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There are many other things there Japan could and would like to get. On the globe the East Indies lie scattered as if a careless creator had dashed a hamper full of specially rich soils and raw materials off the continent of Asia into the southeastern Pacific. The equator straps the area down under a blanket of damp heat which controls both the economy of the soil and the character of its inhabitants. The area produces almost all the world's supply of rubber (94%—plantations are indicated on the map by groves of green rubber trees) and most of its tin (75%, which is mined throughout the Malay Peninsula, the richest deposits being in the western Malay States and the islands of Bangka and Billiton). It yields more petroleum (shown by derricks) than all the rest of the Far East. It supports important and vast plantation crops, such as sugar, tea, coffee, rice, tobacco, cacao, coconuts, various fibres and cabinet woods. The Philippines have a world monopoly of abaca (Manila hemp) and Java of cinchona (source of quinine). Throughout the area there are varying deposits of gold, coal, iron, zinc, lead and limited reserves of strategic minor metals—bauxite on Bintan Island, tungsten at Tavoy in Burma, manganese in the Malay States, Java and th<~ Philippines.
With such riches as these, as well as the fabulous spices and condiments which sent 16th-Century explorers sniffing to the ends of the earth, the Indies are a certain bone of future contention. But in recorded history the whole area has seen only a few quaint skirmishes—the exchange of crossbows and spears on a Philippine island near Cebu which cost the great Magellan his life; some earnest fights between the Dutch and English East India Companies; a few angry scraps between natives and a chain of great adventurers: Drake, Cook, Dampier, Wilkes; and, perhaps quaintest of all, the engagement in which George Dewey took Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, without losing a single man. During World War I the German raiders Emden and Wolf trailed a mysterious, almost merry wake through the island waters, and the Emden was finally sunk at the Cocos Islands near the southern edge of the map.
The greatest concentration o f natural wealth runs down the narrow scimitar of Malaya, Sumatra and Java, and up the east coast of Borneo. Almost all studies of East Indian strategics have been concerned with the defense of this rich curve. The usual plan (Continued on third page following) has hinged on Singapore and brought into play not only Netherlands and British eastern forces, but also (after a delaying action) part of Britain's Mediterranean Fleet. The war in Europe quickly destroyed those well-laid plans for defense by forcing Britain to withdraw many of her ships to European waters. The problem has now to be considered from another point of view: how can Japan get at the Indies?