the Tropics

Tulagi's Scars

Quick Healing Hand of the Tropics

AN American correspondent has been A visiting Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and the other Solomons battlefields.

He described how discarded equipment is rotting in the jungles, how wrecked ships are rusting on the reefs, how the tropical vegetation is regaining posses- Sion Of trenches and foxholes. He proceeds:— The first War reminder to greet the eye in beautiful Tulagi Harbour is the . Ampripnn hillhnnrrl tvnP ir.

American billboard type, m Simple black and white, reading, Kill Japs, kill more Japs. You will help kill the little yellow so-and-so’s if you do your job well.” The sign is on a rocky cliff high above Government and Stur gj s docks Gliding into anrhnragp at Tnlnp-i thP J 1 q- an „ a 6 at lulagl, the ship passes Sing and Song Islands, two small islands named by the 150 Chin- CS6 Who had a Chinatown on the OUt skirts of Tulagi, a British settlement, before the Japs invaded. No Chinese are l e ft. Qnly one main building remains Gavutu and Tanambogo both look like scarred Wastelands sticking out of the Water across from Tulagi. About all that is left of them are coconut-stumps sticking bleakly into the sky. The Isle °f Palms nearby has only a few standing palms.

Gavutu and Tanambogo are connected by an unused causeway. On the former was o nce a beautiful South Seas planta tion headquarters. Former British over oniri Gnvntn was a virtual “trnniral SCOTS SaiQ LraVUWI Was a Virtual tropical fairyland.

Lever Bros., Ltd., a soap firm control ling 20>000 acres of copra plantations an d employing 8,000 natives on 21 plan tations and paddocks scattered through ± j j -u j this district Of hundreds Of islands, had its headquarters there and maintained a hospital, offices, homes, and clubs for 33 white employees, both men and women.

Nearby Makambo Island, which still has its pretty red-roofed houses and palm trees, was the headquarters of another huge firm, Burns, Philp, Ltd., of

Australia. It has suffered less from the war.

On Tulagi, seat of the British Resident Commissioner, who governed the British Solomons under the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, at Suva, the cricket field has given way to Navy and Marine camps, and the nine-hole golf course to camp sites and an open-air picture show.

A RAMBLING eight-roomed English

hoiel is perched on a hillside a Dove the haroour. When the armed forces took over from the Japs only two mementoes of peaceful days remained — an English coo King range and an old fashioned framed picture of a ship named tne '‘Beiama,” which hangs in the dining room. The Japs built a shrine with pure brass roof and expertly joined timbers, on the hillside above the hotel, and it still stands. The Marines hang laundry there on rainy days.

Several months ago Marines were sur prised to find a shorts-clad Australian calmly digging away back of the hotel.

He unearthed a quantity of silverware and other valuables, explaining that he nad been a Lever overseer, and had buried the silverware when the Japs invaded.

Except for the scarred trees and scrap piles of Jap, American and Australian equipment along the quay, there is little outward evidence remaining of the Jap occupation. The war, however, still strikes heavily on Guadalcanal and Tulagi, which are subject to constant air raids on the military installations.