Word: surabaya
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From Batavia on the west to Surabaya on the east, Java's excellent highways were thick with armored cars, with the harnessed and ever-useful water buffalo, with pedestrian natives in economically cut trousers and casual skirts. At Bandung, the Army's mountain headquarters and fortress, patrolling aircraft droned in and away...
...Java's western tip, beyond the Sunda Strait, the Japanese clinched their hold on southern Sumatra, its oil, its tin, and its vantage for assault on Java. To the east, Japanese planes performed their usual preparatory ritual: bombs on Dutch and Portuguese Timor, more bombs on oft-bombed Surabaya's naval base; bombs on Bali; and, to the rear, where Australia juts toward Java, bomb after heavy bomb on the tiny, tinny port of Darwin...
...very edge on the east, to match his Sumatra springboard on the west. With Timor, he won another eastern approach and control of an essential waypoint on the route by which sorely needed fighter planes were flown from Australia to Java. And now he was probably near enough to Surabaya to immobilize that last, vital naval base even before he sent his troops against...
...Dutch had learned to admire: 55-year-old Vice Admiral William A. Glassford Jr. Admiral Glassford needed more cruisers, more destroyers, more submarines for the sea defense of Java. Admiral Helfrich needed men & munitions, but especially aircraft and airmen. Designed originally for defense from sea assault, Surabaya had already felt bombs from the air, expected land assaults from the rear before long. But there was still hope in Batavia. Colonial Dutchmen quoted their Admiral: "Who knows better than the people of our islands the profound truth of the time-hallowed saying: 'The tide will turn...
...Occupied the great Dutch Naval base at Surabaya...