Nauru Memorial To Colonel

Chalmers

RESIDENTS of Nauru are considering the erection of a memorial to the late Colonel F. R. Chalmers, who, with four members of the British Phos phate Commission, was murdered on the island during the Jap occupation.

Colonel Chalmers, an Australian, was Administrator of Nauru when the Japs occupied it in 1942.

Europeans were evacuated before the Japs landed but he, with the four BPC officials, decided to stay behind to care for the natives.

Following the first American bombing raid on the island on March 25, 1943, the five Europeans were taken from their place of imprisonment and brutally put to death. (The Jap navy Commander in charge of Nauru at the time was later hanged for this crime.) During 1943 two separate shipments of 1,200 Nauruans were taken to Truk, in the Carolines, (where about 500 of them perished). The reason for their removal from Nauru was apparently because of food shortage.