Shigetada Nishijima (西嶋重忠) (4 June 1911 – 9 December 2006) was a Japanese scholar, former spy and lobbyist. He was active inIndonesia before, during and after theJapanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, and became a major figure on the Japanese side of theIndonesian National Revolution. Between the 1950s and the 1960s, he was a lobbyist and an intermediary, linking Japanese and Indonesian interests. Later on, he became a scholar of and published memoirs of his time in Indonesia.
Nishijima was born on 4 June 1911. According to him, he was expelled from his high school due to hissocialist leanings, and he worked at an ice factory until 1937 when he moved to theDutch East Indies.[1] Moreover, in an interview Nishijima remarked that his political leanings resulted in him being arrested three times in the 1930s, with two years' imprisonment after his third arrest.[2] He had also studiedGerman inTokyo.[3]
After being recruited by the Japanese Naval Intelligence to study Japanese influence in theSouth Seas, he arrived in the Dutch East Indies in July 1937.[3] Between 1937 and 1941, Nishijima lived inJakarta andBandung, where he worked at a Japanese trading company's chain of department stores. By 1941, he was hired by Rear AdmiralTadashi Maeda as a naval spy.[1] During his time working in the Indies, he established contacts and connections with Indonesian nationalists. When thePacific War broke, Nishijima was arrested on December 8, 1941, and along with some 1,700 Japanese nationals, was detained by Dutch authorities and interned inLoveday, South Australia.[3]
After theJapanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies, Nishijima was repatriated in 1942 (alongside 834 other internees in a prisoner exchange) and was sent toJava. Dutch security forces failed to identify Nishijima as a naval spy, as he was listed as a businessman in the Dutch intelligence documents.[4]
Nishijima then worked with the Japanese Navy Liaison Office in Jakarta, where he reestablished his contacts with Indonesian nationalists such asAchmad Soebardjo, who had worked with the office inNew Guinea relating to maps and topics.[5] FollowingKuniaki Koiso's promise of Indonesian independence in 1944, Maeda sponsored the schoolAsrama Indonesia Merdeka (a school intended to train future Indonesian leaders), with Nishijima and his fellow Japanese agentTomegorō Yoshizumi acting as Maeda's assistants.[6]
After thesurrender of Japan, Nishijima was sent to locateSukarno andMohammad Hatta (who were missing from Jakarta, as they were kidnapped by nationalist youths and held inRengasdengklok). He managed to convinceWikana to return both leaders to Jakarta.[7] He was then assigned to help Indonesian nationalistsSukarni andSayuti Melik ensure the more radicalpemuda did not cause issues during the negotiations between the nationalist leaders and the Japanese occupation force, primarily to stop interference from Japanese guards.[8]
He then participated in a meeting at Maeda's house when the Indonesian Proclamation of Independence was drafted, and with his help copies of the text were printed by the Naval Office' press.[9] He was arrested as a war criminal by December 1946, but was released and returned to Japan.[5][10]
After a rejection of his visa in 1951 due to "official sensitivity",[11] Nishijima returned to Indonesia in March 1953 in order to meetSukarno to discuss war reparations. Discovering Japan's poor image in Indonesian media, he mediated forAiichirō Fujiyama to sponsor and invite Indonesian journalists to visit Tokyo – which includedRosihan Anwar,Mochtar Lubis andAdam Malik. Nishijima built relations with Adam Malik in particular, and in a 2005 interview formerCIA agent Clyde McAvoy noted that Nishijima was a vital intermediary between him and Malik (which involved funding anti-communist groups following the30 September Movement).[12]
In 1958, Nishijima metPertamina chiefIbnu Sutowo, and through negotiations helped establish relations between the oil company and the Japanese "Kobayashi Group" (coordinated by industrialistAtaru Kobayashi [ja]), which eventually culminated in the formation of Nosodeco to exploit oilfields inNorth Sumatra.[13] Nishijima, alongside Maeda, were also involved in negotiating oil contracts inWest Papua following the conclusion of theWest New Guinea dispute.[5]
Nishijima later became a leader and pioneer at the Indonesian Study Group ofWaseda University, which published works related to the Japanese military administration of Indonesia.[14] Though the research topic was largely neglected during the 1960s and early 1970s, Japanese scholars who were part of the research group was given more attention by the late 1970s and 1980s.[15] TheIndonesia ni okeru Nippon Gunsei no Kenkyu (Study of Japanese Military Administration in Indonesia) was published in 1959, and his works and memoirs was donated to Waseda in 1971, compiled, and published in 1973 as "The Nishijima Collection".[16] He gave an interview for theKompas newspaper in October 2000, as likely the last living witness of the formulation of the proclamation text.[17] He died at the age of 95, on 9 December 2006.[18]
Australian historian Greg Poulgrain remarked that "whoever in Washington authorized the return of Nishijima and his compatriots [to Indonesia] should also be seen as having contributed to Indonesian independence".[19] Nishijima was received with a hero's treatment during his visit to Jakarta in 1991.[3] During a 1958 visit bySukarno to Japan, he gave Nishijima a letter meant to be a tribute to other Japanese agentsIchiki Tatsuo andTomegorō Yoshizumi, both of whom died during theIndonesian National Revolution.[20]
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