When The Americans Volunteered in Indonesia

HER NAME is Melanie Aleman. She is a 26-year-old from New Orleans, the United States. In Bondowoso, East Java, Indonesia, she spends her time teaching English in an Islamic school or madrasa. In her leisure time, she teaches yoga or does other activities that can enrich her students’ skills and creativity.

“I gained many valuable experiences in Indonesia. People here are warm and very welcoming,” said Melanie to Historia. “Becoming a Peace Corps volunteer is a challenging experience because I am assigned to a community whose culture and language I’m not familiar with, and also the fact that I’m not a Muslim. But it’s all good. I feel at home here.”

At the time this article was written, Melanie had been on duty for two years in Indonesia as a volunteer of the Peace Corps, an American independent institution for third world countries that focuses on community development. Aside from Melanie, there were many American youths that joined the program.

Peace Corps Indonesia is back active again after its termination around four decades ago due to the worsening political situation in Indonesia.

The Establishment of Peace Corps

Spurred by the assistance program initiated by the Soviet Union in several poor and developing countries, Senator John F. Kennedy was eager to create a similar program for his home country. In his speech at the University of Michigan on 14 October 1960, Kennedy challenged the students to contribute in helping millions of impoverished people around the world.

“How many of you, who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world?” said Kennedy, as published by the website John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, jfklibrary.org.

The young students supported Kennedy’s ideas. In a short time, around 25,000 letters of support came from the whole country.

The Peace Corps was one of Kennedy’s priority programs in his presidential campaign. After he was elected, Kennedy sent a letter to the Congress asking for support for his ideas. There were many Congress members, however, who doubted the effectiveness of the proposed program, mainly due to the huge amount of funds it required.

I gained many valuable experiences in Indonesia. People here are warm and very welcoming.

On 1 March 1961, Kennedy signed the Executive Order 10924 about the establishment of the Peace Corps as a trial program. Kennedy subsequently assigned Robert Sargent Shriver to direct the Peace Corps.

The first batch of Peace Corps volunteers was sent in August 1961 to Ghana, Chile, Philippines, Colombia, St. Lucia, and Tanzania. A month afterwards, the Congress finally approved the Peace Corps as the official program of the US government. The enthusiasm of the American youths peaked. At the end of 1963, up to 7,000 volunteers served in 44 countries including Indonesia.

“To Kennedy, the Peace Corps approach eventually offered a certain moral focus to American policy and, by late 1962, he wanted Indonesia to have Southeast Asia’s largest contingent of volunteers,” wrote Timothy P. Maga, lecturer of Asian history at the University of Maryland, in “The New Frontier vs. Guided Democracy: JFK, Sukarno, and Indonesia, 1961-1963”, published in Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol. 2 No. 1 of 1990.

The Door for the Peace Corps

According to Timothy, in early 1961 Kennedy wasn’t quite sure about running the Peace Corps program in Indonesia since he hadn’t found the right approach to establish a link with President Sukarno. Kennedy was even considering the solution suggested by Secretary of State Dean Rusk about the formation of the New Pacific Community, an international organization for the Southeast Asian, American, and Pacific countries.

However, Kennedy’s government also had another stumbling block, which was the case of Allen Lawrence Pope, a mercenary tasked by the CIA to help the PRRI/Permesta rebellion in West Java but was captured in 1960 by the Indonesian military. Sukarno offered Pope’s release in exchange of the support from the US regarding West Irian. Kennedy then sent his brother, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, to Indonesia with the objective to free Allen Pope and persuade Sukarno and Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Luns to solve the West Irian dispute at the conference table.

“Sukarno has several times said to the United States Ambassador in Jakarta that he wants the Peace Corps in Indonesia. He wants ‘hundreds’; but he often says that he doesn’t want to enter into an agreement before the Netherlands New Guinea problem is solved. If you can encourage Sukarno up to the point where he really agrees on the exchange of diplomatic notes about the Peace Corps now, rather than keep postponing, it would be really helpful,” Robert Sargent Shriver said through his letter to Robert Kennedy dated 29 January 1962.

Sukarno has several times said to the United States Ambassador in Jakarta that he wants the Peace Corps in Indonesia.

On 1 October 1962, through the New York Agreement, the United Nations took over West Irian for seven months before transferring the sovereignty to Indonesia on 1 May 1963. The door for the Peace Corps was wide-open.

In October 1962, when Shriver was in Singapore, Sukarno requested a meeting with him. They met at the Bogor Palace to discuss the formation of the Peace Corps in Indonesia. The talk was successful and Shriver decided to stay for eight days in Indonesia to examine areas where the Peace Corps volunteers would work. A month later, Kennedy sent a letter to Sukarno thanking him for his enthusiasm about the Peace Corps program.

In January 1963, Shriver asked David S. Burgess to direct the Peace Corps Indonesia. The recruitment process began, and 18 volunteers were ultimately gathered as the first batch. Training was given before they were sent to Indonesia.

“At the university they were studying the history and culture of Indonesia, as well as the policies of the Kennedy administration and the Peace Corps itself. They also spent long hours learning the Indonesian language,” wrote Burgess in Fighting for Social Justice: The Life Story of David Burgess.

In the middle of the training, they got a chance to meet President Kennedy at the White House on 17 May 1963. Accompanied by several Indonesian officials, Kennedy advised the first batch of Peace Corps Indonesia volunteers to be kind and eager to get to know the Indonesian people during their duty.

In Indonesia, the Peace Corps was more known as the Development Corps. Their arrival was facilitated and handled directly by the Ministry of Sports.

Political Policy

On 30 May 1963, the first batch of Peace Corps volunteers arrived in Jakarta where their first challenge awaited. The Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), which accused the Peace Corps to be the CIA's puppet, welcomed them with a demonstration.

“I persuaded the minister of home affairs and the police chief of Jakarta to ring the airport with soldiers and police. It turned out to be a wise precaution. As the plane landed on May 30, the airport was already filled with unruly crowds of well-coached PKI protesters, who shouted in English, “Yankee go home” and “Down with the imperialist pig’,” wrote Burgess. The volunteers were then closely guarded to the van that transported them to the hotel, where they’d be welcomed by Sports Minister Maladi.

The Indonesian public’s suspicion had been foreseen by Shriver. He didn’t deny that the Peace Corps was considered as one of US’ global strategies, albeit indirectly, in the Cold War. However, Shriver insisted on ensuring the independence of the Peace Corps.

“Shriver used his privileged access to the president to prevent the CIA from surreptitiously “trying to stick fellows into the Peace Corps” as trainees, because the Peace Corps is the opportunity for the nations of the world to learn what America is all about,” Robert D. Dean wrote in Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy.

According to Alexander Shakow, who was recruited as the first staff of the Peace Corps Indonesia, Indonesia requested 200 university professors at first, but this request was deemed too political. As an exchange, the Peace Corps sent sports trainers, but this decision apparently also became political. Shortly after the arrival of the first batch, President Sukarno decided to quit the Olympics and even established Games of the New Emerging Forces (Ganefo) to rival the Olympics.

“Trainers and teachers of the Peace Corps helped Indonesia prepare for the Games that was an actual competitor for the Olympics,” said Shakow to W. Haven North from the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) that initiated the Foreign Affairs Oral History Project in 1998. Later on, Shakow became the director of the Peace Corps Indonesia replacing David S. Burgess who only held his position for six months before quitting due to his wife’s health condition.

My experience in the Peace Corps Indonesia was a turning point in my life. I learnt a lot about myself there.

While in Indonesia, the Peace Corps volunteers stayed at the house of the villagers who became their host family. They were required to adjust their life according to the natives’, basically everything from the way they eat and talk to their bathroom habits. An experience they found unique yet exhilarating.

“My experience in the Peace Corps Indonesia was a turning point in my life. I learnt a lot about myself there. Even now, I'm still in contact with the children and grandchildren of my host family,” said Joe Chapon, now residing in California, to Historia.

Joe Chapon joined as a volunteer after being inspired by the words and spirits of the youths that Kennedy reflected. He was posted in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara.

Philip Wyckoff, who’s living in Florida, was interested in joining the Peace Corps because he wanted to avoid conscription to Vietnam. He was then assigned as a volunteer in Surabaya and Aceh. While in Aceh, he was close to the local police chief that ensured his safety from the PKI.

“I handled an athlete group and we competed in a national championship in Surabaya in 1964,” Wyckoff recalled to Historia. “One of our athletes even won the 800-meter athletic race.”

The Repatriation

On 23 November 1963, all Peace Corps volunteers gathered in Bandung in preparation for the first Conference of the Peace Corps Indonesia with the goals to evaluate their work performance and to spend the vacation together. On the first day, the atmosphere among the volunteers was delightful and warm as they shared their experience in Indonesia. However, on the second day, the mood turned somber after they heard the news of President Kennedy’s assassination.

“We were stranded in Indonesia with the challenge to regroup, recommit, and carry on because that’s what President Kennedy challenged us to. He proudly served the country he loved; we would attempt to follow in his footsteps,” wrote Paul Burghdorf, Peace Corps Indonesia ex-volunteer stationed in Palembang, South Sumatra, in his autobiography Good Morning, Mr. Paul: A Memoir of Peace Corps Volunteer’s Journey into History.

The death of Kennedy didn’t put the Peace Corps program on hold. The number of volunteers even doubled in the middle of 1964, “which to date remains the highest number of volunteers in service at one time,” wrote Casey Malone Maugh in Peace Corps in the 21st Century: A Rhetorical Analysis.

However, the attacks targeted to Peace Corps volunteers, especially from PKI, never ceased. In Semarang, Bob Dakan was dragged out of his house and was forced to leave the town. Dakan insisted on staying, which earned him sympathy from his student athletes. “We gave the PKI heartburn… just stumbling around in Bahasa, being nice guys,” said Bob as quoted by Theodore Friend in Indonesia Destinies.

PKI’s aggression didn’t daunt the Peace Corps volunteers. During their two years of duty, not a single one from the 50 volunteers resigned.

Bob even fell in love with Maya, a swimming athlete whose father was a major PKI official in Central Java. The couple secretly dated and got married in the Netherlands in 1965 without consent from their parents.

PKI’s aggression didn’t daunt the Peace Corps volunteers. During their two years of duty, not a single one from the 50 volunteers resigned. However, the anti-US campaign intensified. The US consulate in Medan and the library of the United States Information Agency (USIA) in Surabaya became the targets of demonstrations and burning, and both were forced to shut down.

The US government finally reassessed the continuation of the Peace Corps program in Indonesia. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent Ellsworth Bunker, a diplomat, to discuss the matter with Sukarno. It was agreed that the Peace Corps program in Indonesia would end as of 15 April 1965. Sukarno then extended his gratitude personally.

During 1963–1965, around 50 Peace Corps volunteers were sent to various regions in Indonesia: 49 were sports trainers and the other one was an English teacher tasked at the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“There was no problem at all, and one by one the volunteers returned home with a warm feeling about the Indonesian people,” said Shakow.

Return to Indonesia

In the US, the enthusiasm of the youths to join the Peace Corps gradually faded. They started to question the government’s foreign policy, especially regarding the country’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1970, for instance, the Peace Corps volunteers went on a demonstration in Washington demanding for the cessation of war. The volunteers that were still working in their assigned region even received rejection from the local community. The government of Somalia, Turkiye, and Bolivia forced the Peace Corps to leave. Despite still existing, the Peace Corps at that time wasn’t as popular as in the Kennedy era.

After the uprising in Indonesia subsided, the US government constantly offered the Peace Corps program again, but it was turned down by the Indonesian government. “The Indonesian government thinks they have enough of their own underemployed college grads. They have their own volunteers for a rural development program and do not want to give the impression of using Americans to do things they could do themselves,” wrote Theodore Friend.

It was only in 2009 when both countries agreed to revive the Peace Corps program in Indonesia. The memorandum of understanding was signed by the Peace Corps and the Ministry of Religious Affairs as well as the Ministry of Education and Culture. Effective as of 2011, the volunteer program now focuses more on education and teaching, especially in teaching English.

“I really like the Peace Corps. I wish to be able to work there after my duty in Indonesia concludes,” said Melanie.

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