Why are local variables not initialized in Java?

Question

Was there any reason why the designers of Java felt that local variables should not be given a default value? Seriously, if instance variables can be given a default value,

Answer 1

Moreover, in the example below, an exception may have been thrown inside the SomeObject construction, in which case the 'so' variable would be null and the call to CleanUp will throw a NullPointerException

SomeObject so;
try {
  // Do some work here ...
  so = new SomeObject();
  so.DoUsefulThings();
} finally {
  so.CleanUp(); // Compiler error here
}

What I tend to do is this:

SomeObject so = null;
try {
  // Do some work here ...
  so = new SomeObject();
  so.DoUsefulThings();
} finally {
  if (so != null) {
     so.CleanUp(); // safe
  }
}