For a talk at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, I was searching the internet to see what I could find about Shimpei Fukue, one of the Japanese generals who were sentenced to death for war crimes after World War II. Lt. Gen. Fukue had left a couple of remarkable "farewell-to-the-world" haiku before facing a firing squad on April 27, 1946.
Among the several items I readily found on him was a Straits Times article, "Jap General Executed in Singapore," that began with "A red patch of sand on Changi beach early yesterday morning marked the spot where a Japanese General met his death as a war criminal." But just below it was a one-paragraph dispatch with the headline, "Dutch-Indonesian Clash."
"Batavia, Apr. 27 — Referring to the reported clash of Dutch and Indonesians outside Batavia, an official Dutch report today stated that Allied troops attacked a concentration of terrorists near Tjiteureup, south of Batavia, yesterday killing 19 and taking 150 prisoners. — Reuters"