Remember ?
p. 82 · Read in the full issue
Do You Remember ?
The big news in the South Pacific of 20 years ago was the statement to the Japanese
Diet by Foreign Minister
Matsuoka : “I believe that the white race must cede Oceania to the Asiatics. It must be made a place to which Asiatic people can migrate. We be lieve we have a natural right to migrate there.” A “PIM”
editorial warned : “Japan
wants to sweep triumphantly over all Eastern Asia and the Western Pacific, in a cam
paign of extermination of all
that is European.”
Here are some other extracts from PIM of March, 1941; From Paris was coming a spate of anti-de Gaulle propaganda directed at New Caledonia. The propaganda was anti-British, too, and was trying to make out that there was strong feeling in New Caledonia against both de Gaulle and Australia. The propaganda was being blamed on Frenchmen who had been thrown out of New Caledonia by the Free French several months earlier. Meanwhile New Caledonia had placed a com plete prohibition on the export of metals to Japan. * * The South Pacific was in the centre of the hurricane season again, and one severe blow had caused much damage to houses and crops in Fiji, Samoa, Niue and the Cooks. Many small vessels were lost. Little Niue was worst hit. * * * The High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, Sir Harry Luke was reported to be taking steps “to advance the Solomons gold mining industry from the stage of unsystematic scratching to prac tical mining”, sir Harry said the only hope for the Solomons lay in the development of its mineral resources. * * » W. R. Carpenter company was reported to be having trouble in buying two new aircraft for its New Guinea-Australia service. War needs came first, but meanwhile, with only one aircraft on the New Guinea run, and that booked out for many months ahead, New Guinea people were complaining.
A correspondent in New Guinea reported a conversation with an unnamed American oil man who had been looking at P-NG’s oil P£> spects - Said the American: They’ll never get permanent oil in New Guinea. After seeing the results of many bores I have come to the conclusion that the island is badly fractured by earthquakes.
It will be possible to find oil, but the flow will not last”. * * ♦ Energetic efforts by Apia’s War Fund Committee had brought success in sight in a drive for £5,000 for a Spitfire for Britain.