Joanna Jolly, Dili – The first contingent of 24 Japanese military engineers arrived Monday to join a U.N. peacekeeping force amid protests over Japan's brutal occupation of East Timor in World War II.
Among the dozens of protesters were now elderly women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army as so-called "comfort women" six decades ago. The battalion, which will eventually number 680 engineers, will be the biggest overseas deployment of Japanese ground troops since the war.
Dozens of demonstrators rallied near Dili airport with placards reading "Go Home Japanese Self-Defense Force," and "Japanese troops are same as Indonesian military." Timorese and U.N. policemen kept the peaceful protesters away from the airport terminal as the Japanese were driven away through a side gate.
"We just want compensation," said Elena Guterres, who was incarcerated from 1943 to 1945 in an army barracks in Dili and forced into prostitution.
The Japanese unit will replace Pakistani and Bangladeshi personnel scheduled to depart in June. It will remain in East Timor for at least one year. "We would just like to do our best," Col. Shoichi Ogawa told reporters. "We will dedicate ourselves to contributing to the development of (East Timor)."
The Japanese troops will be based in the southwestern town of Suai, and will operate along the border with Indonesian-held West Timor and in the isolated enclave of Oecussi.
U.N. officials said the new arrivals will mainly rebuild roads and bridges and work on flood-prevention projects. Japan has stepped up its role in U.N.-led missions since its Parliament approved a 1992 law expanding the role of its military to include international peacekeeping. Japan's post-war pacifist constitution bans its from troops foreign combat zones. Japan is one of East Timor's largest aid donors.
During World War II, more than 50,000 East Timorese civilians perished after they sided with Australian and Dutch commandos who fought a guerrilla campaign against Japanese invaders. The Japanese set up a murderous auxiliary unit, the Black Column – comprising mainly of Indonesian collaborators – which terrorized the East Timorese.
The death toll in the tiny Portuguese colony was estimated at 12 percent of the prewar population – one of the war's highest loss rates. After the collapse of Portuguese colonialism in 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor and ruled it with an iron fist until 1999 when voters opted overwhelmingly for independence in a U.N.-sponsored referendum.
Pro-Jakarta militias set up by the Indonesian army killed hundreds of civilians and laid waste to the half-island territory before international peacekeepers arrived to restore order in September, 1999. The U.N. force is due to remain in Timor until 2004.