Missionaries And War

In October and November, 1942, we published details of Japanese atrocities committed against Roman Catholic missionaries in the Solomon Islands. Here is an old photograph of some of the victims.

On the extreme left is Father M. McMahon, a Canadian member of the Marist Mission, who led a party of 14 to safety, and eventually to Sydney. On the right is Father A. Duhamel, the American priest who was brutally murdered by the Japanese and whose body, with those of another priest and two sisters, was found at Tasimbok, in Guadalcanal. The two other men in the group are Brother Joseph Redman and Brother Paul Riggs.

All the men were of the Marist Order and the photograph was taken in Sydney in December, 1939, when they were on their way to their mission stations in the Solomons.