Among the foreign residents at least, the Only real cause for concern in Bali in the 1930s was the prospect of war in the Pacific, threat which suddenly became a reality in December 1941. Japanese troops then began ‘heir march down the Malay Peninsula to capture Singapore, the key to the whole re-
64
gion, including the dangerously exposed, weakly defended Indonesian archipelago.
The Japanese invasion forces made Bali an early target of their campaign in the Indies, sending in a small expeditionary force several weeks after they seized the Moluccas and several weeks before they invaded Java. On the morning of Feb. 19. 1942. the Japanese landed about 500 troops on Sanur Beach, the traditional point of debarkation of military expeditions, and marched un¬opposed into Denpasar. In the next few days, they assumed control of the entire is¬land and installed administrative offices in Denpasar and Singaraja.
The Japanese did not perpetrate atrocities in Bali comparable to those common in other areas, but they almost immediately acquired the reputation of being arrogant and obtuse. The one word which they im¬mediately taught the general population was bakkaro. It meant. "You stupid beast!" and was usually accompanied by a kick or blow. The Kempeitai military police force of Japan was soon activated and began making arrests, especially among persons closely associated with the Dutch civil or military establishment. But even Kempeitai tactics in Bali were almost singularly gentle.
One positive development of the occupation was the emergence of military and para¬military resistance movements opposed to the Dutch presence as well as the Japanese. One of the prominent leaders was a young military officer named Gusti Ngurai Rai . the son of a warrior caste family of Badung. He proved to be a charismatic hero and martyr for whom the occasion called — a military leader who relied not upon tactics and logistics but rather upon intuition and indeed at times upon mystical guidance. His slogan was "merdeka atan mali". "freedom or death", and he put it to the ultimate test.
Ngurah Rai created the Tentara Keama-nan Rakyat. or TKR. the People’s Security Force. hi time, he merged it with most of the other paramilitary movements and comman¬ded what was regarded as a Balinese people’s army.
Meanwhile, major events occurred in the outside world thai would have groat impact on Bali. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. The Japanese High Command capitulated. On Aug. 17. 1945. Sukarno and Mohammed Hatta declared Indonesia’s

The Dutch artist Walter Spies in Bali in the 1930s, above. The Dutch controleur arrives at his residence in Denpasar in a 1930s photo¬graph, at right.
national independence. The Balinese persuaded the Japanese to withdraw into self-imposed seclusion on Oct. S. 1945. and the new Balinese officials occupied the provincial offices and residences.
The Dutch eventually drove out the Japanese once and for all. But they also arrested Balinese officials and attempted to reestablish a Dutch civil administration on the pattern of pre-war days. Ngurah Rai and his companions saw to it that Ihey did not.
Ngurah Rai devised the grand strategy of the "Long March to Gunung Agung." He rallied all available men in west and south Bali to concentrate them in east Bali with
The Long March
safe sanctuary on the slopes of the sacred mountain, hoping to lure Dutch forces into areas vunerable to guerrilla attacks. The strategy proved bothlieroic and tragic
The Dutch forces surrounded the encampment of Ngurah Rai and his men. Initially, they escaped annihilation only by climbing up and over the volcanic peak and across formidable mountain terrain to Tabanan. But in Tabanan on Nov. 16. 1946. the Dutch again surrounded them. Called upon to sur¬render and negotiate. Ngurah Rai asked his men to join him in a suicide attack upon the heavily armed Dutch. It proved to be yet another pupuiun. Ngurah Rai and 95 of his men were killed. The site of the "Margarana Incident" as it is known, is now a national heroes’ cemetery.
With Ngurah’s defeat, Balinese military resistance had been effectively broken. But in the ensuing years, continued attacks against the Dutch in neighboring Java finally led The Hague to concede Indonesian independence in 1949. Bali became part of the Republic of the United States of Indonesia on Dec. 29 1949 and later a state in the Republic of Indonesia that was declared in 1956.
A Decade of Disaster
nationhood. In Bali, the transition proved particularly difficult in part by reason of his¬toric Balinese-Javanese antagonisms. Even though Sukarno was part Balinese. he ruled the vast new nation from Jakarta, the long¬time capital city of Java under its Dutch name of Batavia.
Sukarno alwavs claimed empathy with the Balinese soul. lie elected for himself the age-old role of raja, as patron of island dra¬ma. But he did not at the same time discharge the raja’s responsibilities lor enhanc¬ing the spiritual and material welfare of his people. He left Bali a collection of monu¬ments. Most, like the Tampaks.rmg pal.iee and the Bali Beach Hotel, symbolize ill-chosen priorities if not ill-adv.sed ob,ect.ves.But on a more beneficial note. Sukarno established Udayana University.
By the early 1960s, there prevailed throughout Bali the premonition that some awful disaster impended. It was feared that the supernatural powers were being pro¬voked to some trulv dreadful visitation and retribution. Human beings would somehow be compelled bv acts of nature or the gods to revert to the standards and the values ol the past and to impose order upon the present.
The first unmistakable signal that the di¬vine powers were seriously displeased came in 1962 when a plague of rats infested the fields and the granaries. Rats by the mil¬lions, huge insatiable rats such as had never been seen before, feasted upon the grain ripening in the fields and then upon grain
that had been harvested and stored. The government was unable to cope with the emergency. Eventually the farmers and their families engaged in an all-out war of extermination which put an end to the affliction. They then piled up token mounds of corpses and gave them symbolic cremations in order to atone for taking even rodent lives. But the conviction persisted that the gods were dis¬pleased. The conclusive evidence came in 1963 with the first great eruption in modern times of the sacred Mt. Agung.
To make the disaster even worse, the eruption occurred as the Balinese were making preparations for the Eka Dasa Rudra. the most sacred of all island religious ruuals which normally occurs only once every 100
Balinese 210-day years. The Eka Dasa Rud-ra is held in what is regarded as the most ancient and hallowed of the island’s shrines, the magnificent Besakih temple complex on the slope of Mt. Agung. The mountain still evokes the prehistoric animistic worship of the spirits of the great volcano which dominates the island and signals the attitude of the gods toward the people by its serene or violent aspect.
As preparations were nearing completion on Feb. 18. 1963. Mt. Agung began to spit smoke and ash and occasional earth tremors could be felt. Despite the ill omens and inauspicious signs that the time was not right for the ceremony, the Eka Dasa Rudra began on March 8. Four days later, the volcano began to throw out mud and rock, and by
March 17 great rivers of molten lava were pouring down the mountainside. Flames leaped higher into the sky and smoke and volcanic ash blotted out the sun. The Besakih temple complex miraculously escaped major damage, but the Eka Dasa Rudra was prematurely ended. Entfre villages were wiped out. Thousands died during the eruption and the ensuing famine and disease. Relief efforts continued well into the following year.

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