yesterday

Fiji was having a minor

crime wave when “PIM” was published 20 years ago. The

issue of November, 1942, said

that many Fijians and Indians

were appearing before the

courts for failing to observe the

curfew, being unlawfully under

the influence of liquor, or

being unlawfully on licensed

premises.

The Netherlands Indies Govern ment Information Service an nounced that 70-year-old Bishop Aerts, Dutch Catholic Bishop of the Kai Islands, and seven other missionaries had been massacred by Japanese soldiers on July 30 on Tanimbar Island, off the coast of Netherlands New Guinea. * * * In a letter to the headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventists in Sydney, Mrs. F. P. Ward, of Pitcairn Island, said that in Sep tember the Pitcairners had received their first mail for more than 14 months —about a dozen letters, mainly from America. * * * The death was announced in the United States on May 16 of Pro fessor Bronislaw Malinowski, the Polish-born anthropologist whose book “Sexual Life of Savages”, dealing with the Trobriand Islanders, had a great vogue with scientists and laymen. • * * The shortage of small change was so acute in Fiji that the Fiji Government was issuing paper penny notes and many traders were issuing tokens for use as small coins. The traders’ tokens were on thick paper, each was con secutively numbered, and each bore the signature of the issuing firm on the back. Although only the Government’s penny notes were legal tender, the traders’ tokens were being extensively circulated. * * * The New Guinea Returned Soldiers’ Association, which lost all its records and many of its members when the Japanese in vaded Rabaul in January, 1942, announced that it was to be re formed at a meeting in Sydney. ♦ ♦ ♦ The formation of a unit of Fijian fighting men was forecast by the Governor of Fiji, Major- General Sir Philip Mitchell, in an address to the Council of Chiefs at Sigatoka.