to anyone who might have the same problem
the solution to saving a long string to a VFP memo field from textarea HTML/JSP in JAVA

String sql = "UPDATE tablename SET memofield=? WHERE custID=1";
Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:"+DBConn,null,null);
PreparedStatement stmt = conn.prepareStatement(sql);
stmt.setObject(1,sql,Types.LONGVARCHAR);
stmt.executeUpdate();