Japanese minority policy; The Eurasians on Java and the dilemma of ethnic loyalty

Shortly after the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the Japanese professor Komaki Tsunekichi of the Kyoto Imperial University made far-reaching proposals for revising the Eurocentric cartography of the West by placing Japan and Asia at the centre of the map. Both Europe and Africa were designated part of the Asian continent, while America was renamed the Eastern Asia continent and Australia the Southern Asia continent. All the great oceans were seen as one and given the single name the Great Sea of Japan (Dower 1986:273). These proposals to refashion the cartography of the West reveal that in the new Great East Asian Order the Japanese saw themselves as the centre of the world and as the nucleus of all other races. They would be the leading race of the future and would dominate all other races and peoples in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.1 This aim was made quite clear in the Japanese plan for the leadership of nationalities in Greater East Asia drawn up in August 1942. In this plan the Japanese people were the pivot of all the Great East Asia Peoples' Cooperative Body.2 It stated that they had the duty to give leadership to other people. Besides them, they included the Korean, the Manchurian, the Mongolian, and the Han people as members of this body. In what was designated the Southern Area, the so-called Nanpo, containing the present-day states of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, various national minorities were distinguished from the indigenous peoples. First to be mentioned were the Overseas Chinese followed by the Indians and the Europeans and Americans. The Overseas Chinese and Indians were seen as Asian peoples who were entitled to