Crime scene: The Muller Mountains region in Japanese times. (Brief Communications).

This brief communication was prompted by the notes of Beatrice Clayre and William Batty-Smith in the Borneo Research Bulletin (Volume 30, 1999, respectively pp. 140-142 and 142-146), both referring to Bob Reece's recent book, Masa Jepun (1998). The account of World War II events that it tenders is based on personal recollections which I recorded in the mid-1970s and early 1980s among the Aoheng of the upper Mahakam and the Hovongan of the upper Kapuas.

Among many places in Borneo that were the scenes of atrocities during World War II, one is the Muller Mountains, forming the watershed between the Mahakam and the Kapuas, between East and West Kalimatan.

The Muller Mountains are famous, first and foremost, for the murder of Georg Muller in 1825. An officer in the civil service of the Dutch Indies, Muller went up the Mahakam with a small military escort and disappeared into the interior. The exact circumstances of his death were hotly debated throughout the nineteenth century and were still examined by visitors to the region in the mid-twentieth century (see Sellato 1986). Although the region remained until 1894 a complete terra incognita where no first-hand information could be procured, it would appear that Muller did cross over into the Kapuas basin and was killed, by order of the Sultan of Kutai, on the Bungan River around mid-November 1825. As the murder had occurred in the Kapuas drainage, the sultan could, of course, not bear the blame.

When A.W. Nieuwenhuis reached, during his first expedition (1894), the Kapuas and Mahakam watershed, he gave the mountain range the name of Muller Mountains. The tribes of the upper Mahakam were quite hostile to his entering the area and, in the following years, one Aoheng chieftain repeatedly tried to have him murdered--very likely, again, by order of the sultan of Kutai. Thanks to the protection of the influential Kayan chief, Kwing Irang, Nieuwenhuis remained unaware of those attempts on his life, which were reported by Lumholtz, visiting in 1916.

During the Japanese occupation of Borneo, the Muller Mountains, once again, witnessed massacres. When the Japanese landed on Borneo's coasts, scores of Europeans fled to the interior, trusting that they would be safe there. Some took refuge on the upper Mahakam (the current Long Pahangai and Long Apari districts) upstream from the big rapids. For a while, indeed, they were safe. But a Japanese expeditionary force eventually reached the upper Mahakam region and rounded up all the Europeans they could find, civil as well as military, in very much the same way that they did at Long Nawang, in Apo Kayan, and probably at about the same time.

The fugitives were killed at Long Isun, an Uma Suling village on the Meraseh River, probably some time in 1943. The fact that they were first made to dig their own mass grave, and were then executed with the sword (locally called samuray), left a lasting impression on the local population. Although I have no clue from interviews with local informants on how Europeans perished at Long Isun, or about who they were, it appears that some Catholic priests were spared and later deported to Surabaya, where they spent the rest of the war in a prisoners' camp.

Two Dutchmen, instead of surrendering, ran away father upstream, hoping to escape by walking over to the Kapuas. They took refuge at Noha Boan among the Aoheng of the Huvung sub-group, whose chief, Nalang, received and hid them at his farm on the Tohop River. That they were conversant in Malay may have helped. That they had guns and were eager to go hunt wild pig also certainly endeared then to the Aoheng. Nicknamed Ja'ang and Tekuan, they lived there for over one year, in hiding, wearing the loincloth and helping in the fields for their keep.

On the Kapuas side, eight runaways--six Dutch, including a woman, and a Javanese physician (known as Dokter Jawa) and his Iban wife--fled from Putussibau to the interior, towards the Mahakam. The Japanese of the garrison in Putussibau issued orders to the Hovongan (or Punan Bungan) of the upper Kapuas to catch and kill them. Somewhere on the watershed, the fugitives met with a party of Aoheng Huvung headed for the Kapuas. The Aoheng took them to their village and, disregarding the orders passed on to him by the Hovongan, Nalang refused to surrender them. Meanwhile, on the Mahakam side, the Japanese were already at Long Pahangai.

For safety, the Aoheng hid the fugitives in the forest right on the watershed, precisely on the Bungan Leya River--only a short distance from the site of Muller's death. Somehow, the Hovongan found them and, after a period of indecision, beheaded the men. The two women were spared and brought, together with the heads of their companions, down to Putussibau, where the Hovongan chieftains (Tapa, Javung, and Umang) got a reward from the Japanese. Later, under the NICA administration, Umang and two other Hovongan men spent five years in prison at Sintang. Still later, Umang was awarded a medal as a local Independence hero (pahiawan kern erdekaan) by the Indonesian government, and eventually was appointed kepala adat of the Hovongan.

Ja'ang and Tekuan were luckier than their fellow Dutchmen. When they were invited to join eight fugitives from Kapuas, they declined. And, although the chief of the Aoheng sub-group of Long Apari wanted them killed, Nalang held firm. At some point, however, the Japanese got a tip-off, sailed up to the village of Batu Ura, and forcibly made Nalang surrender the two Dutchmen. A Japanese force, under one Kajima, even walked across from the Huvung River to the Kapuas.

The two Dutchmen were taken downriver by the Japanese. By the time their boat reached Melak, on the middle Mahakam, Japan had capitulated. After the war, Nalang received a medal (referred to as bintang kebaikan) on the occasion of Queen Jualiana's coronation. According to local oral sources, one of the Dutchmen later returned to the upper Mahakam to thank the people who had saved him. One source stated that one of them wrote a book about their adventure.

All this, as stated above, is only oral tradition. I have not attempted so far to locate the Ducth archives that could shed some light on the events reported here, but I certainly would be most grateful to readers who would like to share information on this period.

The people of the upper Mahakam remember the Japanese occupation as a period of brutality, and of backslide in terms of welfare from the earlier, Dutch colonial situation. As they report it, during the remaining years of the war, they had to eat cassava, as rice was commandeered by the Japanese; and for several more years afterward, they had to make bark cloth, as trade cloth was unavailable, and to boil the water of salt springs to procure salt. In the 1980s, old people were still recalling the Dutch days as times of plenty (trade wise), even compared to the post-Independence and the New Order periods.

Note: Scattered data relevant to the events referred to above can be found in my dissertation ("Les nomads forestiers de Borneo et sedentarisation: essai d'histoire economique et sociale, "Paris, EHESS, 1986, 570 p.); in a general-public paper ("Vous avez dit explorateurs?, " in Borneo. Des chasseurs de tetes aux ecologists, A. Guerreiro & P. Couderc, eds., Paris: Autrement, Hors-Serie No. 52, 1991, pp. 31-40); and in a paper in this Bulletin (" A.W. Nieuwenhuis across Borneo, 1894-1994", 14-31, 1993).