Complacent in their cocoon of colonial supremacy, were shocked when the Japanese invaded the Indies in 1942, so shocked that they gave up with hardly a fight. More shocking still to the colonialists was the fact that after the war the majority of Indonesians failed to welcome their former rulers back with open arms. Revolution! and Freedom! had instead become rallying cries around the archipelago, and these were taken up with fierce determination by the Balinese.
Those who had come to believe in colonial "peace and order" and in "Bali The Paradise" were appalled by the intensity of violence and social divisions which wracked Bali in subsequent decades, from the beginning of VAVII until the middle of the 1960s. In many ways the violence was worse here than in any other part of Indonesia, a situation which had its roots in the way that the Dutch had ruled Bali, and the fierce pride and independence of the Balinese people themselves.
Japanese rule, brief as it was, was a period of increasing hardship punctuated by torture and killings. Although the Japanese had initially been welcomed as liberators, members of the Balinese upper class soon found themselves bearing the brunt of a campaign of terror designed to beat them into submission. Military requirements for rice and other products also dictated that the niceties of wooing the Balinese masses into devotion to the Japanese cause eventually gave way to harsher measures.
As the war dragged on and Japan's position became precarious, most Balinese suffered from serious shortages of all basic necessities. At the same time, Balinese youths were radicalized by being made to join paramilitary organizations with strong nationalistic overtones. When the Japanese surrendered, a few Balinese did welcome the Dutch back, but many others acted swiftly to seize the Japanese weapons and take up the struggle for independence. As the Dutch prepared to return with the triumphant Allied forces, preparations were made on Bali for a violent "welcome for the uninvited guests."
Bali's foremost revolutionary was Gusti Ngurah Rai, who led a brave but badly outnumbered and outgunned guerilla group. Some 1400 Balinese fighters died in the struggle, but with few resources Ngurah Rai was defeated and killed. Bali then became the headquarters of the new State of Eastern Indonesia, which the Dutch hoped to later merge into a pro-Dutch federation. Even this state, under the leadership of the Gianyar ruler, Anak Agung Gede Agung (later Foreign Minister of the Republic), turned against the Dutch when they broke their treaty with the fledgling Republic, and so contributed to the achievement of full independence in 1949.
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