The Light of Asia

 

The day the Japanese came to Aceh was the kind of day that fools you. One of those bright, clear March mornings when the sun glints off the water like it’s winking at some private joke. The kind of day when folks smile at strangers and think maybe—just maybe—things are finally going to be all right.

They weren’t. Not by a long shot.

Old Hassan Murtala remembered it years later, sitting on his porch with a glass of too-sweet tea, his rheumy eyes staring not at the dusty street before him but at ghosts from 1942.

“We were just foolish children,” he’d tell anyone who’d listen, which by the ‘80s wasn’t many. “Thought the Japanese were gonna save us from the Dutch. Light of Asia, they called themselves.” He’d always laugh then, a dry, rattling sound like dead leaves skittering across a cemetery. “Light of Asia. Astaghfirullah.”

On March 12, 1942, Japanese warships appeared on the horizon like metal islands birthed from the sea. They anchored at three points—Krueng Raya, Sabang, and Peureulak—strategic locations that even a child could see would strangle Aceh if necessary.

The people flooded the beaches, waving and cheering like teenagers at a rock concert. Tears flowed. After decades under the boot of Dutch colonialism, they believed salvation had arrived in crisp white uniforms.

For Tengku Abdul Jalil, watching from the hills above Cot Plieng, something felt wrong from the very beginning.

“They smile too much,” he told his oldest student, Rahmat. “Men with guns who smile too much are never bringing freedom.”

Rahmat, young and filled with the special arrogance of youth, just laughed. “Teacher, you’ve been fighting too long. Not everyone is an enemy.”

Abdul Jalil considered the boy’s words. He’d been teaching at the dayah—the Islamic school—for fifteen years. Long enough to see hope rise and fall like tides, to see promises made and broken with the casual indifference of stepping on ants.

“Perhaps,” he conceded, but the pit in his stomach didn’t ease.

It took less than a month for that feeling to spread throughout Aceh like a cancer.

---

The trouble started with the seikerei.

If you asked the Japanese officers—which no one dared to do after the first few beatings—they’d tell you it was a simple sign of respect. Just a bow toward the east, toward the sun where the divine Emperor Hirohito, the living incarnation of Amaterasu, made his earthly home.

But for Muslims, there is only one direction to bow: toward Mecca. One God to worship: Allah.

Abdul Jalil sat cross-legged on the floor of his modest home, listening to reports from his students. Each day brought new stories. A merchant beaten in the marketplace for refusing to bow. A twelve-year-old boy with his ear partially severed. An old woman forced to kneel in the sun until her skin blistered and cracked.

“This cannot stand,” he whispered, more to himself than to the young men gathered around him. His hands—veined and strong from years of labor—clenched into fists.

Outside, the call to prayer rang out, but something was wrong. The muezzin’s voice cracked mid-call, followed by a shout and then silence. Through the open window came the sound of boots on dirt.

They all knew what that meant.

The Kempetai—Japanese military police—had arrived.

---

The PUSA leaders were a goddamn disappointment. That’s what burned Abdul Jalil most of all.

The Persatuan Ulama Seluruh Aceh—the Union of All Aceh Scholars—had been founded to resist the Dutch. Men like Tengku Abdurrahman Meunasah Meucap and Tengku Muhammad Daud Beureueh had been heroes to the people, standing against colonial oppression.

Now they sat in Japanese offices, drinking Japanese tea, nodding at Japanese suggestions.

“They’ve made a deal with the devil,” Abdul Jalil told his followers one night in July 1942, his voice barely above a whisper but carrying the weight of thunder. The room was lit only by oil lamps, casting long shadows across weather-beaten faces. “They drove out the dog to let in the pig.”

“What can we do, Teacher?” asked Imran, his face still boyish despite the scraggly beard he’d been trying to grow. “The Japanese have guns, planes, ships.”

Abdul Jalil smiled. Not the warm smile of a teacher, but the cold, determined smile of a man who has seen his path laid out before him, no matter how terrible.

“We have something stronger than guns,” he said. “We have faith.”

That night, in the stifling heat of pre-Ramadan, Abdul Jalil gave the sermon that would seal his fate. Standing before the people of Kampung Krueng Lingka, sweat pouring down his face, his voice rising with each word, he called the Japanese “Majusi Infidels”—worse than the “People of the Book Infidels” who had come before.

“Taleetase, tapeutamongboui!” he cried, his voice breaking with emotion. “We drive out the dog, but let in the pig!”

In the crowd, an informant slipped away into the darkness.

---

The Kempetai came for him, of course. They always did.

First, they sent negotiators—respected elders and even Abdul Jalil’s own teacher, Tengku H. Hasan Krueng-Kale, a man he had once revered above all others.

“They will kill you, Abdul,” the old man pleaded, his eyes red-rimmed with unshed tears. “You and all who follow you.”

Abdul Jalil studied his teacher’s face—the deep lines around his eyes, the white beard, the trembling hands—and saw something he’d never seen there before: fear.

“Then we will die as Muslims,” he replied simply. “Not as idolaters.”

The old man left, shoulders slumped in defeat.

The dayah became a fortress. Abdul Jalil, pragmatic despite his faith, knew prayers alone wouldn’t stop bullets. He organized his students into fighting units, distributed what few weapons they had, and prepared for the inevitable.

On November 7, 1942, it came.

---

The Kempetai officer named Hayashi probably thought it would be easy. Just another routine intimidation of locals. Show up with a few men, rough up the troublemaker, maybe shoot someone as an example. Be home for dinner.

Hayashi never made it to dinner.

The Japanese approached the dayah at mid-morning, the sun already brutal in a cloudless sky. Six men in pressed uniforms, rifles slung casually over shoulders, walking as if they owned not just the road but the very air they breathed.

They didn’t notice the sentries until it was too late.

Abdul Jalil’s men had hidden themselves well, using the knowledge of their homeland that no invader could ever possess. They knew which bushes could conceal a man, which trees offered the best vantage points, which patches of ground would remain silent underfoot.

When the first spear took Hayashi in the gut, the look of surprise on his face might have been comical under different circumstances. The polished officer who had overseen the beatings of old men and women, who had forced children to bow to a foreign god, stared down at the wooden shaft protruding from his abdomen as if it were a strange insect that had landed there.

His men reacted with the trained efficiency of professional soldiers, firing into the brush, but their targets had already vanished. Dragging their wounded commander, they retreated to Lhokseumawe.

The real battle would come later.

---

By noon, the Japanese returned in force.

The convoy of trucks could be heard long before they arrived, engines straining against the rough roads. Inside the dayah, Abdul Jalil gathered his people—not just his students now, but their families too. Women cradling infants. Children with wide, frightened eyes. The elderly, some too frail to stand without assistance.

“Those who wish to leave may do so now,” he announced. “There is no shame in seeking safety.”

No one moved.

Abdul Jalil nodded once, his face grim but proud. “Then we fight together. And should we die, we die facing east not in worship of their false god, but toward Mecca in submission to Allah.”

The first shots came minutes later. The crack of rifle fire, the staccato rhythm of machine guns. The Japanese, furious at the humiliation of the morning, showed no restraint.

Abdul Jalil’s fighters responded with a desperate courage born of faith and the knowledge that surrender meant not just death, but the death of everything they believed in.

The battle raged through the afternoon. The mosque caught fire first, its wooden structure engulfed in minutes. Then the houses. Acrid smoke billowed into the sky, visible for miles—a signal to all of Aceh that resistance had begun.

By nightfall, 86 people lay dead—Japanese soldiers and Acehnese alike. The survivors, led by Abdul Jalil, slipped away in the darkness, heading for the village of Neuheun.

For three days, they fought a running battle across the countryside. Each day, their numbers dwindled. Each day, Abdul Jalil led prayers for the fallen and reminded the living why they fought.

On November 10, 1942, in Meunasah Blang Buduh Gampuong Tengah, they made their final stand.

The Japanese, frustrated by the guerrilla tactics that had cost them so many men, brought artillery. They waited until after Friday prayers, knowing the remaining fighters would be gathered in the mosque.

The shells fell like iron rain.

Abdul Jalil was still kneeling in prayer when the roof collapsed.

---

The Japanese, in their arrogance and fury, took Abdul Jalil’s head. They paraded it through villages as a warning, expecting fear.

Instead, they harvested hatred.

What they never understood—what colonial powers throughout history have failed to grasp—is that martyrs are more dangerous dead than alive. In death, Abdul Jalil became more than a man. He became an idea. And ideas, unlike men, cannot be killed by shells or bullets or beheadings.

The resistance spread. In Jangka Buyadi, in Pandrah, in Bireuen, new leaders emerged. New battles were fought.

The Japanese, like the Dutch before them, would eventually leave. But the spirit of resistance that Abdul Jalil kindled would remain, burning in the hearts of Aceh’s people long after his name faded from common memory.

---

Hassan Murtala, in his final years, would end his story the same way each time, his voice dropping to a whisper that forced listeners to lean in close.

“The real horror wasn’t the battles or the beheadings or even watching our homes burn. It was realizing that freedom is never given—it must be taken, and the price is always blood. Always blood.”

Then he’d fall silent, eyes fixed on the horizon, seeing not the peaceful present but the ghosts of Cot Plieng, still fighting their endless battle against forces that promised light but delivered only darkness.