Suharto was born in a village called Kemusuk, on the island of Java, in what was then the Dutch East Indies. His early childhood was difficult, his mother suffered a mental health breakdown when the baby was newborn, so he was sent to live with an elderly relative. His parents divorced soon after, and Suharto was only returned to his mother's care when he was three years old. For the rest of his childhood, he was passed between his parents' households and other relatives. Unlike Sukarno and other nationalist leaders of Indonesia, Suharto lived in isolated villages where he did not have exposure to Europeans or the Dutch language. As a result, he had no interest in politics or the anti-imperial movement until later in life. After finishing middle school, Suharto struggled to find work. He joined the Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) in June of 1940, at the age of 19. World War II was raging, the Nazis had just seized the Netherlands the previous month, and the Japanese were very interested in gaining access to Indonesia's oil fields, so the KNIL was recruiting as many men as it could get.
Suharto underwent a quick round of basic training, then served in the KNIL for almost two years before the Dutch surrendered the East Indies to Japan in March of 1942. Sergeant Suharto took off his KNIL uniform and blended back in to the mass of unemployed youth in the village. When the Japanese began hiring local police for Yogyakarta, Suharto joined. Two days after Japan surrendered at the end of World War II, Sukarno declared Indonesia's independence. Suharto became a battalion commander in the new republican army in October of 1945, and quickly rose to the rank of major. The Indonesian forces soon found themselves fighting Dutch and British troops, who were tasked with returning the archipelago to Dutch colonial control. Major Suharto and his troops faced several years of tough fighting and harsh conditions in their guerrilla war against the Allies; with little financial support from the Republic of Indonesia's infant government, he smuggled opium to buy supplies for his men. In December of 1948, the Dutch forces captured the Indonesian capital at Yogyakarta and took Sukarno captive. Suharto counterattacked, and managed to retake the city on March 1, 1949. Under pressure from the United Nations, the Dutch formally withdrew and transferred sovereignty to the Indonesian government in December of 1949.
Meanwhile, as the revolution raged, in 1947 Suharto married Siti Hartinah from one of Java's noble families. They would have six children over the course of their 49-year marriage, which ended only with her death in 1996. With her, Suharto found the family stability that had been absent during his childhood. Suharto died on January 27, 2008 after being removed from life support. He had been hospitalized for three weeks, suffering heart failure, renal failure, and a septic infection. Despite Suharto's record of misdeeds, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered a week of national mourning for the former president, and lowered flags to half-staff.