The Editars' Mailbag

That Plaque Was No

Ghost, Says Mr. Clymo

Old New Guinea-hand, Edgar John Clymo, now in the Northern Territory, at Batchelor, won’t agree with those who say there was no plaque on the Montevideo Maru memorial stone in Rabaul (PIM, Oct., p. 33, Nov., p. 27). He says he’s prepared to state on oath that a plaque did exist, because he has seen it. He once had a photograph of it, but hasn’t one now.

Mr. Clymo says he can’t remember the exact wording but it was some thing like “To the memory of the residents of New Guinea who perished in the Montevideo Maru which sailed from here on such and such a date”. The last line, he thinks, ended with RIP.

He says the plaque, as he re members it, was in polished grey, with deep cut lettering in black.

Mr. Clymo adds: “I would sug gest that as the plaque was intact and in place when I left Rabaul in December, 1949, it was taken by a souvenir hunter who had a special or personal interest in it, or who was an ardent collector of war relics.

It could be anywhere now, but if an advertisement were placed in newspapers asking the holder of the plaque to supply the wording, there may be a remote hope of securing it.”

If, as Mr. Clymo says, there was a plaque, then surely somebody else knows how it got there?

What Happened To

Mrs. Evans?

We have an inquiry from Mr.

Richard Chambers, Oregon, USA, for a Mrs. Anne Dennett Evans, late of the Western District of Papua, or failing her, her daughter Sharrett, who should now be a woman in her early 30’s. Let Mr.

Chambers explain his troubles him self: Away back in 1936 an American author, John W. Vandercook, visited Fiji, P-NG and the Solomons and the next year published a very entertaining book about the trip, entitled Dark Islands. It was brought out by Harper and Brothers, New York and London.

In his book, Mr. Vandercook de scribed an extraordinary person, Mrs. Anne Dennett Evans, and her daughter (at that time ten years old) Sharrett.

Mr. Vandercook and I both wonder what became of Mrs. Evans. It is not likely that she would still be alive, as she was in her early fifties

in 1936. But she must have been; P-NG, on a rubber plantation (] own) a long, long way from civili tion, in 1942.

In 1936, she had just sold a co nut plantation she had inheri from her late husband, Paul Eva many miles up the Fly River.

One wonders if you would be good as to forward this letter your Upper Fly River corresponde Chances are he or she might be good as to drop me a few lines tell me what happened to the Eva during those momentous mon and then the years between tt and now.

We remember Mr. Vandercok hook as an amusing and, for on reasonably authentic account of \ in Papua in the early 1930’5, but \ details of it now escape us. don’t remember Mrs. Evans and I plantation but it’s a pretty safe it wasn’t on the “Upper Fly”. \ are very much afraid that the > River hasn’t changed much si\ Mr. Vandercook’s day and that most of its 700 miles European po\ lation is notoriously absent—and is our “Upper Fly River Cor spondent”. Kiunga, a sub-district the Fly headwaters, is a compa\ tively recent creation and was there at the time Mr. Vandera wrote.

A communication from WesU District headquarters at Daru, October, says that there are th coconut plantations in the Distr one of them on the Lower Fly a that this plantation last year a produced 22,000 lbs of rubber. Tl sounds as though we’re getting ) —so come in Daru. Do you rememl Mrs. Evans?

More About When

Doctors Are Doctors

In a private letter, an ex-I medical practitioner, now practisi abroad, has his two bucks’ worth \ the question as to whether Cl graduates should be called “Dock or not. This subject was aired November “PIM”. Writes the dock I am on the side of Judy Tud and having been associated wi the Central Medical School, Sui and with its graduates throughfl the Pacific for 25 years, there a points on which I am tempted] take issue with Dr. Dill-Russell. I The only graduates of the Schc in Fiji I knew who wanted to 3 called “Doctor” were Indians, n Fijians. The Fijians, among th< own people, had the quite appropi ate and respectful title of “Vuniw i Taukei”, and I have an abidii respect and affection for the Fiji* race.

The whole principle of the Medic

of 1858 was expressed in the s, “it is expedient that persons ring medical aid should be en [ to distinguish qualified from alified medical practitioners”— if the title of “Doctor” is to be ed by approval of “the Oxford onary” (!) to “any medical MD or not” then where are ) draw a line? what possible way can any cal School be “recognised” by iVorld Health Organisation—as Dill-Russell states. Any such gnition” is given by the Gen- Medical Council of Great in or by Medical Councils or cal Boards in the countries or ories concerned, and the fact ins that the qualifications of Central Medical School are not, resent, “recognised” for pur of medical registration outside Pacific Islands group in the oy of whose Governments the lates of the School at present

(iwi Helped

ledy, He Says

have located Reg Evans re -1 to by Mr. Eric Feldt, in rs’ Mailbag, November PlM— ;her, Mr. Reg Evans has located ilf. ore he had read the item in Fovember issue, he rang to say in his opinion, there never was Zealander who gave help 3 President-elect Kennedy in 1 War II when, as Lieutenant Kennedy, his PT boat was cut ilf by the Japs in Solomons s.

Evans is now living in Syd md has promised to give us irsion of the story—maybe for anuary issue. ; former well-known Islands mary, Rev. A. H. Voyce, now i g in Auckland, who was ain to the NZ forces in the ions, gives us some further in tion about the rescue, but he las no clue to any New Zea r named Wincott having i Kennedy. There was, he says, itish Solomons representative ew Georgia who did some matching at Segi, and who was v Zealander—but he was the ;nown Major D. J. Kennedy.

Voyce clears up the confusion the island of Nauru, on the »ide of Ferguson Passage. He ;he islet is spelled Naru, and is confirmed this through a ons girl at present training in spital near Auckland, who ; the place well.

Voyce adds for interest, that Richard Nixon, who Senator Kennedy such a close i the US elections was on Vella a in 1943 about the same time mnedy was on Naru, not far