Fall of Java

The Japanese conquered Java in eight days. They surged inward from the northern coasts, took the capital at Batavia, chopped up the long island into isolated bits, reduced the naval base at Surabaya and the Army's mountain stronghold at Bandung. On Java there was no Bataan. The Japanese victory was complete and swift.

How Did it Happen? Recriminations by the bitter Dutch defenders told part of the story, but only part: promised Allied reinforcements did not arrive; an Allied High Command was imposed upon the Dutch, without the Allied troops, planes and ships which would have made the joint command effective. It was, in part, the story of Norway, France, Crete and Malaya: hugely superior air forces knocking out the few Allied squadrons, then dive-bombing ground defenders into subjection.

What of Bandung in its high, supposedly impregnable mountains? They were not impregnable. The Japanese, forearmed by long fifth-column study of Java, struck at the crevice in Bandung's natural armor: a rising terrace of plains on the north, where the defending soldiers had no defense except their own insufficient numbers and weapons. Bombed from a ring of captured airdromes, Bandung could have been no Bataan.

The last days were black and sickening. At the mercy of unopposed Jap fighters, angry U.S. bomber crews had to take their few remaining Flying Fortresses from Javanese airdromes and flee to Australia. British fighter pilots followed; they had no more fighters to fly. Some of Java's high officialdom also fled; Lieut. Governor General Hubertus van Mook appeared in Adelaide, Australia, after the last hope was gone.

Behind, they left perhaps 3,500 British, Australian and U.S. troops, fighting with Java's under-equipped Army of 75,000-odd under Major General Heinter Poorten. Aneta, the official Dutch news agency, cabled a last, bitter account of a country lost for want of a few ships, a few hundred planes, a few thousand well-armed troops. A Dutch dispatcher, radiophoning commercial messages (in English) to RCA. spoke the last word from Java: "We are shutting down now. Good-by till better times. Long live the Queen!"

The Japanese still had to mop up. In Sumatra, and other outlying Indies islands, they might have to wage a long and tough guerrilla campaign against unsubjected Dutchmen and hardy natives. But for all the purposes of war and conquest, the Japanese had Java. They had the Indies, their oil and rubber and tin, their "strategic island wall across the southwest Pacific. They had still to fight the battle of India and the battle of Australia. But they had won the battle of the Pacific.

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