and our aggression was less stated than our own suffer. Therefore, the project I tried to develop in Japan started in a very difficult situation, and it was sometimes criticized that I should not spread the view of masochistic history.
Our activities are mainly carried out in two areas. One is Tokyo and its vicinity, and the other is Nagasaki City. First, let’s consider our activities in Tokyo.
Because the shift to the right in Japanese society progressed I devoted myself and was really struggling to realize this project. Fortunately, the Dutch ambassador at the time was very supportive and I was able to escape from the isolated and unsupported situation. Dialogue Conference in Japan is planned and operated by this Stichting and the embassy provides a place and lunch for the attendees. It is held on the day when Dutch war victims come to the Embassy who visit Japan under the Peace Exchange Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. This program was planned at the period of Prime Minister Murayama. Since that time there are more than 600 Dutch victims visited Japan through this program. The conference starts in the morning with about 40 Japanese people, mainly students. They first have lectures from professor about a war history of Japan in East Indie which is never heard in the class rooms and is ignored in history textbooks, and I also talk about the situation in the Netherlands. By doing so, attendees can learn why Dutch people are invited to Japan and the background behind it. Then, in the afternoon they are divided into small groups with Dutch guests and have a conversation directly with them. It has been continued every year since 2014.
There are some important points in this meeting.
The fact that this conference is a very small meeting and the location is in the Dutch Embassy makes Dutch survivors feel more at home. For them the whole trip is quite formal among only Japanese people and that gives them a lot of tension for a week. However at the embassy they can talk freely in Dutch with embassy staff and find my face they met in the Hague and they feel a little relieved to be in their own territory. The size of the small group gives them also a relaxing atmosphere, which makes it easier for people to expose their feelings and emotions. I think it is important for a true dialogue. I know it is necessary to have a bigger audience to tell about our common war history but the current situation is ideal for the Dutch survivors.
The most difficult thing is to find people to attend this meeting. This meeting is usually held on weekdays, so those who have classes or work are not possible to attend. Fortunately sometimes a university professor brings students in his/her class. Since most people know little about it it is not easy to find people who are interested in these matters.
In addition to this dialogue conference in Tokyo, I ask universities and high schools near Tokyo to create an opportunity for a lecturer whom we invite from the Netherlands to talk about what happened in the war in East India. This provides a valuable opportunity for Japanese students to hear the Dutch history from the Dutch people in the first hand. And it is also a healing time for the Dutch lecturer to meet students who listen to their stories seriously and exchange some evaluations with them after the lecture.
At the same time we have also introduced Japanese people to the Netherlands who try to make efforts in reconciliation. For our first symposium at NIOD we invited researchers of POW Research Network in Japan which collects and spread information about POW’s during the war time in Japan. And for the second symposium an activist for Comfort Women in Japan and Professor who started the new Study of Reconciliation gave a talk.
In addition Embassy staff gives quite some lectures inside and outside the Embassy on the theme of the Second World War. A good starting point is the in Japan well known Consul Sugihara, who, together with the Dutch Consul Zwartendijk, saved many Jewish lives by giving them visa to leave Europe and travel via Japan to safe places. In these lectures the more broad context of the war is told including the Japanese occupation of larger parts of East Asia, including the Netherlands East Indies.
Our other activity is based in Nagasaki City on Kyushu island. This connection began with a memorial monument built by Nagasaki citizens five years ago. It is for all victims who were taken as prisoners of war (mainly from the Netherlands East Indies) and forced to labour in Kawanani shipyard in Nagasaki during the war. Since we were connected to this Fukuoka No.2 POW camp because it also housed the father of the late Annie Goudswaard, one of the founders of our Dialogue group we were informed of the Nagasaki citizens’ movement and we started raising funds at the dialogue conference. André Schram, whose father was also interned in this camp joined in our force as a member of the board to organize a group of a survivor of the camp and their families to visit its unveiling ceremony. We also set up an optional tour so that they can understand the monument better to make their visit as meaningful as possible. Unfortunately Toyoichi Ihara, who was a driving power to realize this monument, died last year. But he kept telling until the end that people must remember their own aggressions whenever they tell the suffering of atomic bomb as one of the survivors who suffered damages from the atomic bomb in Nagasaki. We were very pleased that many Dutch victims and their families were reconciled by communicating the goodwill of the Nagasaki citizens.
We are very regretful that we could not carry out the reconciliation trip to Mizumaki and Nagasaki this year because of the epidemic of Covid 19. We were so happy to notice a big enthusiasm for this trip with Dutch and Australians to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the Koyagi Memorial Monument and 75 years after the war this September but it is postponed to next year. I am sure it will be a great chance for both citizens to meet each other to talk about the common history. Let us hope it can safely take place next year.
After the unveiling the monument André also took this opportunity to create history booklets for children based on his father’s life. In order to make this teaching material, the junior high school students in Koyagi interviewed the elderly people around them so that we could add how people were living on the other side of the wall of the internment camp in the booklet. This teaching material is currently used by children in the Netherlands and Nagasaki. It is epoch-making that this booklets are used in both countries with exactly the same content with two sides of the war history. And this is exactly our philosophy to continue our work also in Indonesia.
I would like to summarize what we have learned from these activities in Tokyo and Nagasaki so that these lessons will hopefully help us in our future programs with Indonesians.
First of all, it is very important to work with the local people. Fortunately, Nagasaki citizens are more interested in peace keeping activities than other parts of Japan and the commitment from our side gives a huge encouragement to them. However even with the amazing development of the global Internet, it is still quite difficult to work with people far away. I found the most effective way of working is “do it yourself together”. It sounds a bit awkward but you do the things you are good at in your place and then to merge with the partners. That means you always feel free and to take initiative in planning and acting it. Then you find a suitable partner to realize the project. The Japanese people steadily carried out the memorial monument, and we made our own plans based on it. With regard to the teaching material, Andre actively worked on it, and finally, a material that can be used in both countries was completed and the Japanese people try to find the way to use them. Also, in Tokyo, we planned and operated everything and we were able to lay the groundwork there, but as a point of reflection, we always have to keep it in our mind that there should come time for the local people to voluntarily continue such activities. I realize now that I lacked this notion for the Dialogue in Tokyo.
Second, our target is always the next generation. Our Dialogue conference started with the aim of interacting and reconciling with the first generation of war, but now that we have to miss the first generation day by day the mission of the Stichting Dialogue NJI is to convey our mission to the next generation. That is why it is so important for us to work with Japanese and Indonesian local citizens. The continuation is becoming more important.
In Nagasaki, each school has a peace class curriculum. Therefore, it is different from other prefectures. Children there are thinking about what they can do by themselves. Under such circumstances, there are teachers who try to inform Japanese as the perpetrators during the war even if they do not have to teach as a national guideline. Finding such teachers is also an important issue. In Japan, each school is not given the freedom to teach. The board of education in each city has the right to make decisions and they were controlled under the Ministry of Education. It made me realize how important it is to be in solidarity with people who have networks in such places. Unfortunately, there is no such network near Tokyo, so it is mainly in the form of lectures at universities. When the professor who supported me reaches retirement age, I have to start searching from scratch again, so this point can be said to be an issue for the future.
Thirdly, what should we pass on to the next generation? We must keep on telling how important Dialogue is and what is important to have a good dialogue. History education, especially the history of war, has very subtle subjects in every country. As I mentioned earlier, I feel that Japan has a clear historical revisionism, and there is a possibility that the country will control history. It is not easy to work in such a situation. But you can’t stay still. We sometimes have to gather courage to oppose and break through existing limits. One way or the other; in the end people start exploring their own history and start thinking on what kind of shoulders they are standing: history is the never ending discussion that benefits of openness and the ability to listen to each other. Currently, there are various opinions and speculations about the Indonesian Independent War in the Netherlands not only between the Netherlands and Indonesia but even within the Netherlands. We are sure dialogue is more needed. However, we must understand that we cannot move forward without changing our attitude; attitude of fixing one’s own correctness. We will have to show young people the importance of listening to what the other person says without judging good or bad. We must also tell them that we can really have a good dialogue only when we understand war is a history shared by multiple countries with multiple perspectives. We believe that true dialogue begins when we consider each other’s position. In that sense, I think our dialogue meeting has an important mission to bring the voices of Japan and Indonesia to the Netherlands.
Another point is also very important to carry a good dialogue. When talking about the fear and anger of the first generation caused by the war, it is necessary to be aware of why you want to tell it to the other person. Rather than pointing your finger at the other person, it is important to understand clearly that telling a personal history is for our future peace. The reason to tell the personal history is not to make the same mistake again. Reminding our common future will develop a feeling of compassion for the other person’s position. We believe solidarity is stronger than division and true dialogue begins here. And I hope we can pass on this hope to the next generation also in Indonesia because I believe that peace is not a slogan far away but it germinates and grows in warm hearts which care the other.

In this contribution I want to address the complexity of a dialogue between people and between groups who look with different eyes at the same history they have experienced or. that they have learned through family stories or in education. I will do this on the basis of examples from various oral history projects I have been involved in.

It is often thought that the experience of a history can be captured in just a few perspectives. About the Dutch-Indonesian conflict it is said that it is important to describe “both” perspectives. This is based on the idea that there is one Dutch and one Indonesian perspective. This way of thinking seems to be based on the idea that national perspectives are dominant and valid. It’s not that simple. Those involved, the eyewitnesses, experience history in different ways, with different nuances and with different emphases.
A good example is the three-part television series “The Partisans” that was broadcasted in 1994. In that series, a radio reporter reconstructs an action by a resistance group in the last year of the war in the Netherlands. With every witness he speaks, the story changes because each witness has seen or remembers something different and wants to model his own role and that of others according to what he considers desirable. There were many perspectives.

In the Witnesses & Contemporaries project of the research program ‘Independence, decolonization, war and violence in Indonesia’, we are often confronted with the idea that a complete historiography can be established by integrating the Indonesian and the Dutch perspective. Following up the many perspectives in “The Partisans”, it is interesting to compare the different starting positions of witnesses from the period 45-49.

For Pak (sir) Edy from a village near Solo, Java, the Dutch were defeated by the Japanese in 1942. After Japan was defeated, Indonesia was free and the Indonesians took control of their own society. Then the news came that the Dutch were returning in the wake of the British. They couldn’t let that happen, so Pak Edy became active in defending Indonesia’s’ freedom against the Dutch.
Oom (uncle) Abe lived in the Moluccas. After the Japanese capitulation, the Dutch returned and recruited again for the Colonial Army. After the misery of the Japanese occupation, he did not feel like working in the garden and it was time for adventure. Together with friends he reported for the KNIL.
After the misery of the German occupation and the violent war in the southern Netherlands, the Dutchman Ab enlisted to liberate the Netherlands East Indies after reading a poster. He became war volunteer expecting to fight against the Japanese. He knew little about the Indies.
That was different for Jan who grew up in a communist family where the struggle for freedom of Indonesians was discussed. He did not want to be deployed and did not show up and went into hiding the day he had to embark for the Indies. He. paid with imprisonment.
Oom Dolf stayed with his mother and brother near Semarang during the Japanese occupation. His father, a Moluccan KNIL soldier, had been taken prisoner and killed. After the Japanese capitulation, he and his brother were forced to fight with the republicans. After Moluccan KNIL soldiers conquered Semarang, he and his brother joined the KNIL.
The Moluccan oom Cor also fought aside with the republicans, but for a different reason. He lived in Surabaya. His father advised him to join the Republican Moluccan militia. When the English tried to conquer Surabaya in 1945, he fought with this militia. When his group had to withdraw, he was arrested by the Dutch.
Ibu (Mrs.) Djoewariah also joined the youth in combat. After Dutch troops attacked Yogyakarta on Java in 1948 and arrested the leaders of the Republic of Indonesia, refugees passed her house. She and her friends wanted to help them. Her parents first opposed, afraid that something would happen to her. After a while she also became involved in the guerrilla as a courier. She was 15 years old.
At the same time, Mrs. Boukje was sent from the Netherlands as a nurse at the age of 22 years. She came forward after a speech by (then) Princess Juliana who asked support because of a severe shortage in nurses in the Indies.

Babylonian confusion of tongues
It is not difficult to imagine that all these eyewitnesses have gone through different situations and have a different view of what happened. They may share some observations at the level of a group or country, but when it comes to “identifying” with history, individual differences become more important. That sounds like a Babylonian confusion of tongues: people do not know what the other is talking about, they do not speak each other’s language.

Is it possible to speak each other’s language? Is it possible to find the same words for the same events? And for the different perceptions of those events?
The language of history and experience is more than words that can be “translated”.

Let me make that clear with a few examples.
Behind the language we speak are discourses connected to perspectives and that help to give meaning to what we say. People who know these discourses understand what we mean, others do not or understand less. These discourses relate to different levels: national, group, or even family level. And they change over time. A few years ago I gave a guest lecture on postcolonial monuments in the Netherlands at the Pattimura University in Ambon. That were Indisch monuments. Many of these monuments relate to the victims of the Japanese occupation and of the Dutch-Indonesian conflict. I had to try to explain the Dutch “national discourse” on the period 1942-1949 in order to explain the meaning of the monuments. How do you explain a discussion about the text “for order and tranquility” at a monument to commemorate Dutch boys who were sent as soldiers? A Dutch audience knows that discussion because it is a Dutch discourse. For a Moluccan audience it is a completely strange discourse. At some other monuments discussions arose about questions such as: is it only about civilian casualties, is it also about deployed soldiers, are Moluccans and Indo-Europeans explicitly mentioned?
How do you explain to an Indonesian audience the sensitivities of those Dutch discussions?

A second example is, the meaning and scope of a word. Perhaps it is interesting to talk about the feel of a word: a word can scare and give goosebumps or can feel convenient.
A good illustration is our current program “Independence, Decolonization, Violence and War in Indonesia”. The program started without the word “Independence”. This was added after discussions with Indonesian colleagues. We wanted to express the Indonesian perspective that Indonesia was defending its declared independence. Even though it is often called that way in Indonesia, some Indonesian colleagues argue there was no revolution. A revolution, they say, is about standing up against an existing authority, and the Netherlands no authority over Indonesia anymore.
But what should you call it from a Dutch perspective? At the beginning of the conflict, the Netherlands clearly wanted to restore colonial power. So, we can speak of a recolonization war. But from 1947 on the conflict centred around decolonization under Dutch ‘guidance. Then it actually became a decolonization war, not for or against colonization, but to control the decolonization process.
Concepts are useful for understanding what happened, but they also stand for sensitivities: which word you use often says something about how you look at history.

Which brings me to another source of confusion. That is the way history is framed over time by governments or historians. This is partly due because we tend to approach history chronologically and for our understanding divide it into periods. Between 1997 and 2001, we interviewed 724 people for an Oral History project (SMGI) about their time in Indonesia / the Netherlands East Indies. It was clear that the timeline in the minds of interviewers was out of sync with that of the interviewees. Experiences and memory don’t care about timelines, we tend to fit them in later. As example is how “Bersiap” was used in one of the interviews. In the Netherlands, it refers to the first months of the Dutch-Indonesian conflict, and stands for violence against the Indo-Europeans and ethnic groups loyal to the Dutch. In Indonesia the word has no meaning related to that period, people will speak of Merdeka (freedom) or Revolution. During an interview for the SMGI with an Indo-European still living in Indonesia, the eyewitness told that she was a victim of the Bersiap already in April 1945. The interviewer responded by saying that this was not possible because the Bersiap only broke out after the Indonesian proclamation. Here two rankings collided: the classification of historians with a beautiful timeline and that of an eyewitness. For the eyewitness “Bersiap” stood for violence from Indonesian youth, which she had already experienced in April. The interviewer was stuck in her timeline, preventing her from hearing what the interviewee was talking about.

A final example of the confusion of tongues is how experiences and memories differently persist in containers of memory such as songs and stories. I want to illustrate this with a story about a Japanese song Umi Yukaba that was sung in an interview. The interviewee told she liked that song so much because in the song the Japanese celebrate the beauty of the sea and nature. She knew it from the radio and she had learned it at school. In 2001 I gave ten lectures on the SMGI in Japan. To play some sound for the Japanese audience, I played a fragment of that song. The first time I shared it with a group of activists researching biological warfare by Japan. The public was shocked because it was a glorification of the war. During subsequent lectures I discussed with the audience what the song evoked in them. That varied from horror to recognition because it was still sung in the self-defence forces. My last talk was with Japanese veterans who had served in Indonesia. They had personal memories of the song. For some it was the beginning of the radio announcements of another torpedoed boat, for others it was the commander’s favourite song. The veterans told me that the way the interviewee sang the song was clearly the war version. Later versions sounded different. These kinds of containers of memories, songs, are also subject to change, and can therefore appeal to other emotions.

To make each other understand needs much more than just one common language. We have to learn to listen between sentences. Only that way can we understand the complexity. Only that way can we gain an eye for the variation in personal perspectives within the “large history stories” of governments, historians and experience-communities. We must learn to see the differences, but also the similarities between experiences and memories. This is necessary in order to bridge differences and accept each other’s story, even if it is different from ours. Just like veterans who first tried to kill each other can meet later with respect.

Interactive complexity
I want to add one more layer. That is that memories and history are not told in a vacuum. Recalling memories and writing history is basically the same as interviewing. It is the result of interaction. That seems obvious, but for a long there were historians (perhaps still) who thought that writing history could be done neutrally or in balance between different experiences. But even they cannot escape being part of a societal or scientific debate. With and without people who experienced history themselves.
It is therefore important, when listening to stories, to not only be open to the multitude of perspectives, but also to think about who, why and when someone is telling something. What is happening in the outside world, what is in the news can affect the emphasis in stories. When we interviewed for the SMGI, a fireworks disaster took place. The images on TV brought back memories of bombing raids and burning houses to the interviewees.

A second example is more recent. In 2016 I started to interview a number of the Moluccan KNIL men still alive in the Netherlands. In the past a distinction used to be made between the old soldier who entered service before World War II and the young soldier who entered service after that war. I observed that a new category was added: the men who had served in the militia. These were Moluccans who were mobilized to defend Ambon just before the Japanese invasion. The Japanese army did not treat them as POW and sent them home. Many of them volunteered to serve in the KNIL after the Japanese capitulation. In addition, noted that in stories comparisons were made between the forced labour of the Moluccans as romusja and the forced labour of Moluccan POW’s. The reason for both ‘new’ elements was a decision by the Dutch government in 2015 to compensate those who were in the Netherlands East Indies service at the time of the Japanese invasion for lost wages. The members of the militia and old soldiers were eligible for this. Not the boys who worked as romusjas, although they experienced the same hardship as the POW’s. The trigger for these ‘new’ elements was a Moluccan organization that promised to force the government to pay compensation to the whole first-generation Moluccans. I also noticed that some family members of the men I interviewed initially assumed that I was came because of the expected compensation. This undoubtedly will have influenced the accents in the stories. At the same time, it is a clear example of the interactive complexity of writing history I am talking about.

A final example is the broad research program into Dutch military violence. The program elicits many reactions, history is discussed with the program as catalyst. Depending on how people view the program stories alter. There are people who want to tell how they experienced the ‘Bersiap’, because they are afraid that the researchers are insufficiently aware of this. But also, because to them the violence during the Bersiap explains and legitimizes Dutch military violence. Others want the story of the long colonization to be told, because according to them that explains the position of the Indonesians. A Dutch veteran contacted our Witness & Contemporaries project because he wanted to explain why he considered himself a war criminal. He went to the Dutch East Indies as war-volunteer and was indirectly involved in actions he considered criminal. When I asked him why he explicitly considered himself as war criminal given the fact that his superiors had given him assignments, he replied that being a war-volunteer he had signed himself, went voluntarily and he therefore was personally responsible. He had come forward because he wanted to make his confession to the world. He had never talked about it, but now that the research program was in place, it had to be done. In his letter to the project, he wrote, “These stories are probably of no importance now, but I feel somewhat relieved that I can formally write all this off.” Incidentally, his very layered story gave a good insight into how someone positions himself in that complexity of responsibilities, and you can see and feel how the personal and national story painfully touches each other in his story.

The war volunteer told his story to the world through our project. It is good to realize that stories, as well as history books, aim at a specific audience and are told and written for a specific purpose. At the SMGI we discovered that many interviewees spoke to their grandchildren through us or set up spoken monuments for their parents. A hidden audience (if we can put it that way) partly determines what is told and also which perspective is chosen. For example, that of the victim or of someone who also makes choices.

Not one common language, but what?
I promised to address, in this contribution, the complexity of dialogues between people who have experienced the same events or at least were part of the same history, but look at it differently. I also would try to point out a direction to start that dialogue.
It may be clear that I mainly talked about how complex it is. That there are many different perspectives, that stories and perspectives are influenced by larger stories, by frames, but also by interests. And that they can change over time. To complicate matters, I’ve talked about the impact of interaction on memory telling and history writing.

That doesn’t make it easier. There is no single owner of a history or a story. There are several owners and they all speak their own language.

The complexity makes it intricated. But it is also the opening to a dialogue.
The starting point is to recognize the complexity and especially the polyphony. Trying to understand why stories are told in a certain way and why which words are used and/or sensitive.
A dialogue is to discover together the colours, sentiments, meanings, emotions, sounds and the meaning of stories for individuals. Without feelings of guilt or being wronged, getting in the way.
The dialogue starts with listening to the different stories as much as possible. AND to try to pass them on.
If you need to or want to tell someone else’s story, you have to look in the mirror at your own limitations and assumptions and relativize your own perspective.
This is an important step in becoming receptive to the (other) perspectives of your interlocutors of history.

Ody
“Ody is in an ongoing odyssey from a naive grandson to be a naive historian,” this was a statement that I threw to entertain audiences, mostly Dutch, who attended a session that I had together with a research group in which I have recently joined as an intern. It was indeed a wordplay and a typical Javanese humble-bragging gesture. But since the statement has been thrown out of my mind, I think of it more than I used to.
I recently attempted to theorize that in Indonesia, being a grandchild of a freedom fighter is a shared experience among the third generation. It is indeed more of a small observation rather than a solid theory. My friends, my mutual friends, friends of my cousins, cousins of my friends, and many other people around me would tell a similar story regarding their grandparents: they lived through the period of independence. Some of them believe that their grandparents actively engaged in efforts to gain independence, some others’ grandparents defended Indonesia from a “follow-up” invasion, many of the third generations have no idea what their grandparents did during the period. Nevertheless, let me clarify this, I do not personally think that the freedom fighter (militias or regular soldiers who fought in any combat) are the “owner” of independent Indonesia. The state (that went through thirty-plus years of military dictatorship) might think so, but as utopian as it may sound: I believe that Indonesia should be the home for everyone.
My “theory” is a self-reflection, if not a self-fulfilling assumption. My grandfather fought together with the Student Army, an auxiliary military brigade that consisted of mobilized high school students. He was 15 when he attended an event which he called “Grote-vergadering” of students who passionately supported the establishment of Ikatan Pelajar Indonesia-Bagian Pertahanan (the Defense Section of Association of Indonesian Students) that took place in the heart of Yogyakarta. He engaged in battles that mostly took place in Kedu, north of Yogyakarta, Solo, and the bordering regency: Madiun. He was among the liberators of Yogyakarta who torn apart the Dutch defense line from the north. For your information, I am the youngest grandson, which positions me as the only loyal listener of these repetitive stories.
“Why did you go to war?” I asked him once. Without delay, he responded, “I had no option. Schools were closed.” I accepted it as it is. After I got enrolled in the history department and chose history as my subject, I questioned his answer. For Javanese, questioning elders is considered to be rude, and I can tell you that I really am afraid of his anger. So here I am, an impolite grandson who questions my grandfather’s statement, when he can no longer chase me away around my family house because he passed away twelve years ago.
Before I reached the Netherlands, I had read some publications in English and Bahasa Indonesia regarding the state-of-mind of some Dutch soldiers before they waged war with whom they defined as rampok or terrorist in the archipelago. Some of them were conscripts, forced to enlist in the military and deployed to the group of Islands which they previously knew as the home of smiles, sincerity, and service. Then they entered the military hierarchy where no questions were allowed. “Loose a lip, sink a ship.” a US Propaganda poster said. War has taken over their youth, a similar story that I heard from my grandfather. Perhaps, this is the common ground: both my grandfather and the Dutch soldiers never had a chance to choose.
The silver-lining between the story of my grandfather and the Dutch conscripts satisfied me for a while. The Dutch might be portrayed as evils in history books, monuments, or museums in Indonesia, but they really had no option and only carried out what their higher-ranking officer asked them to do. This viewpoint was altered when the stories are no longer anonymous.
In the dossier of my late-grandfather, I found a verbatim of an interview between an anonymous interviewer with one of my grandfather’s comrades. On the first page of the verbatim, the interviewee recounted a story of a brief clash between his unit and a jeep of Dutch military-police around Pasar Ngasem, a market nearby the palace of the Sultanate of Yogyakarta. He clearly stated that:
“Heru Basuki (my grandfather) released a shot towards the jeep and forced the jeep to change direction swiftly. The shot and the sudden move shocked one of the Dutch soldiers, and the next thing we knew is one of them dropped his wallet. We opened the wallet and found his ID card: Hendrik Smith, a corporal in the Dutch MP. Besides the ID, we found seventeen gulden and fifty cents. Later we learned that Smith met his end because of the shot, the other two MPs were also killed.” (end-quote)
All the heroic stories of my grandpa turned a bit ugly. The Dutch, who never had any option but still stands on the opposing side of his story, now has a name. When I reached the Netherland, the story haunted me even more. What if the family of Hendrik Smith lives around me? Or perhaps I know one of his relatives. It might be an act of overthinking. But no one could prove that I am wrong either.
I then went into an adventure with my imagination. I reconstructed the day when my grandfather engaged in that short clash. It was certain that he was not in a fire-fight. A jeep passed, and a shot was made. Smith lost his wallet and his life. Why did he open fire? It was irregular warfare, I understand, battlefield, buffering-and safe zone was not clearly defined. The pendulum then swang to another side: perhaps, the patriotic narrative about this period is not entirely an exaggerated story. He defended his home and homeland, from enemies.
But which enemies am I referring to? I came back to his cupboard that is full of his belongings. My grandmother, who is suffering from dementia, keeps saying that I should not go back and forth to that cupboard, otherwise my grandpa would be angry. Once again, I can tell you that I am afraid of him, not to mention if he visits me from the afterlife. In the cupboard, I found his medals. The one with the highest merit is “The Guerilla Star,” an award that the state conferred only to the freedom fighter who fought in the revolution. The guerilla star is also the only award he received for a military operation against foreign entities. The other ten medals come from domestic operations, which means, a literal manifestation of Soekarno’s warning: “My struggle was easier because I fought foreigners, Yours will be harder because you will fight your fellow.”
My sympathy towards Dutch soldiers also came from my grandfather’s story. In one of his stories he always tells me “they (the Dutch) were as young as me. They would shout their mothers’ name when they got wounded or when they were dying.” But, I never heard a similar story about his local enemies. “They betrayed us” was the only expression he had to depict the enemy that shared the same cultural background as him.
I zoom myself out as another question pops up in my head, “Why do I need to show my sympathy?” — Ignorance is a bliss, they said. But no, I said to myself, I am in an odyssey that began twelve years a go, or even earlier. The journey started with a mission to understand my grandfather and the complex story has been dragging me to observe other similar stories. Therefore, it started with a deep emotion and bond between a grandson and a grandfather. If I want to be an ignorant, I can stop the journey anytime I want.
Or can I? The pre-Islamic Javanese belief teaches us that our ancestral spirits stay around us. If I may contextualize it in my own case, perhaps, my grandfather has always haunted me with these questions. A “revenge” to little-me who undoubtedly bombarded him with repetitive questions?

Ron

After the Dutch transfer of sovereignty to Indonesia in December 1949 a group of approximately 3.500 Moluccan KNIL-soldiers and their family were temporarily transported to the Netherlands awaiting their repatriation to the Moluccas for their demobilization as KNIL soldier. Amongst this group was my father, not a soldier but a high school student who longed for adventure. My family however has a long and broad KNIL-tradition.

My father’s father was an Ambonese KNIL soldier. Moluccans were then called Ambonese. His father, my great grandfather, was also a soldier who fought for Dutch colonial interests in Aceh, North-Sumatra. My father, the youngest of seven children, had an older brother who joined the resistance in Bandung on Java during the Second World War against Japanese occupation. He was arrested, interrogated, and beaten up by the Japanese Kenpeitai. My father also had several uncles and cousins who served in the KNIL. One of my uncles was an agricultural consultant working for the Dutch colonial government in Tual, in the Moluccan Kei archipelago. During the Second World War, he was executed by the Japanese army. Shortly after the Japanese capitulation in 1945 the Indonesian independence war broke out. Except for my grandfather who was already pensioned, all my family members in the KNIL fought with the Dutch against the Indonesian republicans.
Almost the complete Moluccan so-called first generation who came to the Netherlands – nowadays the Moluccan community counts some 45.000 members – were active supporters of Dutch colonial rule in the Indies. For several decades, the general narrative of the Moluccan community in the Netherlands was based on a KNIL-background, on Christian faith, Malay speaking, and as supporter of the independent Republic of the South Moluccas, the RMS proclaimed in April 1950. Born and raised in the Netherlands, from a family with numerous KNIL ties, one can say that I am a true exponent of a colonial Moluccan perspective. But my family does not completely fit the general narrative of Moluccan soldiers in the Netherlands.
When I was a teenager, I got curious why I was brought up with only the Dutch language. No Malay dialect whatsoever: no commonly used Ambon Malay or Tangsi Malay. At first, I thought that it was because I grew up in a big city, and not in one of the Moluccan camps or local Moluccan communities in the Netherlands. But then I found out that my father’s Malay language skills were like forever rather poor. I learned that my grandfather forbade his children to speak Malay at home in Bandung. Dutch was mandatory. If my father was caught speaking Malay, he was tied to a tree in the garden and was beaten with a wooden stick by his eldest brother. Why?!
Colonial society and the law in the Netherlands-Indies made a distinction between two main groups of inhabitants: Europeans and the so-called Inlanders (Natives). A Moluccan, a “native”, could migrate to a subgroup of natives who by law were considered to be Europeans, the so-called “voor de wet aan Europeanen gelijkgestelden”. My grandfather, being a sergeant, a petty officer in the colonial army, was one of those Moluccans who for the law was equated to Europeans. This included colonial benefits. For example, a better pension and his children were allowed to follow Dutch language schools. This meant better economic prospects and a confirmation of social migration towards the colonial social elite of Europeans and Indo-Europeans.
I never met my grandfather because he never left Indonesia and when I went to Indonesia for the first time, he already had died some years before. I grew up with a traditional respect for my grandfather and was proud of him as belonging to “a martial race”, seng takut mati, who was not afraid to die. When I found out the story of the Dutch language I was surprised. It looked as if my grandfather who has no Dutch blood at all, who had no family ties with the Dutch, and never had been to The Netherlands considered himself as a Dutchman. For the colonial law he was treated like a European. Most of my family members were like my grandfather. Other Moluccans in the KNIL, mostly with the rank of sergeant, were also like him. So, I found out that the general colonial Moluccan perspective has more layers. There was the perspective of Moluccans who were considered as Inlanders, Natives, and the one of Moluccans who were treated as Europeans.
Some of my family members were strongly Dutch oriented however also got close with Indonesian republicans. During the Indonesian independence war one of the cousins of my father accidently ended up as a KNIL soldier at the wrong side of the so-called demarcation line in Bandung, on enemy territory. He was caught by Indonesian soldiers and put into jail, awaiting his planned execution on the next morning. At night he heard some nearby Indonesian soldiers singing some traditional Moluccan songs. It appeared that they were Moluccans fighting on the Indonesian side. My uncle called them and his claim on their common ethnic background resulted in his release from jail. He and the Moluccans on the Indonesian side developed a brotherly bond. Later, when my uncle was given the opportunity to return to Dutch territory, he left his new friends with great pain in his heart, as he emotionally told me a few years ago before his death.
Through the years I interviewed many Moluccans about their perspective during the Second World War and the decolonization: Moluccans in the Netherlands, on Java and in the Moluccas. I learned that there were far more Moluccan perspectives. For example, concerning their attitude toward the Japanese occupation: Moluccans who cooperated with the Japanese military, those who were neutral, and those who resisted the occupation. Concerning the Indonesian independence one also will find several perspectives: that of Moluccans who fought the Indonesian militias and army, the perspective of those who supported the war on Indonesian Independence and the perspective of those who were juggled between the two sides.
Finally, in my opinion it is incorrect to speak of one Dutch, and one Indonesian perspective. The Dutch perspective has amongst others, a Moluccan layer, and even that perspective includes more layers. The same is true for the Indonesian perspective.
Back to my grandfather. He spoke Dutch and considered himself as belonging to a colonial elite. He was a true representative of what some Javanese later called londoh londoh ireng, black dutchman. Although I still consider it awkward that a Moluccan in the Indies acted as if he was a European, I am convinced that he wanted only the best for his children. Closer to the Dutch meant further away from some fellow Moluccans. Concerning his work as a colonial soldier for the Dutch I do not have a specific opinion. He represented Dutch colonial interests and fought against other indigenous population groups in the Indies.

Thank you very much for this invitation to speak at this conference – the reason was an opinion piece that I wrote in the NRC, a renowned Dutch newspaper and that was also published in the Java Post [a webblog about the Dutch East-Indies, hosted by a historian], entitled: ‘Give our colonial past a shared language’.
It was a plea to search for a language that would contribute to the colonial past being heard not only by a minority but also by the majority. I take now the opportunity to explore my initial idea further, and to link up with the thoughts of my colleague Fridus Steijlen on the use of language.

My opinion piece was about the apologies that Willem Alexander made in Indonesia in March this year regarding the violence in the post-Proklamasi era. This was a special moment, because it had been awaited for a long time. There is much to say about the content of the apologies, which in themselves were quite limited (namely only for extreme violence after the Proklamasi), but my point was not about the content of the apology itself, but the fact that we need the apology to get beyond thinking in terms of right and wrong; to be able to discuss the colonial past as a shared past; and face the aftermath still visible in many ways. Therfore we need – so was my hypothesis – a language other than the “recognition language”. Apologies are important, but as we have seen immediately afterwards, they can also polarize, when some feel that the recognition of the one group is misrecognition of another.

In this lecture I will focus on the question of how we might achieve such a shared language and what the concept of “dialogue” can or cannot offer in this respect. I will first share with you some insights from my research on recognition and reparation procedures, and then introduce the outline of the dialogue concept that is the basis of my new research program.

Historical injustice – recognition – identity(politics)
Historical experiences of injustice are often discussed in terms of recognition. Research shows that while in the political and public debate apologies and compensations are mainly seen as the end of a process, these gestures are in fact often the beginning of a broader social process. Historians have shown that it is actually about establishing relationships. Usually it is about two parties involved, in which it is often a minority that engages with the government, and broadly speaking there is a strong focus on the role of ’the state’. However, recognition also plays an important role at other levels; such as in the family or within communities (so-called “we-communities”, Maurice Halbwachs) people do or do not feel part of.

Our way of writing history, but also the way of doing justice, are often still largely based on the framework of the nation-state and certain group identities. But the problem with recognition is that it also contributes to such dividing lines: Recognition produces hierarchies between those recognized and those who are not; and it makes dependent in a sense; the one who asks for recognition from the one who does (or does not) provide it. Decades of Memory Politics and Transitional Justice show this worldwide. Both want to acknowledge past suffering, but commemoration and justice procedures not only recognize, sometimes they oppress people by holding them in identities in which they have got stuck rather than freeing them from these roles.

In this context, the post-colonial / post-war communities in the Netherlands have often been accused of identitarian groupthink and competitive victimization; and in doing so would they themselves stand in the way of social reconciliation. I suggest turning our gaze; that we should not just look at the behavior of those groups, but also at the restrictive (recognition) policy of the government, which is partly the cause of such competitive behaviour; the extensive but selective “war welfare policy” of the seventies; later disrespectfully referred to as “trauma culture”, developing in the nineties into what Jolande Withuis called the “plaintive culture” (2002). The victim/patient has developed into a claimant.

The central and difficult to answer question that still needs to be answered in recognition issues is: Do you become equal at a time you are heard, or do you have to be equal first in order to be heard? That is why there is still a fierce debate in literature about the effects of recognition procedures and reparations. Do they mainly promote identity politics or the contrary, are they a good tactic to improve the citizen status of some groups and deal with inequalities?

This issue has recently brought to more attention by the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. In his book ‘Rethinking Identity’ (2018), he shows that in the debate about recognition the identity issue is the central variable, and states: ‘identity is a lie that binds’. According to him the issue of recognition becomes more complex and less central when the ‘lie’ about identity is dismantled. When identity is less seen as an essence and more as ‘in flux’. He therefore calls for telling more complex stories in order to go against the hardening of the debate and relationships.

Thus, are complex stories the starting point to look at the recognition issue in a different way? This is what my new research – entitled The Dialogics of Justice (2020-2025, NWO) – aims to do. How are we going to do that?

From recognition to dialogue
We examine apologies and reparations not only as an instrument of recognition, but also as an instrument of dialogue. This makes it possible for us – at least this is my hypothesis – to understand the relevance of the social aspect in recognition and repair issues better; who wants to enter into a dialogue with whom and about what? And what place do the present and the future have in this conversation about the past?

In the new project I will, together with a team, talk to various groups looking for recognition for historical injustice and we will ask what people actually are looking for when they ask for recognition and what they expect from the authorities they are suing. Consequently we hope to gain new insights that may help to show why many of the initiatives in the past failed to bring the recognition hoped for.

For that we also investigate the language with which we communicate about injustice and recognition, because it seems that our way of talking about this subject (often) reproduces the problems instead of solving them; that we use categories that stigmatize and essentialize instead of terms that help to talk with each other; a language that allows to hear each other and with which a step forward is possible.
In concrete terms this means going beyond the simplified victim / perpetrator identities. If we go back to the philosopher Appiah who argues that identities are complex because they also shift over time, the question is, what does it mean to hide this complexity when you end up in a simplified binary perpetrator / victim recognition procedure? Can we talk about a form of recognition that does justice to the multiple identity-positions of individuals? This might be the art of dialogue we strive for, to initiate a conversation that makes such multivoicedness possible. But for that we need a different concept of dialogue than the one that is dominant in the public domain.

Dialogue is often seen as something between two (unambiguous) opposing parties. I use a different dialogue concept, that of the psychologist Hubert Hermans. He talks about the multivoicedness or dialogical self; the different voices people carry within them and which can be in dialogue but also in conflict with each other.

The desire for recognition has always been entangled in stories of the self, in family stories and in collective stories. Distinguishing between the dialogic self (the multivoicedness of people), the relational self (communities individuals are part of) and the collective self (the society of which people are part of as citizens) makes it possible to explore broader notions of ’the self’. Searching for all of these different voices will not only reveal people’s multiple, often contradictory, viewpoints, but will also show how cultural, religious, ethnic and historical but also desired / aspired identities are permanently shifting and adapting to new contexts.

What the debate around the decolonization research shows; (what Fridus Steijlen has also touched on) it is not enough to put an Indonesian and Dutch perspective side by side, it needs more perspectives, otherwise only the national frameworks (as well as the positions of the majority and minority) will be reproduced: we aim for more multivoicedness.

The art of dialogue: multivoicedness
To clarify what I mean by multivoicedness, I will give several examples from my research on the so-called “widows of Rawagede”.

The headline in the media about the lawsuits was: ‘Indonesian victims against the Dutch state’. This illustrates perfectly how lawsuits create simplified identities. In the binary setting of the courtroom, there is not much room for complexity; in reality, at a local level, their identities are more complicated. The women became widows because of the execution of their husbands by Dutch soldiers; so they are victims; representing a weak and dependent position.

At the same time, their men, although they were farmers and not militias, were also seen as heroes who died for the struggle for independence, buried at the cemetery of honor (“I prefer him to be buried there with his friend, not here in the garden. Together. Instead of being here alone. He died a martyr”). For the women it is not contradictory to request both, a victim compensation from the Dutch and a hero’s pension from the Indonesian state. Seen from their perspective, they are both. However, the fact that I was astonished by this first and foremost reveals my/our black and white frame in which we often think when dealing with recognition and compensation claims.

Another example: I asked an old woman on Java ‘what do you expect from the Dutch?’, and later I found out that my translator had filled in the answers by specifically asking her: ‘Would you like an apology and compensation?’ The translator found my question too abstract and made use of the two options offered by the court, upon which an affirmative answer followed. Apparently, in the context of a court case, it is difficult to listen openly to what people themselves are looking for when talking about recognition. So the context also determines what is defined as recognition.

One more example: The Indonesian-Dutch activist who initiated these lawsuits of the widows against the Dutch state via his foundation Comité Nederlandse Ereschulden (Committee Dutch Debts of Honor). Many chats with him start with his question: “Who is my father? Who is my father, I ask you, who is he?” He never elaborates on it, but then moves on to his political agenda; to draw attention to the colonial past of the Netherlands. I learned from him that the legacy of the colonial past within families can be incredibly complex, resulting in multiple (loyalty) conflicts. Whereas the mother’s side of his family is Dutch, the father’s side is Indonesian; and in the war of independence they fought on both sides. He consciously positions himself as an ‘Indonesian’ who wants to show ’the Dutch’ what they have done.

“So when I came here to the Netherlands I was confronted by them, saying that we are terrorists, extremists and robbers. And I think it is so unfair, to portray us Indonesians like that. My father is a Menadonese, my mother is a Dutch… Well, they (from mother’s side) don’t have a good word for the Indonesians, because for them the Netherlands is the best. And my father’s side is military, they fought against the Dutch. At some point you get arguments, but of course you don’t want escalation. But it did escalate, because they simply see me as a stranger. They think I’m against them. They think the Netherlands is the best there is. To me it is the opposite, because they do not regard Indonesians as human beings.”

Those tensed relationships make the question ‘who is my father?’ a key to better understand his activism. It is this question mark that shows his quest, his doubts and his multivoicedness. Activism, on the other hand, invites you to speak with “one voice”. This attitude Spivak called ‘strategic essentialism’, a clear position of oneself in relation to an enemy. In a legal setting this means one is the embodiment of the colonizer and the other of the colonized. This clear-cut essentialized position has the advantage that it initiates a discussion, but at the same time it neglects multivoicedness. That also means silencing parts of the self.

One could also think of the example that Fridus Stijlen just gave: The war veterans who at the time were each other’s enemy, but later approached each other with respect as “brothers in arms”. Let us skip the national frameworks for a moment: Even the one we call the “Indonesian freedom fighter” did not always have the grand struggle in mind, but his small village somewhere on Java, that he defended against anyone. Also on the veterans side we see the importance of voicing multivoicedness: There were also veterans who wanted to give attention to the massacre of Rawagede. Just like the Bosnia veterans who return to Srebrenica wanted to get beyond this binary setting of victims / perpetrators; they also feel betrayed, many are in physical, mental and moral pain, and suffer from the essentializing images the media cherishes. There are more parties that bear responsibility for the so-called “peace mission”; a binary setting does not help this discussion.

Then we have not yet talked about institutions. Who takes the decision to prolong lawsuits, forcing victims to wait ten years for a verdict? Who decides what does or does not fall within our jurisdiction?

What I want to show with these examples is: The concept of multivoicedness makes it possible not only to refer to the different groups and positions in a debate around recognition, but also to hear the often contradictory voices people (and institutions) voice. I think that the starting point of a new form of dialogue could be that more attention is paid to listening to one’s own multivoicedness, which then could provide an opening for hearing the multivoicedness of others.

If we can hear and understand this multivoicedness, we might be able to share the complex experiences of the colonial past more widely; because only then it shows in which way it is also our shared past.

To sum up
But how can we encourage this listening to multivoicedness on a personal and social level? And how could that lead us to develop something like “a shared language”? That’s a question and a project (‘The Dialogics of Justice’) that I will work on with a team of researchers over the next five years.

We observed already an interesting shift in language this year in the commemoration of the abolition of slavery (KetiKoti on July 1). What clearly came forward: The search for a new narrative building on a shared past (NINSEE). At a time when it was already clear that the Amsterdam mayor would apologize the next year, it was no longer about regret and reconciliation but about connectedness. In Typhoon’s words, hope lies in “Let’s talk.”

That is exactly what oral history is about; to listen to unknown stories in order to write history in a new way. The aim is to tell complex stories and therewith to complexify what we call history. This implicates that we are not only curious about the other because (s)he is different, but that we also want to see similarities, what binds us, which history we share. This means not only to grasp the vulnerability of the other, but also dare to show our own vulnerability.

In the multivoicedness of the other there is always a voice that brings the other closer by, which means multivoicedness allows and assists connectedness.

But how to hear this multivoicedness? Both the narrator as well as the listener are often trapped themselves in categories that structure public debates. A dialogue perspective I would say can help to become more aware of these frameworks limiting the multivoicedness of individuals.

What I tried to address in my lecture: Dialogue is often seen as ‘something’ between two opposing parties. I use a dialogue concept that assumes that people must first have had the dialogue with themselves (and have heard their own multivoicedness) before they can have a dialogue with someone else. So, the dialogue with the other presupposes the dialogue with yourself. My argument is that this is exactly one of the major challenges of recognition politics, which is based on unambiguous identities, while these are partially a “construction”. So my question is, is there a form of recognition conceivable, in which also the multivoicedness of individuals could be acknowledged? Dialogue that allows not just people to be heard and seen but allows to engage with their own multivoicedness might be such a form of recognition.

For this reason I hope that King Willem Alexander’s apology will be discussed not just in regard to “the violence used in Indonesia”, but also in regard to what the king called the highly needed awareness that “every generation anew” should talk about the colonial past, as it is the heritage of us all. I hope that (t)his recognition of a shared legacy will create the space for more multivoicedness, enabling new forms of dialogue, consequently news forms of recognition.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Because I have another engagement tomorrow afternoon elsewhere, I cannot attend the second day of this 22nd conference tomorrow, even online. I cannot refer to anything that might be said tomorrow during small group discussions, either. You must forgive me for my premature concluding words.
In her introduction this morning, the ever energetic chairman of the Board of our foundation, Mrs Tangena, has informed us about our overseas branch in Japan. Since 2014 she has been making a yearly trip to Japan in order to oversee meetings and lectures on issues arising from our shared history against the background of the Pacific War. We have heard from her how these activities have been going on in Tokyo and Nagasaki. She has rightly stressed the importance of face-to-face communication. Furthermore, she has made a surprising announcement about a farther extension of our activities; the next year’s conference is planned to take place in Indonesia. Whether online or otherwise, who knows? Such a project will be truly significant, contributing to the tripartite dialogue: Dutch – Japanese – Indonesian Dialogue.
Two of our speakers this morning have explored some important theoretical aspects of dialogue. Not on the basis of what they personally experienced in the former Dutch East Indies or Japan like some Dutch POWs transported to Japan. Both of them as well as one of our Indonesian speakers have conducted scientific researches, and are still conducting, on the war-time tripartite conflicts and the postwar bipartite conflicts. This has been for us a unique experience. If my memory serves me right, this is the first time that we are presented with fruits of researches conducted by professional historians.
As a professional linguist myself I have been pleased to hear of Prof. Steijlen mentioning the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Because a dialogue is, by definition, an activity conducted by means of a language, whether verbal or otherwise, we need to consider the nature of the language used by those engaged in a dialogue. Without going into details, I have found his presentation very engaging and providing important insights for effective, meaningful dialogue.
Ms Immler also has gone into the question of language, “common, shared language”. One of the foci taken up by the speaker is the issue of recognition and admittance of wrongs committed in the past. Like Prof. Steijlen, Ms Immler also highlights the importance of facing the difficulty and complexity of polyphony. Even when two or more people who are native speakers of one and the same language, say, Dutch, Japanese or Indonesian, are in a dialogue, they could be perceiving one and the same historical event in quite different ways. The speaker goes on to stress the need to learn the art of dialogue. She has also introduced an original, interesting notion of self-dialogue.
The pair of Indonesian speakers, Mr Dwicahyo and Mr Habiboe, are slightly different from the other two speakers. In his engaging address Mr Dwicahyo’s personal experiences and exchanges or dialogue with his grandfather are highlighted. We have learnt, I believe,
that a meaningful, successful dialogue against the background of past history is impossible in purely abstract, theoretical terms only. Those engaged in such a dialogue need to have an essential capacity for empathy, capacity of sharing your interlocutors’ pain and joy. A proverbial saying, “Pain shared pain halved, joy shared joy doubled” is so very true.
Mr Dwicahyo’s fellow speaker, Mr Habiboe has approached basically the same historical chain of events, the Indonesian-Dutch military conflicts after the capitulation of Japan. Ethnically indigenous Indonesian, former generations of the speaker’s family were effectively Dutch. His father, for instance, was a KNIL soldier. Being Moluccan in origin, his personal experiences and contacts with other Moluccans in the Netherlands and back home have shown him the great diversity of perspectives when it comes to the Dutch colonial history.
I believe that this morning we have learned lots of stimulating, enlightening things of great importance. Let’s keep on dialoguing. Seventy-five years ago the war did come to an end. Earlier this year a book was published in Dutch written by Griselda Molemans, entitled Levenslang oorlog, a story about Dutch sexual slaves. For these survivors the war is still on. On behalf of all participants, thousands of thanks for the organisers and the IT technician.
Our 13th conference held in Voorburg in 2009 had “Music” as its theme. One of the invited speakers was Ms van Rijkevorsel, a daughter of the late Ms Helen Kolijn, the author of a book called De Kracht van een lied. Here I have a copy of its English translation and a Japanese translation. At the close of the conference I proposed that we all stood up and sang “Captives’ hymn,” sung regularly at a women’s internment camp in Palembang in Java. Since our 14th conference it has been customary to conclude our meeting by singing this song together. It was composed and written by Margaret Dryburgh, a British missionary who was teaching at a school in Singapore. Following the fall of Singapore, she, along with other Brits, was transported to the Dutch West Indies, and she found herself in the camp I’ve just mentioned and felt a strong urge to do something to raise the morale of the female captives. Her solution was organising a chorus, a vocal orchestra. They often sang this song. Helen Kolijn was there, too. I believe een lied in the title of Kolijn’s book, the singular form, refers to this song.
Before we start singing, let me briefly share an anecdote. Last September our small Japanese church in Oegstgeest, near Leiden, met for a worship service in a room of a local Dutch church for the first time in more than six months. Because of the current government regulations we were compelled only to hum hymns. After the service I told the congregation of the story of this song. The vocal orchestra organised by Dryburgh had no proper musical instruments. They hummed segments of classical music by Beethoven, Mozart, Dvořák, and so on.
Because the English of the song is a bit archaic, you see my word-for-word Japanese translation of it next to the original English libretto shown on the screen.
T. MURAOKA

The dialogue discussions were held on the second day of the Conference, on 8 November 2020. Two groups were formed; one in the Dutch language and the other in English.

One of the issues discussed in the dialogue groups is the essence and characteristics of real “dialogue”. Dialogue can be between persons collectively as well as within an individual personally. Every person in dialogue comes with her or his own background; cultural, social and other, which have led them to form distinct perspectives. Also, the same individual can have different ideas depending on where she/he is in their own trajectories in life at the time of their participation in the dialogue. Dialogue is, therefore, an ongoing process both collectively as a group as well as individually, where rich dynamics and perspectives interplay.

Authenticity was highlighted as an essential aspect of true dialogue. If participants feel safe to express their real feelings, that space can become genuine dialogue among persons. In such a space, participants can be present while deeply connected, and on the topic of the dialogue on the same page, rather than speaking about general stories deriving from a part of history.

For the purpose of dialogue intended by the Organisation, intergenerational aspect is equally critical. Having an opportunity of being exposed to testimonies and personal stories, communicated in a written, spoken or in any other forms, can be a powerful way to form a bridge between generations. In this way, different generations can make themselves better understand the emotions experienced and spirit held by other generations than their own towards a historical event.

Approaches to the 3-year project
Working together as Dutch, Indonesian and Japanese, respecting each other’s perspectives is of utmost importance. Especially for the next step of the project, a Conference in Indonesia in 2021, the atmosphere in Indonesia, political and social, should be taken into account. Questions that need to be asked include how to involve different generations, genders and social backgrounds, as well as how to present specific terminologies, probably side-by-side without selecting only one.

How “dialogue” is understood in the Indonesian context, how a space for real dialogue can be formed to create a safe environment for persons to share their stories and emotions, are also among the priorities in the considerations. That may lead the organisers to the next step; involving Indonesian dialogue leaders once qualities of a dialogue leader in the Indonesian context is defined.

Fundamentally, the approach to the project should be that Indonesian colleagues and people are the ones who have ownership of the Conference there. The Organisation based in the Netherlands will support them and learn from them at the same time, in this process.

The Organisation may consider taking a wholly new approach to reach out to young generations, including through social media, through pop culture and communication outside the school environment. Involving young people can also take the form of an internship at the Organisation and through the translation services required for the Conference and dialogues in Indonesia. That could, in turn, work as a trigger of awareness of the issues, that also stimulate discussions among them.

The Organisation could consider utilising the outputs of the two-day Conference as a means to start discussions among youth and those who have not yet found any personal interest in conference topics and the Organisation’s objectives. This approach may help the Organisation reach out to different corners of society, and, open a new door.