Pramoedya was born on 6 February 1925, in the town of Blora in the heartland of Java, then a part of the Dutch East Indies. He was the firstborn son in his family; his father was a teacher, who was also active in Boedi Oetomo (the first recognized indigenous national organization in Indonesia) and his mother was a rice trader. His maternal grandfather had taken the pilgrimage to Mecca. As it is written in his semi-autobiographical collection of short stories "Cerita Dari Blora", his name was originally Pramoedya Ananta Mastoer. However, he felt that the family name Mastoer (his father's name) seemed too aristocratic. The Javanese prefix "Mas" refers to a man of the higher rank in a noble family. Consequently, he omitted "Mas" and kept Toer as his family name. He went on to the Radio Vocational School in Surabaya but had barely graduated from the school when Japan invaded Surabaya (1942).