Volume 37, Number 12 · July 19, 1990
Workers & Warriors
By Ian Buruma
The Fugitive
by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, translated by Willem Samuels
Morrow, 171 pp., $16.95
The Great World
by David Malouf
Chatto and Windus, 330 pp., £12.95
In March, 1940, a group of thirteen-year-old Javanese boys emerged from the playground of their school in Jogjakarta. They were rounded up by Japanese soldiers, sealed in a cargo train without anything to eat or drink, and taken to Batavia, where they were added to eight thousand other Indonesians. They were then put on two ships bound for Singapore. One was sunk by a torpedo, four thousand drowned. The rest got off in Sumatra, where they were put to work on a railway line. But first the Japanese guards gave them a little demonstration. Eight boys were ordered to lift up a track. When this proved impossible, the Japanese decreased their number, until there were only four. When they, too, failed to lift the track, they were lined up and beheaded. 'This,' said the Japanese commander, 'is what happens to lazy workers.'
Review, 3739 words
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