Word: java
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Dutch successfully started planting cinchona trees in Java from one pound of South American seed. In recent years, after South American forests were plundered, the Dutch Kina Bureau controlled 95% of the world's quinine supply (33,000,000 oz.), kept the price pegged at an exorbitant 67? an oz. With Java now fallen to the Japanese, the supply of quinine to the U.S. (which has about 3,000,000 cases of malaria in the Southern States) has been cut off. So have all shipments to Russia, India and South America...
...long, the U.S. and British lines, from supply sources to the battle areas, were infinitely longer. Moreover, if the Jap fronts stretched far from home, they were nevertheless fairly close to each other. Result: the Japs could switch squadrons back & forth from one front to another, from Malaya to Java, from Java to Burma, and could usually base them near their next objective. Old crates could be used where opposition in the air was inconsiderable or nonexistent. Until last week, one such place was Japan itself...
...Malaya, off Java and now off India, the naval story was the same: the U.S. and British were caught by superior Japanese forces. The Allies in these areas had lost the equivalent of a formidable fleet: two capital ships (Prince of Wales, Repulse), four heavy cruisers, three or more light cruisers, twelve to 15 destroyers. At any one place and time, with effective air support, they could have beaten the Japs. As it was, piecemeal, the Allies lost both the ships and the battles...
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...
...went down. The story was finally broken, because the longer it was withheld the more would public confidence be shaken in the Government's candor about bad news, but even after 35 days the casualty lists were not fully straightened out-if some of the survivors got to Java or other enemy-held islands, their fate may not be known until after...