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The Siege. The Japanese flood rose and widened, flowed inland from Indramayu to the railway between Batavia and Surabaya. Soon, in this central invasion sector, the Japanese were within 30 mountainous miles of Bandung. On the west they pushed inward toward Batavia. The Dutch destroyed everything of military use in Batavia, even though they insisted that the capital itself was not yet in danger. At Tjepu they wrecked the last major oil base left to them in the Indies. Then came an announcement which accented Java's extremity. The United Nations' joint southwest Pacific command in Java no longer existed. Britain's Sir Archibald Wavell, the Supreme Allied Commander, had surrendered his command and the responsibility for Java's defense, returned to his old post at the head of British forces in India and Burma. The defense of Java, still with some Allied aid, was now where Dutchmen all along had thought it ought to be: in the hands of a Dutchman, the Indies Governor General Jonkheer Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer.
Java was not yet lost. It could still be reinforced, although only at the risk of increasing air attack from captured Javanese bases. But the battle of Java in its first days rapidly became a series of Allied withdrawals and sieges. If Java was not yet lost to the Dutch, it was lost to the Allies as a Pacific bastion. It would be lost until the last Japanese was driven out.