Do You Remember?

From RIM of 20 Years ago

rN the Pacific, in February, 1938, things were beginning to warm up after the holidays (which :ame late in many places, because ;he ships with Christmas supplies veren’t too punctual).

Educationists from all over the "acific were meeting in Honolulu to liscuss some airy-fairy aspects of education, Suva was getting some lew Administrative buildings at long ast, NG identity Mrs. Doris Booth lad five Europeans and 200 natives working in her Wau goldmine, and n Tonga they had just gaoled a iongan confidence man who for six ears had taken “tax money” from lis fellow natives, and used it to uy himself cars, expensive Euro pean suits and cigars instead of igarettes.

Some other events, as reported in 'lM’s issue of February, 1938: Fiji had just had a strike among Indian and ijian labourers at the Lautoka sugar mill, he trouble started over the payment system )r workers, who established an organised icket line as soon as they struck.

PlM's Suva correspondent said the CSR Co. cceded to the workers' demands after a ouple of days, "a fact which caused con derable comment throughout the Colony, old ands remarking that it was most unlike the SR to give in on such a matter". ❖ * * In Hawaii, tourist traffic was booming so

much that it had now become the island's third industry. 53,000 tourists visited there in 1937 —which is small potatoes to-day. * * * A correspondent in the New Hebrides—a planter—was getting hot under the collar about anthropologists. In a letter he said, "What constitutes an anthropologist? For many years this —and I suppose other groups—have had a succession of people coming from this or that museum or university or body, and claiming to be specialists in one or other branch of science. A portion are genuine and keenly in search of knowledge, others are seeking notoriety, cheap or otherwise; others simply seek local colour to clothe fiction or theories".

Twenty years don't change some things, apparently.

In an editorial headed, "Japan's Shadow on the Pacific", PIM was saying: "The facts are indisputable; and the danger is so real that we need offer no apology for returning to the subject again and again. The peoples of the Pacific must try to realise what is happening . It has been explained in this journal many times that a clash between Europeans and Asiatics, led by the Japanese, is unavoidable." * * * Miss Barbara Hitchins, 23, who had made news the previous month by flying her single engined aircraft from Australia to Port Moresby, was making further news by being reported ™ ,SSI "9- L But she turned °P after three days.

She had been forced down near Madang, while making a flight from Kerema to Wau. She had simply "overshot" Wau, explained a Port Moresby correspondent, in the understatement of the year.