lvage Team to Clean

[?] War "Litter"

Dne of the very last war-littered sas of the Pacific Islands will be aned up in the next few months.

A Rabaul salvage team of three — ;ssrs. Pat Roberts, Ken Hendren d Mike Czolle —have taken up a se to smelt the remaining planes d war junk on Treasury, Strickland d Shortland Islands.

A work team of 23, including ■ee Europeans, went to the area in

early September in the barge Koron.

They will heap junk aluminium for smelting.

Ken Hendren, who visited the area three months ago, reported that Jap anese and US fighter and bomber wrecks littered a square mile area overgrown by jungle and infested with giant coconut crabs.

Left much as it was after the war moved northward, the planes are all that is left of a major air base which existed to protect bombers flying between Rabaul and the Solo mon Islands.

Balili, which many people believe to be the romantic “Bali’hai” of James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, is one of the areas the salvage team will visit.

This small inshore island on which (according to Michener’s story) French settlers in the Hebrides con fined their womenfolk “safe” from both the Japanese and US conquerors, is substantially smaller than South Pacific filmgoers would believe.

Salvage rights in the area have been let several times since the war, but have never been fully exercised.