Word: borneo
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...boarded a British destroyer, which slipped by blockading Japanese warships and steamed into Manila Bay through strange mine fields which sank an intercoastal steamer. From Manila he hurried to Dutch Borneo, then to Singapore. From Singapore he got to Médan on Dutch Sumatra, took the last commercial plane to Rangoon. On Dec. 28 the Japanese made their parachute attack...
...obvious to the Dutch that if the Japanese had an easy time in Malaya, if they took the Philippines, then the Dutch islands of Borneo, Java, Sumatra would be next on the list of the Mikado's Lord High Executioner. And first to fall would probably be Borneo, of which the Brookes' Sarawak is a small part...
...Borneo is larger than Japan, three times as large as Great Britain. It is, in fact, the third largest island in the world.* Dutch industriousness and British imperiousness have only picked at the tasseled fringes of its wealth: its oil, rubber, hard woods, copra, coconuts, hemp, pepper, sago. In places red veins of iron ore crumble right out of the earth's surface, but they have not yet been tapped. Coal is known to lie just under the surface, but it has not yet been mined. With all Sarawak's natural wealth, some of Raja Brooke...
Highways embroider no more than the coast of this huge treasure island. The only lines inland are rivers, leading into a mysterious, mountainous land of superstition and legend-the land of the Dyaks, the wild men of Borneo, who used to collect heads as Westerners collect stamps; who believe that their victims' spirits enter their own bodies and add to their strength; who live, 50 families in a bunch, in communal houses up on stilts to be safe from orangutans, honey bears, rhinoceroses, elephants, snakes...
This is land the Japanese covet. To its taking they have given much thought. Long ago they sent in their advance guard of barbers, fishermen, photographers and loggers, who became bug-eyed at Borneo's wealth and military secrets. Last week the Japanese had not yet made their all-out assault on Borneo. The preliminary landings were designed mainly to secure the southeastern rim of the China Sea, insuring communications with Indo-China, Thailand, Malaya. The Dutch expect a heavier blow...