Adaptation to Environment

Nine years after the war, Rabaul, NG, is still littered with Japanese pill boxes, gun emplace ments and bomb shelters. This par ticular bomb-shelter is next to the Court House and right in the centre of Rabaul’s commercial and business quarter.

Like a hermit-crab seeking a home in a new shell, some enterprising native had set up house in there, in May the place showed every sign of prospective long occupancy and was complete with bush-bed, blankets, cooking tins and whatnot. Built on

one end of it, shown here in part behind the empty drum, was a lean-to made of scraps of paper, tin, etc. Nobody who was asked could say which native (or natives) lived there but one European resident re marked: “Probably an employee of the Administration no private employer would be allowed to provide that sort of accommodation for his native labour."