A Message from Morning Star

For a former Tokyo bar hostess, it was indeed an impressive homecoming reception--an official welcoming delegation at the airport, scores of jostling newsmen, photographers, television crews--the works. But after all, beautiful, 25-year-old Ratna Sari Dewi has come up in the world since that day in 1959 when Indonesia's fun-loving President Sukarno decided to make her his third wife.

Dewi, whom the Bung calls Morning Star, had come to Japan to sign a contract with a construction firm for a $3,700,000 hospital to be built in Djakarta with Japanese aid funds. But what seemed uppermost in her mind was dispelling rumors that Sukarno had lost control at home and was about to go into exile in Japan. "Calmness has been restored in Indonesia," she told reporters at the airport. "President Sukarno is in fine health, but he is so busy that he will not be able to leave the country for some time." A couple of days later, Dewi delivered a letter from Sukarno to Premier Sato, chatted for 30 minutes about Indonesia's new stability.

Perhaps it did not dawn on Morning Star that the courteous smiles she got from her countrymen concealed a healthy skepticism. The Japanese, like everyone else, know that calm has by no means returned to Indonesia. Since the Communists' coup attempt last September, the army has looked the other way while Moslem mobs killed at least 100,000 members and supporters of Indonesia's pro-Peking Communist Party. And now the purge was spreading south from Sumatra and Java to Bali. Nor was it the press of business that kept hubby at home; Sukarno is said to have made elaborate visible arrangements to accompany Dewi. At the last minute Defense Minister Abdul Haris Nasution said no.

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