Kapingamarangi

IN a recent issue of the National Geo graphic Magazine there is a long il lustrated article describing the atoll of Kapingamarangi. This is the most southerly of the Caroline Islands, and it is remarkable for two things. The 500 people on the atoll (mostly on the islet of Touhou) are pure Polynesians. They and the people on Nukuoro (200 miles to the north) constitute a Polynesian “pocket” in this area, for the presence of which there is no explanation. There are Polynesians also on Nauru, a few hundred miles to the eastward. The oeher thing which makes Kapingamarangi notable is that, as it was the Micronesian island nearest to New Guinea, it was equipped by the Japanese in 1942-43 as a naval and air base, and it was often in the news in the most difficult days of the Pacific war.

Ravuama Yunivalu has been appointed Chief Inspector of Co-operative Societies in Fiji. He was the first Morris Hedstrom University Scholar. After graduating BA in New Zealand he was awarded a Scholarship under the Colonial Develop ment and Welfare Scheme and spent over a year in the United Kingdom, Europe and Ceylon, studying co-operative organ isations and methods.

One of Noumea’s leading business men of the older generation, M. Raphael Menard, died recently at the age of 92.

He imported the first motor cars into the French Colony, built the first regular theatre and, later, installed the first

talkie equipment.