Strategic Map: The Prize of the Indies

In December 1938, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, then Premier of Japan, made a famous speech in which he proclaimed that Japan’s aim was the creation of a New Order in East Asia. Ostensibly this meant that the Orient should be for Orientals, working in cooperation with each other; actually, it developed, it was to mean an Orient for the enjoyment of Japan. Recently, after a year and a half’s retirement, Prince Konoye returned to power at the head of a quasi-fascist Government. Like a poor but ambitious woman who cocks a new feather on an old hat, his new Government revised his threadbare slogan to read: New Order in Greater East Asia.

The tacitly understood boundaries of Greater East Asia include Japan, Manchukuo, Inner Mongolia, China, French Indo-China, Thailand, the Malay Peninsula, The Netherlands East Indies. The next step, about which many young Japanese speak frankly, is to delete the word East: establish Japanese hegemony over Greater Asia, meaning the Philippines, Burma, India, Australia. The strategic problem of attaining the first of these objectives appears on the map which occupies the following two pages.

The military defeats of France and The Netherlands and the desperate extremity of Great Britain have recently caused Japan’s amateur imperialists to clamor for, and her professionals to prepare for, an adventure toward the equator. If the Japanese were to accomplish their much-vaunted New Order in this area, U. S. economy might be severely dislocated. Materials for a range of products all the way from tires to electric-light filaments, from tea to teak, from tin for canning to quinine for malaria, would become drastically scarce in the U. S. until substitutes could be produced in sufficient quantities. What the U. S. can do about it is limited by the fact that the East Indies lie some 2,000 miles outside the arc of effective U. S. operations. Furthermore, if the U. S. at this juncture tried to press home the recent halfhearted embargo on scrap iron, steel and oil, doing so would probably drive Japan to desperate measures in the Indies, where she could get an alternate supply of oil and some iron.

There are many other things there Japan could and would like to get. On the globe the East Indies lie scattered as if a careless creator had dashed a hamper full of specially rich soils and raw materials off the continent of Asia into the southeastern Pacific. The equator straps the area down under a blanket of damp heat which controls both the economy of the soil and the character of its inhabitants. The area produces almost all the world’s supply of rubber (94%—plantations are indicated on the map by groves of green rubber trees) and most of its tin (75%, which is mined throughout the Malay Peninsula, the richest deposits being in the western Malay States and the islands of Bangka and Billiton). It yields more petroleum (shown by derricks) than all the rest of the Far East. It supports important and vast plantation crops, such as sugar, tea, coffee, rice, tobacco, cacao, coconuts, various fibres and cabinet woods. The Philippines have a world monopoly of abaca (Manila hemp) and Java of cinchona (source of quinine). Throughout the area there are varying deposits of gold, coal, iron, zinc, lead and limited reserves of strategic minor metals—bauxite on Bintan Island, tungsten at Tavoy in Burma, manganese in the Malay States, Java and th<~ Philippines.

With such riches as these, as well as the fabulous spices and condiments which sent 16th-Century explorers sniffing to the ends of the earth, the Indies are a certain bone of future contention. But in recorded history the whole area has seen only a few quaint skirmishes—the exchange of crossbows and spears on a Philippine island near Cebu which cost the great Magellan his life; some earnest fights between the Dutch and English East India Companies; a few angry scraps between natives and a chain of great adventurers: Drake, Cook, Dampier, Wilkes; and, perhaps quaintest of all, the engagement in which George Dewey took Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, without losing a single man. During World War I the German raiders Emden and Wolf trailed a mysterious, almost merry wake through the island waters, and the Emden was finally sunk at the Cocos Islands near the southern edge of the map.

The greatest concentration o f natural wealth runs down the narrow scimitar of Malaya, Sumatra and Java, and up the east coast of Borneo. Almost all studies of East Indian strategics have been concerned with the defense of this rich curve. The usual plan (Continued on third page following) has hinged on Singapore and brought into play not only Netherlands and British eastern forces, but also (after a delaying action) part of Britain’s Mediterranean Fleet. The war in Europe quickly destroyed those well-laid plans for defense by forcing Britain to withdraw many of her ships to European waters. The problem has now to be considered from another point of view: how can Japan get at the Indies?

The problem is largely naval. Overland routes through this whole territory are utterly impassable. Formidable mountain ranges tumble down from the Himalayas. Thick jungles, swampy lowlands, torrential rivers, horrible rains, clouds of malarial mosquitoes—all make land attack out of the question. Furthermore, the problem narrows down for practical purposes to one of covering distances between naval bases (marked on the map by the flags of the nations to which they belong) and storming of a handful of coastal towns: Balikpapan, Tarakan, Batavia, Surabaya, Macassar, Singapore and a few others.

The problem of distances can be judged by the fact that if a map of the U. S. were superimposed on the map overleaf it would just about cover the area shown. Roughly Rangoon would correspond to Seattle, Guam to Boston, Sumatra to Southern California, and Florida to New Guinea. The distance from the Japanese naval base on Hainan to the heart of Borneo approximates the air distance from Fargo, N. Dak. to New Orleans, and the distance from Singapore to Manila that from Salt Lake City to Detroit.

At the top of the map are Japan’s advance bases for the push—Formosa, which Japan won from China in 1895, and Hainan, which she grabbed early last year. But before these bases could become really effective, the Japanese would have to erase the British outpost of Hong Kong. This harbor, which has the unmatchable beauty of an intimate Rio de Janeiro, was to be the base of Britain’s preliminary delaying action. Now, it is almost completely surrounded by Japanese land and naval positions. The British last summer revised their plans to resist there. Most of their revised plans at Hong Kong called for resistance only to inflict as much damage and save as much face as possible.

Next task of an attack from the north is to neutralize the flanks for a southwesterly drive. Northern French Indo-China has been penetrated economically and to a large extent militarily merely by bluff, following the fall of France. By a combination of bluff and force, it appeared easy to subdue the only other important Indo-Chinese ports: Cam-ranh Bay, which is not so strong as the French had advertised, and Saigon, which is negligible. The Japanese have already softened up Thailand by an appeal to racism—and might be further bribed by the return of Siamese territory now incorporated in Indo-China. Burma across the way, recently made to bristle with R. A. F. land ing fields (military and naval airfields indicated by red and white windsocks, commercial airfields by blue and white), would probably have to be left until later; but in any case it is on the wrong side of the peninsula for naval action.

On the other flank of an attack from the north lie the Philippines. The Japanese would be crazy to attack them before 1946, when promised Philippine independence would make penetration almost automatic. They have already invaded Mindanao with brigades of civilians and regiments of cheap products. A tight submarine ring might suffice to hold in the small U. S. squadron. based on Manila. East of the Philippines the Japanese already have bases in the mandated islands at Saipan, Rota, Yap, Palau.

After these preliminaries, the Japanese may easily attack the relatively unprotected Netherlands islands of Borneo and Celebes, boring down through the Strait of Macassar to take Tarakan, Balikpapan, Macassar. The Netherlanders have long anticipated such an attack. The Borneo oil ports have been mined and studded with artillery for several months, and oil wells outside both Tarakan and Balikpapan have been prepared for firing. Borneo refineries have been moved to Palembang on Sumatra. For about a year secret airfields have been under construction.

If the attack on Borneo were successful, the Japanese would hope to be well supplied with fuel for the major drive—on Java, then on Sumatra, and finally, from both north and south, on Singapore. Netherlands Sumatra and Java would be the first really tough nuts to crack. The naval and air base at Surabaya is sheltered by Madura Island, and both approaches are mined. The Netherlands East Indies Squadron consists of close to 100 surface craft, and although the waters are so clear that submarines might as well be in fishbowls except at night, there are over 18 modern submarines based on Surabaya. If the Japanese should attempt a landing, the Dutch can muster some 360 planes and a moderately well-trained army of 80,000 (principally for the defense of Java) with G. H. Q. at Bandung.

Singapore is one of the four most formidable naval fortresses in the world (others: Helgoland, Gibraltar, Pearl Harbor). Before the war started, Britain’s strength at Singapore consisted of three cruisers, one aircraft carrier, nine destroyers, 15 submarines and a number of smaller craft—only enough to play for time until help came from the British China Squadron (four cruisers), from Australia and New Zealand (eight cruisers, five destroyers, some of which are now in the Mediterranean) and from the Mediterranean (now impossible). Singapore’s guns are powerful, and the only successful attack would be a long siege and food blockade. But if the Japanese succeeded in taking the rest of the Indies, they might do something they have long planned on paper and for which they have even formed a company: ignore Singapore’s throttlehold on trade with the west by cutting a canal through Thailand’s 17-mile-wide Kra Isthmus.