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One out of 11 Shinto shrines built in Indonesia. [34] The Japanese divided Indonesia into three separate regions; Sumatra (along with Malaya) was placed under the 25th Army, Java and Madura were under the 16th Army, while Borneo and eastern Indonesia were controlled by the 2nd South Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) based in Makassar.
Following these operations, the 16th Army, led by Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura, and the 25th Army, under the command of General Yamashita Tomoyuki, began their sights to take control of Indonesia. [5] From its intelligence reports, the Netherlands was well aware of Japan's intention to expand its influence to Indonesia.
The East Indies was one of Japan's primary targets if and when it went to war because the colony possessed abundant valuable resources, the most important of which were its rubber plantations and oil fields; [13] [14] the colony was the fourth-largest exporter of oil in the world, behind the U.S., Iran, and Romania.
Japanese forces landed in Pontianak, West Kalimantan on 19 December 1941 and quickly overran Dutch defenses in the region. By late December, interior towns and cities such as Putussibau and Sanggau fell into Japanese control. With the fall of Banjarmasin, a major city of Dutch Borneo, in 1942, the Japanese assumed control over the entire island ...
After the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the liberation of the Philippines, the Japanese abandoned hope of turning Indonesia into a puppet state, and now began to try and win goodwill. However, a rebellion by PETA militias in Blitar in February 1945 showed the Japanese they were losing control. [3] [4]
Control of these routes was vital to securing the territory. [11] [12] Japanese military movement in the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDA) area from 1941 to 1942. With the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Japanese immigrants had been welcomed since the 1900s. Companies such as Mitsubishi and Nissan were involved in trade with the territory.
After Japan was defeated by the Allies in 1945, colonial control from Tokyo over the far-flung territories ended. The extent of Japanese governance was restricted to the naichi (excepting Karafuto Prefecture, which was annexed by the Soviet Union); the Nanpō and Ryūkyū Islands were returned to Japan by the US in 1968 and 1972 respectively.
[20] [5] Japanese propaganda was useful in mobilizing Japanese citizens for the war effort, convincing them Japan's expansion was an act of anti-colonial liberation from Western domination. [21] The booklet Read This and the War is Won —for the Japanese Army—presented colonialism as an oppressive group of colonists living in luxury by ...