[4] Several months later, his father added Soepratman to his name and explained that he was born in Meester Cornelis, Batavia.

After his father retired, Wage followed his sister Rukiyem to Makassar, where he began attending a Europeesche Lagere School (ELS) in 1914.

His brother-in-law, Willem Mauritius van Eldik, gave him a violin as a seventeenth birthday present in 1920.

In November 1933, he resigned as a journalist at Sin Po and settled first in Cimahi, then Palembang, and finally in Surabaya.

The government awarded Wage the National Hero title and the Bintang Mahaputra Utama kelas III in 1971.

[10] Several Indonesian cities and towns have named streets after Wage, usually referred to as Jalan WR Soepratman.