page_title: Early life and career of Suharto
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Early life and career of Suharto / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: President Suharto and Madame Tien Bahasa Indonesia: Presiden Suharto dan Ibu Tien Русский: Президент Сухарто и его жена Сити Хартинах (Мадам Тиен)
context_page_description: Suharto was the second President of Indonesia, having held the office for 31 years from 1967 following Sukarno's removal until his resignation in 1998.
  Suharto was born in a small village, Kemusuk, in the Godean area near Yogyakarta, during the Dutch colonial era. He grew up in humble circumstances. His Javanese Muslim parents divorced not long after his birth, and he was passed between foster parents for much of his childhood. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, Suharto served in Japanese-organised Indonesian security forces. Indonesia's independence struggle saw him joining the newly formed Indonesian army. Suharto rose to the rank of major general following Indonesian independence.
context_section_description: Suharto was born on 8 June 1921 during the Dutch East Indies era, in a plaited bamboo walled house in the hamlet of Kemusuk, a part of the larger village of Godean. The village is 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) west of Yogyakarta, the cultural heartland of the Javanese. Born to ethnic Javanese parents of peasant class, he was the only child of his father's second marriage. His father, Kertosudiro had two children from his previous marriage, and was a village irrigation official. His mother Sukirah, a local woman, was distantly related to Sultan Hamengkubuwono V by his first concubine.
  Five weeks after Suharto's birth, his mother suffered a nervous breakdown and he was placed in the care of his paternal great-aunt, Kromodirjo. Kertosudiro and Sukirah divorced early in Suharto's life and both later remarried. At the age of three, Suharto was returned to his mother who had remarried a local farmer whom Suharto helped in the rice paddies. In 1929, Suharto's father took him to live with his sister who was married to an agricultural supervisor, Prawirowihardjo, in the town of Wuryantoro in a poor and low-yield farming area near Wonogiri. Over the following two years, he was taken back to his mother in Kemusuk by his stepfather and then back again to Wuryantoro by his father.
  Prawirowihardjo took to raising the boy as his own, which provided Suharto a father-figure and a stable home in Wuryantoro. In 1931, he moved to town of Wonogiri to attend the primary school (schakelschool), living first with Prawirohardjo's son Sulardi, and later with his father's relative Hardjowijono. While living with Hardjowijono, Suharto became acquinted with Darjatmo, a dukun ("guru") of Javanese mystical arts and faith healing. The experience deeply affected him and later, as president, Suharto surrounded himself with powerful symbolic language. Difficulties in paying the fees for his education in Wonogiri resulted in another move back with his father in Kemusuk, where he continued studying at a lower-fee Muhammadiyah middle school in the city of Yogyakarta until 1939.
  Like many Javanese, Suharto had only one name. In religious contexts in recent years he has sometimes been called “Haji” or “el-Haj Mohammed Suharto” but these names were not part of his formal name or generally used. The spelling "Suharto" reflects modern Indonesian spelling although the general approach in Indonesia is to rely on the spelling preferred by the person concerned. At the time of his birth, the standard transcription was "Soeharto" and he preferred the original spelling. The international English-language press generally uses the spelling 'Suharto' while the Indonesian government and media use 'Soeharto'.
  Suharto's upbringing contrasts with that of leading Indonesian nationalists such as Sukarno in that he is believed to have had little interest in anti-colonialism, or political concerns beyond his immediate surroundings. Unlike Sukarno and his circle, Suharto had little to no contact with European colonizers. Consequently, he did not learn to speak Dutch or other European languages in his youth. He learned to speak Dutch after his induction into the Dutch military in 1940.
caption: Official portrait of Suharto and First Lady Siti Hartinah
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