Guess At New Territories Boundaries In
p. 42 · Read in the full issue
The Pacific
Letter to the Editor
HERE is my guess for the post-war set-up in the Pacific: The United States will hold the Japanese Mandated Islands.
Australia will retain the Islands con trolled by her in 1939, to which will be added the British Solomons and the northern half of the New Hebrides.
Dutch New Guinea and Timor also will probably come under Australian control.
France will retain New Caledonia; and the southern half of the New Hebrides will be transferred to her.
Sooner or later Fiji will pass to New Zealand—and the whole of Samoa to the United States.
Naval and air bases will be allotted to protect the special interests of individual nations, and the interests of the United Nations as a whole.
The United States will be given first choice, and will probably pick Noumea Naval Base and Tontouta Airfield, in New Caledonia, and Havannah Harbour Naval Base and Espiritu Santo Airfield in the New Hebrides. France and Australia, respectively, will gladly cede the rights
to these bases in their then-controlled Territories, under an arrangement similar to that whereby the United States has built and operates bases in the British West Indian Islands.
In addition to the above, United States naval and air power will be based on Samoa, Japanese Mandated Islands, Philippines, and French Indo-China.
British-New Zealand power will be based on Fiji.
In the Melanesian Arc, RAAF squadrons will' operate from ’dromes in Guadal canal, Munda, Bougainville, Rabaul, New Guinea Mainland, Papua, and Timor.
British-Australian naval power, based on Port Moresby, Rabaul, and a Solo mons base, will also protect the Arc; while, in the Dutch East Indies, Holland will spend much more in defence than hitherto, as well as ceding rights to the United States and the British Empire for the establishment of naval and air bases there.
As regards commercial aviation, equal and reciprocal rights will be granted to airlines of the United Nations for the use of air bases not required by the Services.
Private interests will no doubt utilise many of the remaining air-strips scat tered throughout the Islands.
I am, etc.,