Word: balikpapan
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...Over Balikpapan on the east Borneo coast the smoke hung thick; flames from the oil wells fired by the Dutch stabbed red into the murk. The Japanese were closing in. Off the port in the Strait of Macassar a great Japanese convoy stood, ready to move south toward Java. Before the next dawn. Feb. 24, it had been slashed into gaping disorder in one of the wildest naval raids in modern naval history...
Desdiv (destroyer division) 59 was cruising south of Celebes when it got word to head for Macassar Strait. It quickly found out why. It was to blast the convoy at Balikpapan, peppered that day by Dutch bombers. The monsoon was kicking up a rough sea when Talbot's division set out, at 25 knots...
First the Japanese sent paratroops. They hoped to seize Palembang's oil before Dutch demolitionists could lay everything waste, as they had at Tarakan and Balikpapan. The paratroops died by hundreds, failed in their mission. Seaborne invaders followed. They landed at the mouth of the Musi River, swarmed overland through swamps and marshes. Outnumbered, outgunned, Dutch and native defenders killed hundreds, but the thousands overwhelmed them...
...northern approaches to Java the Jap strengthened his footholds in Borneo and Celebes. From ruined Balikpapan patrols fought southward toward Banjermasin on Borneo's south coast, 300 miles from Java...
...bombed, then occupied western Borneo's port of Pontianak on the South China Sea. He completed his occupation of Balikpapan on the east coast of Borneo. He hurled bombs, then troops at the Indie's No. 2 naval base, Amboina in the Moluccas. The brave, brown Amboinese met the enemy with skill at marksmanship and the bayonet. But they were too few and they lacked both naval and air support. The Dutch sadly announced that demolition squads, long trained for just such preventive waste, had wrecked every useful thing in Amboina...