Word: java
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Last week Indonesia, racked by civil war, was in dire danger of splintering apart. Guns cracked in the jungles of West Java; government bombers winged over Pakanbaru in Sumatra and Menado in the Celebes, blasting radio transmitters and telephone exchanges; government patrol boats, cleared for action, blockaded rebel-held ports...
Indonesia's wealthiest island, Sumatra, is bigger than California; Java has more people than the American Midwest. Mountains march down the spines of both islands, and a hundred volcanoes drift their smoke against the blue tropical sky. Indonesia bursts with resources, from copra and hemp to teak, tobacco and oil. The world's largest flower, rafflesia, with a diameter of 3 ft., blooms on Madura. The red-brown soil of Java (pop. 52,000,000), terraced with unbelievable ingenuity, produces two rice crops a year. The warm seas send long rollers crashing on the palm-fringed shores...
...land where the centuries do not follow each other but run side by side. In the oil city of Palembang the streets throb with Cadillacs and motor scooters, while scarcely 50 miles away aboriginal Kubus still live in trees. There are modern textile factories on Java but. close by, a tiger may feast on a wild pig or water buffalo. Elephants trumpet in the rain forest; single-horned rhinos move like tanks through the deltaic swamps; the 10-ft. Komodo lizard looks out from thick underbrush like a dragon from the pages of Arthurian romances...
What is it, in this book, that Maria Dermoût knows? Born in Java on a sugar plantation, she lived for 27 years on many islands in what was then an opulent Dutch Indian Eden. Her children and grandchildren were born there. The look, sounds, smells of jungle and sea seem to have penetrated her consciousness. The deep differences between native and white, between servant and master, are effortlessly established as both subtle and decisive. And underneath the light garment of Christianity or Mohammedanism worn by the natives, there is the steadily discernible play of a fundamental superstition...
...battalions rather than divisions-and there is no easy way for them to get at each other, since neither side has enough warships or transports to mount an invasion. The rebels have no aircraft at all; the central government has only a few, with perhaps several hundred paratroopers. Java has more population (54 million, v. Sumatra's 12 million). But Java must import even its food, is already in serious economic difficulties. Sumatra is rich in rubber, tin and coffee, provides some 72% of Indonesia's export revenues, v. Java's 17%. The rebel government made clear...