Riots, Deaths In Rabaul As

Natives Stage Lost Week-end

From a Rabaul Correspondent

When native fought native during a week-end of trouble in Rabaul on July 29-30, and the police were forced to break it up—the casualty list showed two natives dead, 13 in hospital (three of them serious), 16 treated and discharged. European casualties were two European police officers, with minor injuries.

THE dead were killed by bullets fired by hard - pressed native police.

A week after the riots an Ad ministration patrol found the body of a third native—a mainlander—in a grave near a village about 14 miles from Rabaul.

The dead man had been one of three plantation workers who during the week-end of the riots had left their plantations to visit friends.

Two of them had returned to their plantation after being attacked by hostile natives and told the plantation owner, Mr, A. Reilly, that the third man was missing.

Police said there was a connection between the Rabaul trouble and the third man’s death.

The trouble was between the Tolais (there is a population of 40,000 of them in Rabaul) and mainland natives, mostly Sepik, who provide a transient labour force of about 2,000 in the town.

The Tolais, introverted, usually slow-acting, can be vehement and emotional once aroused, while the

Sepiks are extroverts, quick to laugh or to anger and with a pug nacious streak. The incompatibility of Tolais and mainlanders has caused ill feeling since the war.

The incident which triggered the riot occurred in a trade store operated by New Zealander Rod Hancock, op posite the native bung (market).

Late on Saturday morning a Tolai woman named lamana went into Hancock’s store.

Market Wrecked A Sepik native behind her put his hand on her leg. She screamed and called to her male cousin, Taube, who fought the Sepik.

But during the fight another Sepik entered, so Taube ran to the bung for help and returned with a Tolai leader named Tologoma, who ordered the Sepiks away.

Usually Tolais will demand money to compensate for alleged insults, but Tologoma said, “I thought the fright we gave the Sepiks was enough”.

But it wasn’t.

During the afternoon, about 200

Sepiks armed with sticks entered the bung and began carrying away pro duce and money. Many Tolais panicked and left their women.

The Sepiks wrecked the market, scattered produce over the ground, smashed the benches, and then chased the women and children.

Three European police officers and 20 native constables restored order, but ill feeling had now spread, and minor fights broke out along the northern end of the town.

The casualties at that time were four Tolais injured, one of them critic ally.

By Saturday night, when the Tolais had returned to their nearby villages and spread the story, a big section of the population was inflamed.

On Sunday morning 500 Tolais gathered at a cross roads two miles out of town.

The first direct clash with authority came when 10 officers of the Native Affairs Department, European police and constables with batons unsuccess fully tried to disperse the mob, which then attacked a police estate car.

The occupants, Sub-Inspector A.

Emery and native constables, escaped without serious injury but the mob completely wrecked the vehicle in cluding its radio equipment before any message could be sent.

A utility truck made a 60 mile-an hour dash into Rabaul to get help.

The police sent out two fire engines and two truck-loads of native con stables.

The Tolais, armed with sticks and stones, smashed all the glass in the two fire engines and one of the utilities. They put one fire engine out of action by pushing it over an

embankment. There had been no time to use hoses.

Hand-to-hand fighting broke out be tween native police and the rioters, and a Rabaul ADO, E. J. Emanuel, fired four pistol shots into the air and the Tolais disappeared into the bush. No rifles had been used.

Meanwhile, while this clash was going on out of town, about 1,000 Tolais and mainlanders were gather ing in Rabaul itself.

The Tolais painted their faces white. The Sepik colours were black foreheads and a red hibiscus in the hair.

The Tolais armed themselves with baskets of stones and heavy sticks, but the Sepiks used more imagination with bars of scrap iron, pipes, bicycle chains, hammers, axes, scissors,

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knives and jagged can lids nailed to sticks.

At this stage it was something like a Sunday outing for many Rabaul people. Groups of armed natives grinned happily and posed in patient, frozen groups for amateur photo graphers. Some asked to be photo graphed. One Tolai thumped his chest proudly, waved a 10-inch knife, and shouted in pidgin, “Me numba wan cowboy!”

Sometimes too the native police found time to lean on their .303 rifles and pose for photographers.

Some Europeans had themselves

photographed in the middle of weapon-waving natives, and a white haired lady visiting from Australia said “My friends will be green with envy when they see this photo”.

Among the hard core of rioting ringleaders, the attitude was more serious.

District Commissioner J. R. Foldi made a personal attempt to stop violence when he stood unprotected among one big group that had now gathered in Rabaul, calling on them to forget their grievances. Some stones began to rain near him at one stage, but a native shouted out not to touch him.

There were three major rioting incidents at the northern end of the town at this stage. The showdown came when police and Native Affairs officers could no longer keep apart the two factions and hand-to-hand fighting broke out, fire hoses were used on the mobs and armed native and white police went into action.

The position was complicated by the fact that many of the native police themselves came from Sepik, and the Tolais associated them with race rather than law. Sometimes the Sepik police tended to concentrate their actions on the Tolai rioters rather than the crowd in general.

The clash in which the two men died took place in Malaguna Road, and in front of a row of weather board houses.

Ex-coastwatcher Frank Holland, an eye-witness from one of the houses overlooking the shooting, claimed there was a certain lack of discipline in the action of native constables.

A rifle shot in the heart killed one Tolai rioter outright. A second Tolai died in half an hour from a rifle shot in the spleen and lungs. A Tolai woman received an injury in the shoulder from a ricochet bullet.

There were about 20 white officers and 50 native police at this scene, with about 1,000 rioters—but they were not in a concentrated mass.

The shooting ended the major dis turbances of the week-end.

The rioting was purely between the two tribal groups and at no time was the white population the target of the disturbance. Injuries received by European officers or native police were occasioned purely in the process of attempting to oreak the trouble up.

The Europeans injured were the Rabaul Superintendent of Police, Superintendent J. Carroll, who spent a night in hospital under observation for a leg injury and Inspector John Herbert who received a scalp injury.

Four aircraft flew in police rein

forcements from Port Moresby on the Monday. With them came the Ad ministrator, Sir Donald Cleland.

By this time the violent trouble had ended, but the police had their hands full returning the situation to normal.

Groups of natives armed with sticks continued to gather in the town, and many others assembled in tiny villages outside the town. Police answered a continual stream of minor alarms.

A strong force was sent out to a coastal plantation following a false report that 25 native labourers had been killed there.

By the end of the first week in August Rabaul was back to normal, but the incidents had had ramifica tions too wide for the issue to be considered finished.

Police and Native Affairs officers were making continual tours of in spection, questioning native com munities and preparing evidence for a coroner’s inquest that will follow.

The Tolais were generally keeping out of the town.

Sir Donald Cleland said there was a deep seated resentment between the Tolais and the Sepiks going back to before the war. The Tolais had a broad intolerance to other people and resented the Sepiks.

Sir Donald said the Tolais had al ready expressed great shame that the trouble had occurred. Sir Donald said he had had the utmost confidence in his officers and in the way they had handled every situation during the trouble.

See “Commentary”, page 25.