Product

It Was A

Of Coconut Radio

Letter to the Editor IN the article “Red Tape in French Oceania” (PIM, December, 1949) ap pears the statement: “It is a well known fact that almost all government officials have traded in the black market’.’

Please allow the undersigned to point out that they have never before been apprised of this so-called fact—a cir cumstance that appears more than curious, in so much as all of us have been American residents of Tahiti for the past 14 to 20 years.

Your anonymous contributor further informs us that; “It is widely rumoured that one fonctionnaire recenty made over 9,000 dollars in black market cur rency dealings.”

Tahiti’s rumour-factory (better known as the coconut radio) is generally con ceded to be the most active of any in the Pacific. No other word-of-mouth broadcasting has quite its vigor and abandoned fantasy. And the man is dull indeed who fails to get many a chuckle from its high flown fictions. But how we could have missed this one about a mythical official and his 9,000 dollar booty, we can’t imagine. Possibly it was never truly on the island air, but sprang fresh and full-blown from the rather badly-muddled mind of your unnamed contributor.

We are, etc.,

Lewis Hirshon. W. S. Stone.

Eddie Lund. Preston Moore.

Frank Stimson. John Farnham.

Papeete, 17/2/50.