Background
Jusuf was born in Buitenzorg (now Bogor), Japanese-occupied East Indies (now Indonesia) to a Chinese-born father and an Indonesian-born mother.
熊德怡
Jusuf was born in Buitenzorg (now Bogor), Japanese-occupied East Indies (now Indonesia) to a Chinese-born father and an Indonesian-born mother.
Currently Jusuf is chairman of the Chinese Indonesian Social Association (Paguyuban Sosial Marga Tionghoa Indonesia). Him Tek Ji was ten years old when he saw his first real soldiers at an Indonesian military camp stationed near his school in North Jakarta where he grew up. Every day, he went to watch them train and he knew one day he would be a soldier.
Tek Ji attended both national and Chinese language schools as a boy and speaks Mandarin.
True to his childhood dream, Him Tek Ji enrolled in the military academy when he finished secondary school. He graduated in 1965 as Lieutenant
Teddy Jusuf. He was then suggested by the governor of the military academy who was concerned about reactions to Chinese-Indonesians joining the army.
Despite enduring a lot of discrimination in his early days in the army, Jusuf rose through the ranks, becoming a brigadier general in 1983 and even serving as a senior staff member in army intelligence. Jusuf attributes his success to hard work, discipline and patience, qualities which would serve him well later in establishing the association.
