Portal:Indonesia/AOTW/33, 2006



The Indonesian Declaration of Independence was officially read at exactly 10.00 a.m. on Friday, August 17, 1945.

The draft was prepared only a few hours before earlier, on the night of August 16, by Soekarno, Hatta, and a student named Subarjo, at Admiral Tadashi Maeda's house, Miyako-Doori 1, Jakarta (now the "Museum of the Declaration of Independence", JL. Imam Bonjol I, Jakarta). Maeda himself was sleeping in his room upstairs. He was agreeable to the idea of Indonesia's independence, and had lent his house for the drafting of the declaration. Marshal Terauchi, the highest-ranking Japanese leader in South East Asia and son of Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake, was however against Indonesia's independence, scheduled for August 24. (read more...)