Dutch East Indies campaign

Dutch East Indies campaign
Part of the Pacific Theatre of World War II
Japanese forces land on Java.
Date 8 December 1941 – 9 March 1942[1] Location Dutch East Indies Result Japanese victory Territorial changes Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies
Belligerents
ABDA Command: Netherlands  Dutch East Indies  United Kingdom  United States  Australia  New Zealand Portuguese Timor	Japan
Commanders and leaders
Archibald Wavell A. T. van Starkenborgh  Hein ter Poorten  Thomas C. Hart Conrad Helfrich Karel Doorman † Richard Peirse George Brett	Hisaichi Terauchi Kiyotake Kawaguchi Ibō Takahashi Hitoshi Imamura Shōji Nishimura Jisaburō Ozawa Takeo Takagi Nobutake Kondō
Strength
148,000[2] 100,000 local forces[3] 40,000 Dutch regulars[3] 8,000 Anglo-American regulars[4] 33 warships[5] 41 submarines[6] 234 aircraft[3]	52 warships[7][8] 18 submarines[6] 107,800 personnel 193 tanks & tankettes 2,017 guns & mortars 5,898 motor vehicles 11,750 horses 609 aircraft[9]
Casualties and losses
2,384 killed 100,000+ captured[10] 24 Allied ships sunk (9 American, 9 Dutch, 5 British, 1 Australian): 1 seaplane tender 2 heavy cruisers 3 light cruisers 1 coastal defense ship 15 destroyers 1 oil tanker 1 gunboat 5,000–10,000 sailors and Marines killed on the sunken ships thousands of sailors and Marines captured[11]	671 killed[12]

The Dutch East Indies campaign of 1941–1942 was the conquest of the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) by forces of the Empire of Japan in the early days of the Pacific campaign of World War II. Allied forces attempted unsuccessfully to defend the islands. The East Indies were targeted by the Japanese for their rich oil resources which would become a vital asset during the war. The campaign and subsequent three-and-a-half-year Japanese occupation was also a major factor in the end of Dutch colonial rule in the region.