Word: java
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...years." When he leaves, the U.S. will get another topnotch diplomat in his place. Sir Archibald John Kerr Clark Kerr,* polished, informal veteran of a dozen capitals on four continents, will come to Washington as soon as he winds up the peacemaking mission he has been assigned in Java...
Such is the plight of the quarter-million whites and Eurasians who had once ruled Java. Before the war they had attained a comfort of living probably unmatched elsewhere. Now their sprawling, marble-floored houses are occupied by British officers (in unreclaimed cities, by Indonesians). An estimated 200,000 Dutch and Indo-Europeans remain in Java, many of them still living in former Japanese "hell camps"; 17,000 evacuees are in crowded, poorly supplied camps in Singapore, 11,000 in Bangkok. Some 15,000 are hostages of the Indonesian rebels...
Dutch humiliation is nourished by British refusal to allow Netherlands marines to land in Java; by the "undeclared war" waged by Australian wharfside workers who refused, out of sympathy for the Indonesians, to load Indies-bound ships; and by a gradually growing realization that Dutch mistakes brought defeat and disaster...
Dutch voices here in Java are quick to blame their own "woodenheaded" Parliament for its inability to roll with the punches in imperial British style. Many admit that the freedom movement had not been "made in Japan" (however much it was nurtured by Tokyo). President Soekarno had openly collaborated with the Japanese; but anti-Jap natives still rallied to his nationalist party...
Most rankling of all is the war record of the Dutch army in Java. Built into a formidable myth by misleading propaganda, it yielded quickly to the Japanese. Now Indonesian papers fling taunting jibes like: "We pitied the Dutch when the victorious Jap hordes sent Dutch soldiers fearfully fleeing in sarongs and pajamas or underwear, hurriedly throwing their equipment away...