Sardony

Many thanks to Arms Control Wonk for alerting me to this Wikipedia-hosted image:

Courtesy: museumofworldwarii.com

What I find amazing about this poster is the sarcastic blurb.

"The South Pacific is the South Pacific. Japan is Japan."

...and never the twain shall meet?

Is it really a paraphrase of Kipling? Or the repetition of a famous (at the time) comment by an American representative?

I am struck most of all by the Japanese ship circling between the Dutch East Indies and the U.S. cordon. What does it represent? Were any Japan-bound ships repulsed in the period 1939-1941? Did the Dutch East Indies sell oil to the Japanese? What was the status of such sales after the invasion of the Netherlands in 1940?

I know too damn little about everything.