came in the front door the Americans and British could skip out the back way, leaving as little war material behind them as possible.
In this connection there is a story which deserves to be told. Fully ten years before these events there appeared in Surabaya an unpretentious Japanese fisherman who unfurled his nets and sailed his boat about the harbor, peddling the fish he caught from a crude cart. Perhaps it should have occurred to the simple Dutch residents who bought his fish that there was a reason why they were cheaper than the catch offered by the Javanese fishermen. However, Dutch thrift nullified any suspicions. The Jap fisherman prospered. His prosperity took form in a peddler's cart with which he trundled Nipponese knickknacks about the streets and to the families at the naval station. Later, the peddler's cart was exchanged for an automobile, and the peddling trips were extended into the villages in the hills along the road across the island to Jokyokarta. Everybody knew him; and everybody liked him for his courtesy, kindness, and the bargains he offered. Everyone congratulated him when he announced his embarkation on a new business venture — a five-chair barbershop in Surabaya. He got the town's best patronage, and, no doubt, as he and his assistants lathered, clipped, and shaved, the best gossip and most recent and authentic news.
It was a distinct shock to Surabayans one day, in the summer of 1941, when they found the shop closed and shuttered and its proprietor missing. . . . "It only went to prove," so they said to one another, "that you never really understand a yellow man. There's never any telling what goes on behind their little slant eyes. . . ."
The same residents of Surabaya said the same — but silently and with venom — the next time they saw their erstwhile fisherman-peddler-barber. This was when he arrived in town in the uniform of a Japanese colonel, at the head of the army of occupation.
The retreat was on. Every afternoon about four the planes came across from Broome to the landing field at Jokyokarta. The pilots climbed out stiffly, to walk a few steps and drop wearily in the
