Word: java
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...world and World War II changed last week. By their conquest of Java, the Japanese split the far Pacific. Its vast expanses ceased to exist as a single Allied war area. The great zone of strategy, action and command became a set of separated zones...
Inevitably, in advance of Java's fall, the Allies dissolved the unified system of command which they had established to direct the far Pacific war from Java. General Sir Archibald Wavell, the Supreme Commander, flew in a U.S. plane from Java to Ceylon, then to India and Burma, then into China, then back to India. Like writing on a wall, his travels traced the perils which the U.S., Great Britain and their allies must now face, the changes which they must deal with and somehow use for victory...
...present with drives at northern and northeastern Australia. If so, the U.S. and Australia would have time to amass land, air and naval forces in the south. But "to be content for the present" did not sound like the Japs of Indo-China, Manila, Malaya, Singapore, Burma and Java...
...Japanese conquered Java in eight days. They surged inward from the northern coasts, took the capital at Batavia, chopped up the long island into isolated bits, reduced the naval base at Surabaya and the Army's mountain stronghold at Bandung. On Java there was no Bataan. The Japanese victory was complete and swift...
What of Bandung in its high, supposedly impregnable mountains? They were not impregnable. The Japanese, forearmed by long fifth-column study of Java, struck at the crevice in Bandung's natural armor: a rising terrace of plains on the north, where the defending soldiers had no defense except their own insufficient numbers and weapons. Bombed from a ring of captured airdromes, Bandung could have been no Bataan...