They're like sea monkeys. This system was rather less popular in Indonesia, and the Dutch didn't offer much in exchange. They couldn't even defend their colony from the Japanese, who occupied it for most of World War II, during which time the Japanese furthered the cause of Indonesian nationalism by placing native Indonesians in more prominent positions of power, including Sukarno, who became Indonesia's first prime minister. After the war, the Dutch, with British help, tried to hold onto their Indonesian colonies with so-called police actions, which went on for more than four years before Indonesia finally won its independence in 1950. Over in the French colonies of Indochina, so-called because they were neither Indian nor Chinese, things were even more violent. The end of colonization was disastrous in Cambodia, where the 17-year reign of Norodom Sihanouk gave way to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, which massacred a stunning 21% of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979. In Vietnam, the French fought communist-led nationalists, especially Ho Chi Minh, from almost the moment World War II ended until 1954, when the French were defeated.