After the Great Depression of 1929, whose effects lasted for a decade, relations between the Dutch East Indies and Japan began to heat up. The Japanese saw the Dutch East Indies as a potential market and an abundant source of natural resources for their industry.
In the 1930s cheap goods from Japan began to enter the Dutch East Indies and displace similar goods previously imported from the Netherlands. Japanese agents were also reported to have started infiltrating the Dutch East Indies as photographers, traders, etc.
After the outbreak of the Pacific War marked by the deadly Japanese attack on the United States military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, tensions between the Dutch East Indies and Japan rose. Suspicions that Japan will soon invade the Dutch East Indies are rising, as they have done to other Asian countries.
After a series of diplomatic attempts that seemed to just buy time, the suspicions were confirmed. In a short time the Japanese imperial army conquered the Dutch East Indies army. The Governor General of the Dutch East Indies then surrendered to the Japanese who had controlled various strategic areas in the Dutch East Indies.
The photo above shows several Japanese soldiers walking on a bridge with Indonesian children. The exact time and place of this photo is not known, but it is suspected that the photo was taken in Sumatera.
Comments