Still Bomb Holes at Kihili

ONCE the most-bombed area of the South Pacific, the former mission station at Kihili, South Bougainville, still presents a scene of destruction. The Japs made a major airfield here for their Solomon Islands campaign in 1942-3.

A visitor from NZ writes: “A

number of wrecked ships strew the beach near Kihili. Ashore, the whole mission station is being laboriously reconstructed. It is pitted with bomb holes. On the edge of the former Jap airstrip lie fragments of hundreds of planes swept out of the way after they had been bombed. The salvage men are still at work. There is fre quent work for the officer whose job

it is to ‘delouse’ bombs and other dangerous material.”