¹Though, somewhat confusingly, they call them "references" instead of pointers. But they really are more like C++ pointers than like C++ references because you

• obtain one of these pointer/references by allocating an object on the heap via the operator new,
• can assign the value "null" to one of these to indicate that it isn’t pointing at anything at all, and
• can assign a new address to one of these to make it point at some different object on the heap

All three of these properties are true of C++ pointers but not of C++ references. So Java "references" really are the equivalent of C++ "pointers", but by renaming them, Java advocates are able to boast that Java is a simpler language because it doesn’t have pointers. That’s more than a little disingenuous, IMO.