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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.