Batttle of Java

WORLD BATTLEFRONTS

BATTLE OF JAVA

Voice of Doom
The voice was like the voice of doom. It was the voice of Dr. Hubertus Johannes van Mook, Lieutenant Governor General of The Netherlands East Indies:
It is not that dozens of battleships, scores of cruisers and thousands of planes are needed. . . . It is only question of hundreds more of planes and a few tens of thousands of men. . . . The reinforcements need not be tremendous, but must come continuously and there must be an end of wavering uncertainty which wastes time and weakens morale.

   When Dr. van Mook spoke last week in Batavia, it was late in the game for Java. the Indies and the Far Pacific. It was terribly late for the Indies' "Strong Man" to have to speak of wavering uncertainty among his allies. Within a week the Japanese broke through Java's naval line (see p. 18) and set their scores of thousands of invaders upon Java's shores before the few hundred planes, the needed thousands of troops had arrived. The battle for the Indies had come to Java, and it would be won or lost with what Java had in the air and on the ground when Hubertus van Mook cried to Washington.
   The Prong. The Japanese chose their first landings well (see map): near Serang in the west, a hop & skip across the Sunda Strait from invaded Sumatra: on the broad, open coasts of Indramayu Bay, 160 miles eastward from Serang; at Rembang, another 225 miles to the east. Thus the Jap with three strokes sliced up the northern Javanese coast, flanked the capital of Batavia, the Army's mountain fortress at Bandung and Java's chief naval base at Surabaya.
   That was the Japanese plan. Its execution would not be so simple. The Dutch had a mobile Army of perhaps 50,000 well-armed white and brown troops. 50,000 not so well armed. "Some thousands" of Australian, British and U.S. soldiers were on the island, and probably were held for last-ditch shock attack, Short of artillery, short even of ammunition for the various calibers of Dutch, U.S. British, Swedish, German and Italian rifles. pistols and machine guns, the Dutch ordnance men had made much out of little. They juggled rifle parts to fit their ammunition supply. For armored cars they walled trucks with double sheets of boiler plate. The first layer took the zing out of armor-piercing bullets, the second stopped them. The improvised cars with their mounted machine guns roared over the narrow, metalized Java highways, barking at advance parties of Jap bicyclists and rushing defenders to threatened points.
   In the mountainous interior, the Dutch had planted explosives in the sides of every pass, every cut through which key highways and railways threaded. Successively, as the invader advanced, Java's arteries could thus be blocked to anything on wheels. Mined passes commanded every approach to the Bandung fortress, and at lie worst Java\ Army was prepared to withstand a siege there comparable to Douglas Macarthur's on Bataan.
   Dutch, British and U.S. aircraft rose incessantly from interior airdromes, met the invader in the air and strafed him on the ground, returned, reloaded and refueled, took off again. Pilots who had planes shot under them parachuted down, Then they chafed and groaned because there were no more planes for them to take up.
   The Siege. The Japanese flood rose and widened, flowed inland from Indramayu to the railway between Batavia and Surabaya. Soon, in this central invasion sector, the Japanese were within 30 mountainous miles of Bandung. On the west they pushed inward toward Batavia. The Dutch destroyed everything of military use in Batavia, even though they insisted that the capital itself was not yet in danger. At Tjepu they wrecked the last major oil base left to them in the Indies. Then came an announcement which accented Java's extremity. The United Nations' joint southwest Pacific command in Java no longer existed. Britain's Sir Archibald Wavell, the Supreme Allied Commander, had surrendered his command and the responsibility for Java's defense, returned to his old post at he head of British forces in India and Burma. The defense of Java, still with some Allied aid, was now where Dutchmen all along had thought it ought to be: in the hands of a Dutchman, the Indies Governor General Jookheer Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer.
   Java was not yet lost. It could still be reinforced, although only at the risk of increasing air attack from captured Javanese bases. But the battle of Java in its first days rapidly became a series of Allied withdrawals and sieges. If Java was not yet lost to the Dutch. it was lost to the Allies as a Pacific bastion. It would be lost until the last Japanese was driven out.

   What Then?
   The U. S. this week faces its bitterest defeat since 1814: the loss of all the southwest Pacific except Australia. And Australia is in peril. If Java falls, if the United Nations lose their last bases within striking distance of the Japanese, what kind of war can he U.S. then wage in the Pacific?
   Hit & Run. The Navy and its air service can harass Japanese shipping and outposts by surface, submarine and aircraft-carrier raids, constantly striking and then retiring to the main U.S. base in Pearl Harbor. Such raids cannot win the war. They cannot even protect U.S. shipping routes to the Allied forces in Australia and in the Middle East, or supply lines to Russia, India and China.
   Attack from the North. Tonguing out from Alaska, 1,150 miles into the north Pacific toward Tokyo, lie the U.S. Aleutian Islands (see map, p. 17). The outermost U.S. base, Dutch Harbor, is 2,550 miles from Tokyo--well beyond effective bomber range. But the Aleutians stretch halfway to Japan's little known naval base at Paramoshiri in the Kuriles, which means that they could be either targets for Japanese attack or U.S. steppingstones toward Japan. Heavily armed, carefully balanced striking forces might take off from Alaska and the Aleutians, perhaps get the use of Russia's naval base at Petroparvlovsk, fight for footholds in the Kuriles, then strike directly at Japan itself.

16	TIME March 9, 1942

WORLD BATTLEFRONTS

   A more immediate possibility for attack in the north is bombing from Vladivostok. only 580 air miles From Tokyo. For that offensive the U.S. must have:
   1) Russia's consent; 2) more bombers than have yet been delivered to any front.
   Attack from the Center. Given the means and the offensive will, the U.S. can do more than raid from Pearl Harbor.
   Assault forces of carriers, cruisers, destroyers, submarines and transports with supporting troops can strike to recapture Wake,^* then Guam, eventually establish a forward base in Japan's Marianas. Similar forces could fight step by step through Japan's Marshall and Caroline Islands, finishing what the Navy spectacularly began in February with hit-&-run raids.

* Last week Tokyo reported an attack on Wake by a typical task force: two cruisers, six destroyers. The Japanese said they suffered, minor damage, minor casualties. Said the Navy Department in Washington: "No Information."

   With this spearpoint in the Marianas and Guam, U.S. forces would still be 1,350 miles from Tokyo, but they would again be in the position to threaten Japan's vital supply routes. And the Navy would be in a better position to aim striking forces at Japan.
   But for all-out attack via the Aleutians and the Marianas, the US. must amass more carriers, more shipping. more aircraft. Then it must fight for the bases. All this means that full-scale attacks from the north and center are possibilities for the future. How far in the future depends mainly on how fast he U.S. musters its offensive will and spirit, gets additional aircraft carriers into service, and reconstructs its naval thinking around the assault airplane.
   Attack from the South. If Java falls Australia will thus remain a base for present operations in the far Pacific. Desolate, vulnerable northern Australia would he hard to defend against determined Japanese attack. But Australia's Prime Minister John Curtin was speaking for as well as to the U.S. last week when he said that southern Australia must be held. There the U.S. can amass land and air forces: there it can base the naval forces necessary for an attempt to recapture the Indies and drive on toward Malaya and Japan from the south.

TIME March 9, 1942

Helfrich Biography . Article List . Geographic Names
Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942