10 NOVEMBER
BRITISH CRUSH OPPOSITION TO DUTCH COLONIAL RULE IN SURABAYA, KILLING HUNDREDS, INCLUDING MANY CIVILIANS.
10 November 1945 – British army launched a military assault on the Indonesian city of Surabaya where nationalist opposition groups refused to submit to Dutch colonial rule. Many hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed, including many civilians, as British and Indian soldiers, backed up by a murderous air, navy and artillery bombardment, advanced through the city’s streets. The British author David Wehl noted that
“the streets had to be occupied one by one, doorway by doorway. Bodies of men, horses, cats and dogs, lay in the gutter, broken glass, furniture, tangled telephone lines, cluttered the roads, and the noise of battle echoed among the empty office buildings.”
FOOTNOTES
- D Wehl (1948), “The Birth of Indonesia,” London, p66.