After Japan surrendered due to atomic bombings by Allied forces in August, 1945 Japan was no longer in charge of Indonesia and other regions in Asia. Allied forces then came to disarm the remaining Japanese soldiers and put them under arrest as prisoners of war.
The photo above shows Japanese prisoners of war employed as porter by Dutch military, unloaded cargo from an airplane in Jakarta, December 11, 1946. The location was probably in Kemayoran airport or Cililitan airport. The cargo was Christmas letters for Dutch military personnels from their families in Netherlands. Although war has long ended, but there was still many prisoners of war left.
Besides disarmed Japanese soldiers, Allied forces also intended to put old orders back in power. They wanted to install Dutch colonial administration in Indonesia like pre-war era. However, people of Asia (and also Africa) were already fed up with Europeans colonialism and wanted to be free. Wave of nationalism were strong after the war, and there was no way for the colonialists to keep their power over their colonies.
Dutch military finally left Indonesia by the end of 1949, and Indonesia initiated Bandung Conference in 1955, also known as the first Asian-African Conference (AAC). AAC played an important role in the world after war, where the globe was divided into two blocks: Western and Eastern. The newly-independence countries in Asia and Africa decided to not sided with the US nor the USSR, but formed their own block. They refused to participate in war of superpowers.
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