History Forum / General / General Topics / October 2005

Our Debt to the Dutch
By Hallett Abend

On February 2, 1940, a diplomatic conflict began between Japan and Holland
which was of utmost importance to the United States. On that date Japan
made its first move toward demanding special trade privileges in the
Netherlands East Indies, and for more than sixteen months thereafter kept
applying pressure against the Dutch authorities for greatly increased
supplies of rubber, tin, and oil. The Dutch suspected that Japan wanted
these vital materials to facilitate further conquest in the Far East and to
reship to Germany. The Dutch said that existing economic relations could
continue, that Japan could purchase as great a proportion of the products
of the East Indies as it had averaged during the preceding five years.
Japan was not satisfied and kept pressing for further concessions, and the
Japanese press began to publish editorials about the "manifest destiny" of
the empire beckoning from the south. When, last June, the pressure was
relaxed and Japan met diplomatic defeat with pretended good grace, the
Dutch felt certain that the next step would be war. In six months their
forebodings were realized. But they had won precious time for us as well as
for themselves.

The High Commands of the United States army and navy blanch now when they
consider how doubly desperate the situation would be today inthe Far East
if the Dutch had yielded to Japan's threats in June of last year. There
would have been Japanese planes on all their landinf fields on December 7,
and Japanese ships in all their jarbors. Thousands of Japanese reservists,
disguised as laborers, traders, or fishermen, would have infiltrated into
the islands between June and December and would have smuggled in
ammunition. British North Borneo offers an example of what would have
happened on Java, for there 2,000 supposedly Japanese fishermen suddenly
appeared, clad in their uniforms of military police and heavily armed. The
Japanese would have been able to seize the oil wells, tin mines, and power
plants before they could have been destroyed. Soerabaja would have been
made useless as a base for the united navies under Admiral Thomas C. Hart,
and the route from Australia to Singapore would have been closed the first
week of the war.

Instead of yielding, the East Indies prepared their defenses feverishly and
therefore were far from powerless when December 7 arrived. Their fleet had
been at sea, prepared for war, for eight days. Within three weeks their
submarines and planes sand more than a score of Japanese troop transports
and destroyers off the coasts of Luzon and the Malay Peninsula.

During the period of negotiation the East Indies were in no position to
fight, and it devolved upon two stout-hearted, wise, and patient men to
play a masterly game. Jonkheer A. W. L. Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer,
the Governor General of the Netherlands East Indies, and Dr. Hubertus
Johannes van Mook were playing perilously for time against a wily, greedy,
and impatient foe. Every week was precious, for every week their
preparedness program advanced further.

His Excellency Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer is descended from a long
line of Dutch aristocrats, and before the war was one of the largest
landowners in Holland. For generations his forefathers have held positions
of trust at court, and have had in large part custody of the fortunes of
the ruling house. At one time he was on the staff of the Netherlands
legation at Washington, and his wife is of a wealthy Balimore family.

H. J. van Mook, by contrast, is the son of two Amsterdam school teachers. He
was born in Semarang, Java, obtained his early education in the Indies, and
then studied in Holland. He began his career as an assistant in the police
department of Batavia. Later he was appointed to a seat in the Volksraad,
or Parliament of the East Indies, and as late as 1934 was editor of a
radical bi-weekly called De Stuw. He was in the United States in 1936 as
the chief delegate from the East Indies to the conference of the Institute
of Pacific Relations.

The demands which the Japanese government made upon these two men are
amazing in their effrontery. Here they are, published in full for the first
time:
(1) the right of unrestricted immigration to the East Indies for all
Japanese;
(2) the concession for a cable, Japanese owned and operated, to run from the
island of Yap to Batavia;
(3) unrestricted fishing rights for Japanese among the islands of the
Netherlands East Indies, which cover an area as large as the continental
United States;
(4) unrestricted rights to operate coastal shipping lines between ports of
the East Indies;
(5) unrestricted rights to operate air lines between the islands of the East
Indies and to have branch lines to Japanese lands and possessions, also the
right to acquire air fields;
(6) unrestricted rights to explore the islands and to develop mineral and
oil resources;
(7) definite pledges to allot to Japan large percentages of East Indies
exports of rubber, tin, oil, quinine, and other supplies vital in time of
war, taking in payment large imports of Japanese factory products;
(8) the establishment of jointly owned and managed industrial enterprises,
docks, warehouses, and hydroelectric developments.

These are the terms of an arrogant conqueror. They were coupled with threats
of direct action to bring about the fulfilment of Japan's "divine mission
in East Asia" if they were rejected. Except that they did not include
provisions for Japanese naval, military, and financial "advisers," they
were strangely reminiscent of the outrageous demands which Japan made upon
China in 1915 - the infamous scret Twenty-one Demands.

The situation for the Dutch was almost desperate. The exposed position after
Dunkirk left Batavia no alternative but to temporize. At Bandoeng, the army
headquarters in Java, were 70 heavy machine-guns - but no ammunition. Near
Batavia were 20 tanks. There were trained crews to operate 400 tanks, but
Britain had to keep all it could make, and we were turning out almost none
in 1940. The Dutch were short of rifles, had an inadequate supply of
munitions, and were pleading with Washington for bombers and pursuit
planes.

Late in August of 1940 Japan appointed its Minister of Commerce and
Industry, I. Kobayashi, head of a special delegation to the East Indies.
The mission arrived in Batavia on September 12, and except for a few
economic experts, was made up of army and navy men. "Evidently they
expected to move right in," the Governor General told me.

A fortnight after the Kobayashi mission reached Batavia came the formal
announcement that Japan had become a full ally of Germany and Italy. When
negotiations got under way, the only important demand which Kobayashi
insisted should be granted immediately was for a greatly increased supply
of oil and gasoline from Borneo and Sumatra.

....
...
..

The Governor General's last words were of a different tenor. We had sat
silent for a time after a lon talk. Then, across the wide lawns, from the
distant and dusty street came a clanking rumble to break the peace of the
great palace. We rose together and walked to one of the windows. Down the
road rolled a long line of field artillery, trucks, small armored cars.

"Look at that spectacle," His Excellency exclaimed. "This country's total
resources and savings are being spent on guns, ships, planes, bombs, tanks.
It will take a generation or more for these 70,000,000 people to amass
again the wealth which we are spending now so willingly upon preparedness.
And all because of Hitler's frenzy, Mussolini's vanity, and Japan's greed.
We must all fight this evil thing together, and win such a victory,
regardless of the cost, that it can never occur to mankind again."