British forces burn a village during the Indonesian National Revolution | After the murder of five RAF aircrew and twenty Indian soldiers by Indonesian nationalists, the village of Bekassi (Bekasi) in Java, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), is burned in reprisal, December 1945, after the population was removed. Days after Japan’s surrender, Indonesian nationalists declared independence from the Netherlands. In September, British troops arrived in Java to take the surrender of Japanese forces and to

On August 17, 1945, political leaders Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declared the independence of Indonesia. But this proclamation was only the beginning of a four-year armed conflict and the diplomatic struggle for Indonesian independence. For centuries, Indonesia had been colonized by the Dutch Empire. The Indonesian independence movement had begun at the turn of the 20th century in May 1908, which marked the beginning of many Indonesian nationalism movements. When Sukarno and Hatta first proclaim