Americans

In the Track of the Americans Changes in Noumea and Solomons

AN officer of the Information Office, Suva, Fiji, Mr. Harold Cooper, recently visited advanced battle stations in the South-west Pacific. Some of his cabled despatches were printed in the “Fiii Times,” and a condensation of two of them appears below. Pacific residents are anxious and interested to know the effect of war on island territories other than their own, but although more cor respondents and newspaper men have let Zoose in the Pacific than ever before, few, if any, have the <e lsland annle Cooper has.

Here are Noumea and the Solomons as he sees them.

APRE - WAR resident re-visiting Noumea would rub his eyes and wonder whether his name was Rip Van Winkle. Two years ago, Noumea was a sleepy tropical town, where casual traffic moved at a leisurely pace along avenues which one could cross blindfold in perfect safety. Now there, are corners where the pedestrian must wait patiently for an occasional gan in the grimy caval cade of military vehicles of all sizes, from ieeps to giant trucks, which rumble by in unwearying procession.

The change that has come over Noumea is a sample and symbol of the prodigious American exertions over the past eigh teen months in this part of the world.

Here, as in so many places in the South Pacific, the Americans have had to start from a long way behind scratch in their race to build up bases adequate to sup port a major offensive against Japan. As everybody knows, you can’t tie a battle ship to a palm tree, or land four-engined bombers on a bathing beach. Yet that was about the sum total of the facilities available to the Americans when they assumed direction of Allied operations in this theatre.

It was, at one time, fashionable to complain of the slow tempo of events in the Pacific war, and these complaints were often barbed with hints that the task of mobilising Allied striking power was either being bungled or not tackled with the grim seriousness the situation demanded. But when the full story is told of the transformation the Americans have wrought in Noumea and its cluster of subsidiary bases it will be counted as a miracle of speed and efficiency no less impressive than the launching of the first thousand Liberty ships. Before very long Japan will learn with baffled amazement exactly how quickly Uncle Sam has de livered the goods in the South Pacific. ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ GUADALCANAL to-day is a vast grave yard of Japan’s dreams of Empire.

Everywhere along that nart of the coast which was the scene of last year’s fighting there is unmistakable evidence of the overwhelming extent of the Japanese disaster.

The beach for many miles on each side of Cape Esperance is littered with hun dreds of derelict landing barges, many of which the sands have already swallowed.

Five big Japanese transports, grounded in a vain attempt to escape American bomb ing, rust forlornly in shallow water. One of them, once a show piece of Japan’s Merchant Marine, now bears, painted on its scarred and fissured hull, the humi

liating inscription: “Bomb target. Keep clear.”

Guadalcanal is the souvenir hunter’s paradise. The natives are letting little go to waste. Japanese helmets have in creased the housewife’s hoard of kitchen utensils. Sections of Japanese collapsible boats mounted on wheels make excellent village handcarts. Other boats are up turned to do duty as benches and tables.

Swords which once adorned Tojo’s officers are now used to dig yams. The arms of Guadalcanal’s grass-skirted womenfolk jangle with bracelets wrought from the metal of crashed Zeros.

There was one Japanese political officer who sought to impress village audiences by driving a six-inch nail into a tree trunk, declaring that it represented Japanese power firmly implanted in the Solomons. The brief myth of Japanese invincibility is now blown sky-high and the natives hugely enjoy the discomfiture of their would-be oppressors.

The season’s musical hit in the Islands is a song in pidgin English which tells the story of the series of Japanese de feats at the hands of American land, sea, and air forces, and each verse of which ends with the derisive line, “Me laugh along you Japan! ha ha.” The amount of face lost in the Solomons must keep many a Japanese bigwig awake of nights. • • ♦ ♦ DURING the last hours at Munda, on New Georgia, I was looking down from an observation post, about a mile from Munda Point. The tanks were moving into position to open point-blank fire on the few remaining pill-boxes at the end of the bomb-pocked rectangular airfield.

There was almost a holiday atmos phere, for everyone knew that, to quote the words of another soldier watching from the hilltop with me, “It’s all over except for handing out the cigars.” Be hind the front line Naval Construction Battalions—they are among the unsung heroes of this Pacific war—were already at work building a two-lane highway to link the beach-head with the virtually captured airfield.

As we jeeped our way back through the wilderness of shell-blasted stumps that was once Lambeti plantation, we came upon a huge steam shovel gnawing busily at a patch of ground which only a few days before had been the scene of fana tical Japanese resistance.

Even if the Americans have fallen slightly behind their original ambitious schedule for the advance on Munda, whatever time has been lost they will more than retrieve by the incredible speed with which they are exploiting their gains. The process of transforming

Munda from a ruined Japanese fortress into a smoothly functioning and well equipped Allied forward base will be com pleted before Tojo can say “co-prosperity.”

HERE is a story of Captain D. G.

Kennedy, formerly a District Officer in the Solomons, who waged a private war with the Japs until the Americans arrived and “relieved him of the responsibility for the defence of his district.”

His residence is like a miniature war museum. It is filled with trophies which he and his small band of 35 native troops have captured during several months of highly successful, albeit far from ortho dox, campaigning against the Japanese occupation forces. For most of that time Kennedy was cut off from the outside world and had to devise a strategy which would enable him to wage war against the invader at the invader’s own expense.

Before long, the enemy was unwillingly keeping him supplied, not arms, but also with food and transport, for among the earliest spoils to fall into the hands of Kennedy’s elusive guerrillas were two armed barges, large quantities of petrol and lubricating oil and enough rations to feed the entire party for three months.

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Mr. T. M. Bryce, who has been mana ger of the Bank of New South Wales in Fiji since early 1941, has been transferred to Perth, Western Australia.

22 others taken prisoner. “We felt much better,” says Kennedy, “when the tally of Japanese dead exceeded our own estab lishment, for we knew then that even if the worst happened and we were all wiped out the final score would still be in our favour.”

Kennedy’s last battle will probably go down in history as one of the briefest and oddest naval engagements ever fought. In a ten-ton schooner he at tacked, under cover of darkness, a 25-ft. whale boat, containing a party of ten Japanese, which he had followed down the coast and into a lagoon. When he found difficulty in silencing the Japanese machine-gun fire Kennedy cut the en counter short by ramming the whale boat in a manner which would have done credit to one of His Majesty’s destroyers.

In the intervals between these adven tures Kennedy carried on normal adminis trative duties and was at hand to welcome the Americans when they landed.