TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod cabled from Melbourne an account of how the courageous Dutchmen of Java died fighting.

TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod last week cabled from Melbourne this account of how the Dutchmen of Java died fighting:

When the history of War II is written, that page belonging to the indomitable Dutch should be illuminated with the blood of heroes. For a thousand years free men should stand…

Hubertus van Mook cried to Washington that the East-Indies needed reinforcements must come continuously now that the battle for the Indies had come to Java.

The voice was like a voice of doom. It was the voice of Dr. Hubertus Johannes van Mook, Lieutenant Governor General of The Netherlands East Indies:

It is not that dozens of battleships, scores of cruisers and thousands of planes are needed. . . . It is only a question…

One of the decisive sea battles of history was fought last week, the naval battle for Java. A battle, lost before it began, for the last bulwark against Japanese conquest of the Indies.

One of the decisive sea battles of history was fought last week in the placid waters between Java and Borneo. It was the naval battle for Java. It was a battle for the last bulwark against Japanese conquest of the Indies, a battle for the Southwest Pacific, a battle for… View large cover

Last week a Dutchman took command of the Dutch and U.S. Naval forces defending The Netherlands East Indies, named Admiral Helfrich.

Last week a Dutchman took command of the Dutch and U.S. Naval forces defending The Netherlands East Indies. Into the joint command vacated by the U.S. Navy’s warworn, 64-year-old Admiral Thomas Charles Hart stepped 55-year-old Vice Admiral Conrad Emil Lambert Helfrich.

Home to Sharon. The Navy Department said that…

The first Axis shells land on the soil of the Americas, carrying the war into the Caribbean.

One night this week Associated Press Photographer Herbert White was sound asleep on the little Dutch island of Aruba, just off the Venezuelan Coast. At 1:30 a.m. an explosion bowled him out of bed. Photographer White’s routine assignment, covering a routine inspection trip by the U.S. Army’s Lieut. General Frank…

Amboina, the Indies’ second naval base, a key to Java fell. Amboinese troops had to withdraw into the jungle.

The brown, lean men gazed down the barrels of their Dutch and American rifles at the yellow visitors. The brown men fired. The yellow men fell. Dutch officers urged on the Amboinese—the best native troops in The Netherlands East Indian Army. Japanese aircraft appeared again & again with bombs…

By General Gerardus J. Berenschot calling General Hein ter Poorten saying “Het is Zoover”-This is it, the Netherlands East-Indies war plans went into action.

The Eastern Theater of war moved on. Americans still held a corner of Luzon, British still held Singapore, but the Japanese had overrun most of the Philippines and Malaya. Now their attack was rolling on toward their third major objective, the Indies —a new terrain with a new cast of… View large cover

Japan attacked the NL. East-Indies. The Dutch, in need for help, got some – but not enough – from U.S. bombers. The Allies, in the end, finally recognized its tremendous strategic importance.

The next prize that the Jap wants is the rich Netherlands East Indies. Last week while he was still fighting in Luzon and Malaya he struck at the Indies, for their supplies of oil, rubber, metals and all the other storied riches by whose possession he could tilt the economy…

The Japanese did not attack a single Netherlands outpost, but the Dutch knew there was no permanency to this, and they went straight to work,

To U.S. homebodies, the field where U.S. soldiers were giving their lives (see p. 16) seemed the most urgent. But to the Allied strategists, there was no more important battlefield than Malaya. On that battlefield Singapore was at stake. At Singapore the future of the Allies in Asia was at…

The Netherlands East Indies, so far unattacked, declared war in the knowledge that they would be attacked sooner or later.

The first crashing blows were so widespread that it looked as if the Japanese were trying to realize their “Heavensent,” Hell-patented ambition of dominating the Pacific all at one fell shock. Actually they had no such crazy plan. They had, instead, a pattern of attack for a first move which…

The U.S. occupied Dutch Guiana (Surinam), a demonstration of U.S.-Dutch collaboration. For the Dutch to protect Bauxite mines would mean withdrawal of troops from The NL. East Indies.

Franklin Roosevelt was feeling no pain this week. He had laid his plans, and his plans seemed to be working out. He had seized a country—Dutch Guiana (Surinam). He had temporarily stalemated the Japanese, at a time when every day’s delay before the Japs went to war constituted a…

Curaçao welcomed Jewish refugees from Europe.

From the deck of a ship entering the harbor, Willemstadt in Curaçao looks like a toy Dutch town, its well-scrubbed houses bright in the vivid tropic sunlight. To 79 men, women and children hanging over the rails of the Spanish liner Cabo de Hornos last week, Curaçao seemed very beautiful…

The R.A.F. bombed The Netherlands. The bombs were colored orange in honor of the House of Orange. Each bore the letters V for Victory, and W for Wilhelmina.

London announced last week that the R.A.F. bombed The Netherlands with 1,000,000 of a new type delayed-action bombs. Each was a rectangular box about three inches by two inches by one, colored orange—in honor of the House of Orange. Each bore the letters V (for Victory) and W…

In The Netherlands a Dutch Nazi was knifed while attending another Nazi’s funeral.

isorder flared dangerously in Hitler’s New Order last week. In Norway, most persistent trouble-maker for the German conquerors, spontaneous outbursts against Nazi rule broke out from Oslo to Narvik.

Disquiet in Oslo reached a crest when 2,000 workers in the Akers shipbuilding yards went on strike. They resented Nazi plundering…

A report on the Netherlands-Indies, since all Japan’s plans are made with an eye on the Indies, the Dutch are buying war equipment in the U.S. Van Mook is portrayed as a strong negiotiator.

Abandoning his tour of Western Austral ia and summoning his Cabinet, Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies hurried back to Melbourne this week. The chips were down in the Far East ; the next thing to be seen was Japan’s hand. Bob Menzies said that the people of Australia were standing… View large cover