About Islands People

Corporal J. E. Broad, NZEF, who for merly was purser on one of the Union Steamship Co.’s ships trading to Fiji, and later was a member of a New Zealand engineering company in Fiji, has been recently listed as a prisoner of war.

Rev. W. F. Paton, MA, BD, who has been Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Tasmania, was recently fare welled on the eve of his return to New Hebrides to continue work there as a missionary. While in Tasmania, Mr.

Paton translated the Gospel of St. John into the language of Ambrim. The edi tion was printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society, Launceston, and is an important contribution to mission work in the Pacific.

Mr. E. J. Frame, who in pre-war days was manager of the British New Guinea Trading Co., has returned to Port Moresby with a lieutenant’s commission in Angau, and is now ofiicer-in-charge of supplies.

Private “Bill” Simpson, well known in Papua before the war, and the first of a number to enlist at Port Moresby for service overseas, has returned from the Middle East, and is now in camp near Sydney, waiting and hoping that his next move will be to Port. “Bill” is a veteran of World War I.

Mr, E. Washington, of the staff of the External Affairs Department in Sydney, is the proud possessor of the list of the first war draft of Papuan volunteers for overseas, signed by all the members and sworn-in by Captain P. Dolan, at Port Moresby. Framed, it will have pride of place on the wall of the Public Service Clubroom, when, as he remarked, “the Japs are no more and the officers of the Administration return to Port!”

Mr. A. B. Edwards, of Sigatoka, Fiji, was notified in December that his son Geoffrey, who left Fiji with the first contingent of RAF recruits, had sustained a broken leg in an air accident in South Africa.

Dr. W. Worger, Medical Officer in the Fiji Government service, has been ap pointed a District Commissioner at Levuka, in the Eastern District.

A former resident of Fiji, Mr. Esmond Kohn, died in Auckland on November 3.

He was a member of a well-known Auck land jewellery firm at the time of his death; but he formerly spent a few years with Henry Marks & Company, of Suva.

Private Cecil Purcell, of Aleipata, Samoa, has been killed in action while serving with the NZEF in the Middle East.

He is the first Samoan Euronesian to give his life in World War 11.

The death has occurred on active ser vice of Pilot-Officer John Hamilton Bom ford. He is the second son of Mrs. B. K.

Bomford, of Auckland, and the late Dr.

W. H. Bomford, of Fiji; and he was for merly employed by the CSR in Fiji. He enlisted in the Royal N.Z. Air Force in June, 1941, and went to Canada in the following November, where he completed his training as a pilot and received a commission. In June, 1942, he went to England.

The British High Commissioner for the Western Pacific (Sir Philip Mitchell) recently paid his first visit to the New Hebrides, where he decorated the British Resident Commissioner (Mr. Blandy) with the OBE.

Setareki Tuilovoni, of the Methodist Mission, who has been doing deputation work in Australia for the past two years, hopes to return to Fiji shortly. • It is expected that the following Methodist missionaries will soon visit Australia on furlough: Rev. Cecil Gribble, from Tonga; Rev. R. J. Maddox, from Samoa; and Miss Merle Farland, of BSI.

Rev. R. H. Green, of the Methodist Mission, Fiji, arrived in Sydney just before Christmas. He is at present in Melbourne with his family.

Rev. J. C. Rundle, of the Methodist Mission, has been appointed to the RAAF as a chaplain, and has left Sydney for the north. He hopes to be able to make contact with some of the Mission’s people in Papua.

Mr. Ken. Armstrong, well-known em ployee of Burns, Philp, Port Moresby, before the evacuation, is now resident in Sydney and engaged in work of an essential character.

Pilot- Officer Ivan Palmer was killed in January in operations over Malta. He was born in Levuka (Fiji) and educated in Auckland. When the American, Dwight Long, sailed his little ketch, “Idle Hour,” across the Pacific to Australia, Papua, and on to Europe, Ivan Palmer accompanied him part of the way. He was on the editorial staff of Sydney “Sun.”