Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Glossary
- Introduction
- Chapter One American Foreign Policy and the End of Dutch Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia: An Overview
- Chapter Two “It’s 1776 in Indonesia”
- Chapter Three The United States and the Dutch East Indies: the Celebration of Capitalism in West and East during the 1920’s
- Chapter Four American Visions of Colonial Indonesia from the Great Depression to the Growing Fear of Japan,1930-1938
- Chapter Five The Specter of Japan and America’s Recognition of the Indonesian Archipelago’s Strategic Importance,1938-1945
- Chapter Six The Politics of Independence in the Republik Indonesia and International Reactions,1945-1949
- Chapter Seven The Emerging Cold War and American Perspectives on Decolonization in Southeast Asia in the Postwar Era
- Chapter Eight Indonesia’s Struggle for Independence and the Outside World: England, Australia, and the United States in Search of a Peaceful Solution
- Chapter Nine Armed Conflict,the United Nations’Good Offices Committee, and the Renville Agreement: America’s Involvement in Trying to Reach a Settlement
- Chapter Ten Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia and Indonesian Politics:US Foreign Policy Adrift during the Course of 1948
- Chapter Eleven Rescuing the Republic’s Moderates from Soviet Communism: Washington’s Conversion to Unequivocal Support of Indonesia’s Independence
- Epilogue
- Archival Sources and Selective Bibliography
- Sources of Illustrations
- Notes
- Index
Chapter Five - The Specter of Japan and America’s Recognition of the Indonesian Archipelago’s Strategic Importance,1938-1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Glossary
- Introduction
- Chapter One American Foreign Policy and the End of Dutch Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia: An Overview
- Chapter Two “It’s 1776 in Indonesia”
- Chapter Three The United States and the Dutch East Indies: the Celebration of Capitalism in West and East during the 1920’s
- Chapter Four American Visions of Colonial Indonesia from the Great Depression to the Growing Fear of Japan,1930-1938
- Chapter Five The Specter of Japan and America’s Recognition of the Indonesian Archipelago’s Strategic Importance,1938-1945
- Chapter Six The Politics of Independence in the Republik Indonesia and International Reactions,1945-1949
- Chapter Seven The Emerging Cold War and American Perspectives on Decolonization in Southeast Asia in the Postwar Era
- Chapter Eight Indonesia’s Struggle for Independence and the Outside World: England, Australia, and the United States in Search of a Peaceful Solution
- Chapter Nine Armed Conflict,the United Nations’Good Offices Committee, and the Renville Agreement: America’s Involvement in Trying to Reach a Settlement
- Chapter Ten Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia and Indonesian Politics:US Foreign Policy Adrift during the Course of 1948
- Chapter Eleven Rescuing the Republic’s Moderates from Soviet Communism: Washington’s Conversion to Unequivocal Support of Indonesia’s Independence
- Epilogue
- Archival Sources and Selective Bibliography
- Sources of Illustrations
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The State Department's growing preoccupation with the belligerence of Japan compelled the US Consul General in Batavia, Erle Dickover, to respond to nervous inquiries concerning Japan's commercial activities in the Dutch East Indies. In early 1939,he sent several elaborate reports to Washington,in which he detailed the scope of Japan's economic enterprise in the Dutch East Indies.The Consul General described in great detail the more than “one hundred Japanese corporations” doing business in Java,Sumatra,Celebes (Sulawesi),and some of the smaller islands. He also informed his superiors in Washington that Japanese companies leased approximately 380,000 acres of land throughout the Indonesian archipelago for the purpose of cultivating rubber,palm oil,coffee,tea,and coconuts.
In a similar vein, Dickover discussed the presence of approximately 2,000 Japanese fishing and pearling vessels operating in the region. He conceded that he had little doubt that Japan's extensive commercial fleet sailing in between the thousands of islands of the archipelago, manned by capable Japanese crews of “natural-born” fishermen and pearl divers, possessed an enormous “military value.”These ships had most certainly “charted every foot of the waters of the archipelago, each shifting shoal and every submerged rock, for the Japanese Navy.” In order to illustrate Dutch perceptions of Japan's shrewd economic infiltration of the Indonesian archipelago, he quoted a journalist in Makassar,who had written in the pages of the Java Bode on January 6, 1939, that Europeans should never forget that the Japanese tended to pursue their objectives in a single-minded fashion.Employing hackneyed Western stereotypes about supposedly inscrutable Asians,the Java Bode reporter asserted that the goal of the Japanese in the Netherlands East Indies was to herd Europeans “out the front door with long faces,” while they entered via the back door “with sphinx-like smiles.” Once the Japanese had settled inside the house, he concluded that it might be impossible “to drive them out again.” What he did not mention, however,was that the overall Japanese population in the Dutch East never exceeded 7,000 people at its peak in 1927 and gradually declined thereafter.Thus, he had created the impression that the Japanese presence in the archipelago was much greater than it actually was.
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- American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/IndonesiaUS Foreign Policy and Indonesian Nationalism 1920–1949, pp. 100 - 118Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2002