The Defenders of the Homeland was a volunteer army established on 3 October 1943 in the Dutch East Indies by the occupying Japanese. The Japanese intended PETA to assist their forces in opposing a possible invasion by the Allies. By the end of World War II, there were a total of 69 battalions in Java, Madura, and Bali and Sumatra. On 17 August 1945, the day after the Proclamation of Indonesian Independence, the Japanese ordered the PETA daidan to surrender and hand over their weapons, which most of them did. Indonesia's inaugural President, Sukarno, supported the dissolution rather than turning the organisation into a national army as he feared allegations of collaboration had he allowed a Japanese-created militia to continue to exist.