JAPANESE IN JAVA

All the open spaces around the great naval airfield at Surabaya, Java, are set with bamboo stakes, about waist high, their tops whittled razor-sharp. A visiting journalist recently asked what they were for. The commander of the base explained that they were designed as an unpleasant reception for parachutists, and added: "When Holland first fell and we were very excited we put poison on the tips of all these stakes."

The sharp stakes of Surabaya were just one sign last week of the alertness of The Netherlands East Indies. The islands had new cause to be wary. Another Japanese negotiator was on his way to Batavia ostensibly to talk oil--but the Dutch knew that selling oil to Japan might be a very minor part of the conversations. They recalled what happened to French Indo-China.

Until last week Japanese-Dutch negotiations on the Indies were as different from Japanese-French "negotiations" on Indo-China as black and white. The Japanese just walked into Indo-China in the face of French blustering. In The Netherlands Indies they got nowhere in the face of determined Dutch geniality.

First the Japanese proposed sending as negotiator General Kuniaki Koiso, who, after a previous visit to the Indies, had publicly made some abusive remarks about the Dutch. The Dutch said he would not be acceptable. The Japanese sent instead a Cabinet Minister, Ichizo Kobayashi of Commerce and Industry. To receive him fittingly, Queen Wilhelmina cabled from London raising Hubertus J. Van Mook. Director of the Department of Economic Affairs, to the rank of Cabinet Minister of the Dutch Government-in-Exile.

When the Japanese mission docked at Batavia, tiny Envoy Kobayashi and his 23 aides were greeted by a guard of honor who, it happened, were: 1) the force assigned to rounding up all Japanese in case of hostilities; 2) the tallest men in the Indies. (On his return to Japan, Mr. Kobayashi told the press: "I was amazed at the tallness of the people. I do not even compare in height with a child.") Members of the Japanese mission smilingly pointed at the bristling shore fortifications, barbed wire and blockhouses. Oh yes, said the Dutch, with perfectly straight faces, in such unsettled times as these it was quite natural that The Netherlands Indies should be worried about the imperialist ambitions of French Indo-China.

The Governor General invited the Japanese to a reception. The Japanese accepted, planning to attend in native costume or uniform. The Dutch sent word that those who attend receptions of the Governor General always go in formal European dress. Immediately, each tailor shop in town received orders for five or six small tail coats. At the reception, Colonel Itsuo Ishimoto of the mission drank more Bols gin than was good for him, became attracted by the long curved creese of a Javanese prince. The creese is more than a sword to the Javanese; it is a sacred symbol, and if it is drawn rashly and without preliminary invocations, Javanese believe that misfortune overtakes the rash drawer. Colonel Ishimoto, without asking permission, drew out the creese and waved it about. A few days later he went to Bandung, collapsed with pernicious anemia, and died. Javanese natives were impressed.

The mission was ushered into one of the hottest rooms in torrid Java. It developed that Mr. Kobayashi spoke only one foreign language: German. The Dutch politely refused to speak the language of an enemy. The conference was carried on in English. Kobayashi, unable to understand a word, slept half the time, protested in Japanese half the time.

The Dutch said: Have you agenda? The Japanese had none. The Dutch said: We never confer without agenda. The Japanese said: Oil, we want 3,500,000 tons. The Dutch said: We are a Government, not a firm of oil merchants. So the Japanese had to go to offices of the oil companies like any other customer. Kobayashi went home to Tokyo.

Even the oil companies were difficult. The companies said they could not possibly sell the Japanese that much oil. The Japanese asked for some high-octane aviation gasoline. The companies said: our aviation gasoline is all contracted for. Do you expect us to import aviation gasoline so that we can sell you ours? The Japanese wanted to pay in yen. The companies demanded guilders or dollars. Final sale: 1,040,000 tons of refined oil; 760,000 tons of crude; 0 tons of aviation gasoline. Said Japanese Oil Expert T. Mukai, as he signed: "I will have a lot of explaining to do when I get back to Tokyo."

Apparently Mr. Mukai's explanation did not satisfy the Army and the Navy. The Japanese appointed a shrewd old diplomat, Kenkichi Yoshizawa, who as Ambassador to France (1930-31) and Foreign Minister (1932) learned how to deal with the strange men of the West. Last week, as he passed through Shanghai on his way to Java, the Japanese military spokesman there said that Japan would give the Dutch "one last chance." The Dutch were not panicky; they put no poison on the stakes of Surabaya. But they were tense. They realized that this time polite highhandedness might not be enough.

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