The Tabu On The Shortlands

A Plea for British-Australian Commonsense

By Mrs. C. W. Seton, a Resident of the Shortlands —Part of the British Solomons

FW people realise that the north western end of the British Solomon Islands is still in the hands of the Japanese, and that they hold both gate ways to the Bougainville Straits —Buin- Shortlands on one side, and the northern end of Choiseul on the other. It is prob able that the much criticised “mopping up” taking place in Bougainville must surely be soon southwards to the Shortlands area.

Mono (or Treasury) Island, which belongs to the Shortlands group, lies about 25 miles south-east of the main island, and has been in Allied hands since its capture in October, 1943 —partly at bulldozer point, for, at the landing, a bulldozer charged a Jap foxhole, and neatly smothered its evil inhabitants with a few hundredweight of earth. Almost simultaneously, to the east, the 2nd Bat talion of the Ist Marine Paratroop Regt. (USA) landed on the Choiseul coast, near Voaza, and routed a Japanese detach ment at Sangigai, about 20 miles north of the Methodist station at Bambatana.

This is the last recorded land fight ing in the British Solomons. Now, nearly two years later, one feels that the stay of the enemy in these places cannot last much longer.

These districts produce little save.copra.

Chinese-owned schooners used to get beche de mer, and there was a certain amount of green snail and trochus avail able, but nothing else —except about forty

planted acres of rubber on Lofung and Kokonai, which had never been worked. W , TT ™ T T , ... 11/ HEN 1 went to sllor glands at the *▼ end of the nineteen-twenties, the district was just showing the effects of the post-war slump. Gloomy planters and traders were looking as if the bottom of their world had dropped out because copra had fallen to £l9 a ton. Through the ever worsening years that followed, they were to see it eventually go as low as £4 and to be almost unsaleable at that—to see boys paid off and planta tions abandoned to the jungle—to see the white population drop to a scant dozen or so, which were finally evacuated hur riedly in small launches before the advance of the Japs in those black days of early ’42.

My first trip on the “Mataram was Captan Voy’s last, and I have often felt sad that I did not see that kindly exu berant figure in its heyday. Throughout the trip he was quiet and withdrawing: consequently, I remember little of him except my embarrassment at the journey’s . end when, in his cabin, he introduced me with iovial cynicism to some of my new neighbours as the new manager of Lofung.

The first impressions of the place were fin de siecle, Evervthing worth having was finished. and all the good times had been exhausted before mv arrival. The gallons of champagne—the dances—the tennis parties—the bright and witty in

habitants, and the whopping times they used to have—all gone.

Our part of the world was rather a cul de sac, and the steamer used to turn round and go straight back, with a general air of saying that if, after three weeks of ocean trudge, this was the best that could be provided, it was not worth going on with. Later, when the “Malaita” went through to Rabaul, we were on the road to somewhere, and life

took on a brighter hue in consequence.

This aloofness of the Shortlands is a peculiar man-made phenomenon, and was caused after the last war by the deadline drawn between our British Protectorate and Bougainville, part of the Australian Mandate.

FROM Kamaliai at the northern end of Shortland Island, one could, in the early morning, see Mt. Bagana, in the Crown Prince Range on Bougain ville, -set like an enchanted blue fortress nearly fifty miles away. A fine bluish white cloud emerged from the tip of the volcano when things were normal with it; but once, when we were being sub jected to violent earth tremors, Bagana had a wide swathe of dark smoke pouring out and bending away across Bougainville in an easterly direction. Cloud always came up and obscured the summit of the range later in the day, so one had to get up early to see the “burning mountain,” which the natives used to look on as the place bad folk went to after death.

From Kamaliai one could see the light at the Government station at Buin on Bougainville, six miles away. “How nice to have neighbours so close,” I observed unsuspectingly, only to be withered with scorn at the idea. It was then explained to me that Buin was out of bounds, being across the invisible line between Protec torate and Mandate.

To go that six miles from Kamaliai to Buin one must make all preparations for going to a foreign country. One must first go to the DO at Shortlands, to secure customs and health clearance for ship and crew. Then one must put up one’s yellow flag and go to Kieta (chief port of Bougainville), the best part of seventy miles away. Arrived there, one must wait in outer darkness like some scabrous leper, till boarded for examina tion by the doctor and the Customs officer.

Then one could turn the boat round and trudge back along the Bougainville coast for almost the entire course pre viously travelled, till one could reach Buin, where one coud see the tantalising light of one’s starting point.

The return trip would have to be on similar lines. One would, in short, have to travel about 250 miles to go and c<pme back from a place six miles distant. The only place one could land between Shortlands and Kieta, was Refuge Island, half way, but I never heard of any one landing there.

It did not look particularly hospitable, bemg rather a barren rocky island.

In the German days there was none of this pother, for there was free coming and going for both natives and whites, and no one any the worse for it. One hopes that somewhere between the San Fran cisco Conference and other talks now pro

ceeding about the future of the islands the plight of the Shortlands will be con sidered, and something done about this.

Geographically, shortlands belongs

to Bougainville. The place is 80 miles from Gizo, and over 300 from Tulgai. All its natural affiliations are to the north and east. A potentially wealthy district in the highly strategic Bougain ville Straits, Shortlands should not be denied a chance to get on its feet again economically after this war. I do not sug gest that it should be included in the Mandated Territory, but I do feel that it should have the weight of this dead line removed. It should be possible to secure labour from Buin for the Short lands plantations, of having to bring them workers all the way from Guadalcanal and Malaita, hundreds of miles from their homes.

Our trips in the old days to Kieta were nearly always for medical attention as our district had no doctor. Residents of Kieta, looking out and seeing one of the Short lands launches in the early morning wait ing in the harbour,.would generally guess at illness as the cause of its presence. It was a horrible trip if one happened to be really ill, and there was no chance to put it at a sheltered place on the Bou gainville coast to help the patient weather the trip in good order. rpHIS tabu was having a serious effect X on the Shortlands natives, who seemed to be dying out and to be badly in need of new blood. The other islands of the Protectorate were too re mote for intermarriage on a useful scale.

The mortality amongst young women was heavy, and men outnumbered women. One would see old crones, who had already buried a couple of 'husbands, compla cently looking over an assortment of young men in their twenties, who wanted a wife.

The Alus had become lazy owing to the fall in their numbers and their indivi dual resultant wealth. Where once a whole village had subsisted on the pro ceeds of one coconut grove, now that grove might belong to one individual, who probably didn’t even live there, having property elsewhere.

However, business, if not love, laughs at locksmiths, and there was a small island half-way between Malahuna Point and Moila Point, where the natives of Shortlands and Buin used to go in their canoes to exchange news and native wares, including The famous Buin baskets.

ONE wonders how the natives have fared under the prolonged Japanese occu pation. Were many of them pro- Jap? One feels that with such a small island, even if they wished they could not have gone bush to escape the invader.

Thousands of the enemy must have been quartered on Shortlands in their palmy days, when Kahili and Kara on Buin were busy airfields, and Ballalai, three miles from Koliai village on Short lands, was a number-one fighter field.

These three big airfields were blasted and laid waste at the time of the opera tions in the Central Solomons at Munda and New Georgia and Kolombangara; and the roadstead of Shortlands, near Buin. which once provided anchorage for heavy units of the Japanese Navy, is now empty save for hulks on the coral and scrap iron at the bottom of the sea.

The Japs certainly did not impose any deadline on Shortlands, seeing how well, strategically, it fits in with Buin.

WHAT has happened to the chiefs of Shortlands? Kipau, the head chief, lived at Gomai. He was a colossal, waddling, good-tempered hulk, with a

snowy thatch, and smiling, toothless mouth, reminiscent of betelnut.

Once HMS “Sussex” spent four days in Shortlands harbour, and was open for inspection by the natives. Kipau, a “Sussex” cap-band round his white wool, impressed the officers considerably by the admiring way in which he waddled round the big guns, now and again wheezing in awed tones, “Number ONE—Number

One!”

Then there were the other chiefs, Ilala, of the one hand, from Nuhu—Riesing from Koliai—lsoma from Pirrimirri— Betiai of Aliang—Glassa of Maliai—most of them old men. Will they be still alive when Shortlands comes back to us? And what will their consciences be like?

The Alus were a distinctive crowd, with their dead black skins and ugly brownish

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a There waffone called Antonio who used tn brincr nc rravfi«;h Onrp whpn wp remonstrated with him for brinaine hen with laraT clusters of eaas told tom they would end bv dvina out he lathed for ouite five minutes at such a notton He had a feTreome habit of aDDearine wfth anvthffie un to twentv Sp SvfiT imf flftpr onp hTd a rptoiVprtoorfnll of stpampr meat reirigeraior-iuii oi steamer meat. mHE Shortlands are low. Shortland X itself is a bare six hundred feet above sea level. Approaching on th,e steamer, after the night run from Gizo, one sees, with the first light of dawn, the huge mass of Bougainville towering aloft.

Not till one is very close does ope see Shortland Island, crouched like a dog at the foot of Bougainville.

There are lovely coral beaches on all the surrounding islets and, whilst travelling among the reefs and sandbars, one passes

the whole incredible paraphernalia of a tropical picture—blazing white sand, dark blue §kies, deep-green coconuts leaning out over the sand, basking alligators on Once, coming back from Kamaliai, there was one asleep near Sivi lou, and it slept so soundly with its mouth open that the launch boys killed it by firing down its mouth with a shotgun.

They brought the 12-feet body back in the punt; and the head was still drying out on the office steps when the Japs came in.

Back from the water’s edge, the prime val jungle lifts, green and mysterious, with rain showers falling on the upper slopes like a fine grey mist. There is a tremendous average rainfall, and a large quantity of swamp, so horses are never used, and everything is done by water. w hile I was there times ever grew W poorer and more difficult for those J* the peak prices for copra were on the wane. with depression around us, and com munications and population getting more and more nil ’ we lived for our homes and our gardens and our domestic animals.

We sought the co-operation of the natives in reviving their dances. The Malaita boys, I think, took the honours for these. The y have some intricate steps and a highly finished performance of them. The devil dance was done for us at Christmas time. They take their dances very seriously, and it is very bad form for onlookers to laugh, no matter how amusing the earnestness and the antics. The Choiseul natives have a very attractive canoe dance; and the Buin» dance put on by “boys” who were brought over in the old days as slaves to the Alus, and left behind when their homes were cut off, was very spectacular.

Round trippers used to wax vocal and

not in complimentary fashion, over the heat, the flies and copra bugs that assailed them at Faisi; but those of us who lived there used to assure them that steamer-day was always the hottest occa sion for us, too, rushing about in the glaring sun in the heat of the day on the waterfront. They should have known, as we did, the happier occasions—punning with a fair wind, and the awnings down; jib and mainsail taut, and big kingfish coming in over the stem as fast as the boys could haul them; nights on the launch, with the velvet water softly slap ping the bows and the phosphorescence snakily weaving in the overside depths; the pleasures of a loyal and adequate staff in plantation or house. The more I hear of Huns and Honourable Nipponese the ™J° r “ y treated ' BECAUSE the Alus were too wealthy or MJ too lazy to work, the only work done was by indentured labour—Malaita, Guadalcanal, and Makira (San Cristoval) natives. A few Ysabel or Choiseul boys were to be found amongst the police at Korovou, or in casual jobs. They were a happy, good-natured, laughing lot in the main, though inevitably there were the lazy or scheming exceptions that could, at times, make life decidedly tiresome.

I have many pleasant and appreciative memories of our boys. Our laurich-boy, Ilala, a Malaitaman, fought through the war alongside our own men, and was decorated.

The Shortlands are, or used to be, very unhealthy. There had been many cases of blackwater there, and a world-famed Methodist mission doctor told me he con sidered it came third on the list of the world’s most unhealthy places—the first two being the Gold Coast and the Sepik

River. This was on account of the universality of the malignant Tertian type of malaria, which found ample breeding ground in the swampy terrain.

What does the future hold fpr the Shortlanders—that is, the European ones; for we will not know just what has happened to the Alus till the Japs have been run out.

These people, in the early days braved the dangers and the diseases and the bad conditions to make their homes there, and to obtain the confidence of the natives.

One hopes that the day is not far off when these people, only a handful it is true, but -who yet have been responsible for such a spectacular effect on the natives, will be able to return to their homes.