[J2ME] Repeatedly displaying values in a form does not work

Hello,

the problem I am currently facing is the following:

J2ME seems to "optimize" my code in such a way that repeated outputs
to a GUI-Element such as a StringItem are not performed and only the
last of the
values is actually written to the output.
If you take for example a loop as shown below, J2ME only writes the
last value to the output, there is no continous output as expected.
Since I am
wrtiting a countdown-application, this is exactly what I do need. I
would like to get an output e.g. every second. Is there a way to
tackle this issue?
I have also tried to use a canvas and its repaint() method but the
behavior is exactly the same.

{code}
import javax.microedition.lcdui.Command;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.CommandListener;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.Display;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.Displayable;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.Form;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.StringItem;
import javax.microedition.midlet.MIDlet;
import javax.microedition.midlet.MIDletStateChangeException;

public class OutputTest extends MIDlet implements CommandListener {

    private Command exitCommand;
    private Form form;
    private Display display;
    private StringItem output;

    public OutputTest() {
        display = Display.getDisplay(this);
        form = new Form("Test Midlet");
        exitCommand = new Command("Exit", Command.EXIT, 2);
        form.addCommand(exitCommand);
        form.setCommandListener(this);
        output = new StringItem("","");
        form.append(output);

        // Test loop, shows the value 0 after some computation,
        // but not as expected the decrementing value before
        for (int i=0; i<1000000;i++){
            output.setText("Output: " + i);
        }

        // the loop above is replaced by a countdown()-method which
        // does a output.setText(remainingTime) every second.
        // this.countdown()

    }

    protected void startApp() throws MIDletStateChangeException {
        display.setCurrent(form);
    }

    protected void pauseApp() {
    }

    protected void destroyApp(boolean arg0) throws
MIDletStateChangeException {
    }

    public void commandAction(Command command, Displayable displayable) {
        if (command == exitCommand) {
            try {
                destroyApp(false);
            } catch (MIDletStateChangeException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
            notifyDestroyed();
        }
    }

}

{code}

Thanks in advance,

Markus