yesterday

Owing to irregularity of

mails, caused by the Pacific

War which was well into its

fifth month in April, 1942, the

news from Fiji, Samoa, and

French Oceania, available for

publication in “PIM” that

month, was small and frag

mentary.

Here are extracts from that issue of 20 years’ ago: Because the copra available in the Pacific was limited to supplies from Fiji, New Hebrides, New Caledonia. Tonga. Samoa and the Cook Islands there was keen bidding. Yet there was a good deal of murmuring in Fiji because planters were finding they were not getting anything like the £lB per ton Which was officially announced some weeks previously.

Also the Copra Pool that was proposed for the New Hebrides in November by the British Admini stration there was acceptable neither to the British nor the French planters. * * • One effect of the occupation of the East Indies by the Japanese was the virtual disappearance of quinine supplies from Allied countries. In the tropics quinine was still the standard protection against malaria, and there was no public indication of how the situation would be met. * * * Vila, New Hebrides, now had a lighting system, completed just before the war, but the residents would have to pay a “lighting tax” according to their marital status.

The tax ranged from £l/12/- for a bachelor 18 years and over, to 16/- for widows and divorcees sup porting more than one child. * * * Mr. Lewis Hershon, who recently acquired the estate attached to the historic Rougier house at Taaone, on Tahiti. established there a dairy of blooded cattle and mechanical equipment “such as has never been seen before in this part of the world”, according to a correspondent. * * • Pan American Clippers, despite the war, were still operating in many areas of the Pacific. The US Navy forbade specific details, but permitted the disclosure that the Clippers were taking important passengers, mail and war material between the US and Islands ports.

They did not follow the same course on each flight. * * • A terrific storm which lashed Apia Harbour, Western Samoa, on February 4 and 5 shifted the wreck of the “Adler”, which had lain in Apia for 50 years. It caused the .middle portion of the wreck to collapse.