Undertaking
p. 43 · Read in the full issue
Americans In The
North Pacific
Undertaking Scientific Research —En Masse
By a Staff Writer
• It was said in World War 11, as we watched enormous forces, both human and material, piling into the Pacific, that the Americans never send a boy on a man’s errand —they usually send two men.
THIS is true also of the United States’ peacetime activities in the Pacific.
We have received from Mr. Harold J. Coolidge, Executive Director of the Pacific Science Board —he has been visiting the South Pacific—a 10-years’ review of the Board’s field programmes, up to the end of 1956.
There is no doubt that the Pacific archipelagoes for which the Ameri cans are responsible—and especially Marshall, Carolines, Marianas, Guam, Ryukyus, Okinawa and East Samoa—have had the full treat ment.
The Board has been responsible for the formation of CIMA, SIM, ICCP and SIRI. For the uninitiated, these represent Co-ordinated In vestigation of Micronesian Anthro pology, Scientific Investigations in Micronesia, Invertebrate Consult ants Committee for the Pacific, and Scientific Investigations in the Ryukyu Islands.
176 Specialists
During the ten years 1947-1956, the Board, through these channels, and directly, initiated, supported and carried out a great deal of basic research. It fully employed no less than 176 specialists, and as sisted another 69 scientists in pri vate research.
By South Pacific standards, there are not many people in those North Pacific groups except perhaps Okinawa; but, in ten years, the scientists have examined and re ported copiously on their ethno graphy, atoll culture, anthropology, social organisation, land tenure, subsistence economy, psychology, native money, political factionalism, vital statistics, problems of re settlement, languages, botany, hy drology, marine zoology, ento mology, geology, marine biology, icthyology, forestry, nutrition.
No one can question the useful ness of the work. But how does America find the huge funds neces sary for such projects, while vir tually financing the free world in carrying on a global Cold War?