For Wandering

Letters To The Editors

For Wandering Tongans, Home Life Was Humdrum

Sir, —PIM readers, especially

those in Tonga, may be in terested in the following report from the San Francisco Examiner of December 28. It tells of Tongan students who have reached this shore without immi

gration papers.

THEY were given all the chances of defending their cases, the Judge Monroe Kroll even offered to get them a lawyer without them hav ing to pay. The Government has treated the boys very well indeed and has gone as far as it can to help them.

I am a US Immigration and Naturalisation Service interpreter here. I used to be with the Tongan Government as mechanical engineer, then with the Suva City Council as Superintendent of Parks and Gardens.

Here is what the Examiner says:

Back To Little Grass

Shacks: Fugitives From

Paradise Must Go.

They had soft-sounding Polynesian names and were uncomfortable in jackets and trousers and their native Tonga was a world away.

They sat dejectedly at a deporta tion hearing here yesterday—four of 50 Tongans who entered the United States illegally in past months.

And government aides and news men at the deportation proceedings, who long had heard of Tonga as an idyllic South Pacific islands paradise, wondered: Why?

Why exchange the swaying palms, booming surf and easy living for a cold new world, far from where the trade winds blow?

The four up for deportation proceedings yesterday explained readily—but glumly through a United States Immigration and Naturalisa tion Service interpreter, Cecil G.

Smith.

Tonga, east of Fiji and south of Samoa, they said, belied the blazing green South Pacific tourist posters.

There were no opportunities, no advancement, just humdrum routine, collecting copra as their fathers and grandfathers had done.

The first names of the four showed

the missionary influence of Tonga.

They gave their names as Maumalanga (“Attends Church”) Metui, 24; Sailosi (the biblical name of Saul) Amalani, 25; Langi (“Heaven”) Lui, 18; and Malanga (“Speaker of Sermonsf’) Kanongata’a, 21, Special Inquiry Officer Monroe Kroll ordered Kanongata’a deported, and continued the others to Monday. . .Of the 50 Tongans being rounded up by the Immigration and Naturalistion Service for entering illegally, most made it only as far as Honolulu.

Fifteen reached the West Coast.

Of the 15, four were up for deportation yesterday; two have been deported; two, ordered deported, are appealing; seven are being sought, most of them in the Bay area.

Yours etc.,

C. G. Smith

San Francisco, California.

A Norfolk View on Finances Sir,—l was recently shown the article in January PIM, “Fortunes go Begging on Prosperous Norfolk Island”, by Robert Langdon. It is a pity your representative does not do the president of our Norfolk Island Council the courtesy of call ing more frequently upon him— then it is possible such fatuous state ments on p. 43 in respect to Government subsidies might be avoided. [. , . Unless Norfolk’s

tourist industry is developed, the island is doomed as a place to live on in anything but primitive fashion. In fact, without a Commonwealth Government subsidy (£32,500 last year) and without revenue from postage stamp sales (£23,500), Norfolk Islanders would probably have had to pack up long ago and move either to Australia or New Zealand]. Anyone who can add up can see we have been a good customer to Australia, having spent approximately £3 million in that market alone in the past 15 years.

Others can reasonably deduce from Australian statistics the Aus tralian tax component within this S um, which is irrefutably not less than £600,000 revenue for the Aus tralian Government and much of it foreign currency. i n twice that period, or 30 years, we h a d received a return in grants amounting to £566,476, a large portion of which has gone into the old colonial buildings and resump n °f l an d f° r the wartime air strip.

A glance at the 1960-61 Annual Report (for under 500 adults) shows that we are far from insolvent, hav ing balanced expenditure from revenue without the “grant” and in addition had £81,923 accumulated funds to our name. Furthermore without the heavy “overheads” (salaries alone now exceed £50,000 p.a.) to a great extent brought about

by Territories departmental requii ments with which we are loade we have never been near insolven in recent times—your remarks thei fore as to “packing up” are she< idle nonsense.

I see other equally incorrect stal ments dealing with freight charg in the same article, and trust th this is not the commencement another era of wild unfounded stat ments in your press.

Yours, etc.,

W. N. Selby Newbal[?]

Norfolk Island.

In Reply to Mr. Syme Sir, —Mr. Ronald Syme, wl corrects my spelling {PIM, Dec., 49) is apparently unaware that always use the Tahitian word Popi when referring to Europeans in n writing. In speech, however, I wou use the word of the local language Papaa in Rarotongan, Haole Hawaiian, Papalangi in Samoa and Alolangi in Puka-Pukan. Popi has, for me, happy connotatior However, if Mr. Syme insists, I w think of him as a Papaa, a woi that recalls early memories n altogether pleasant.

Noo Wakalelei,

Johnny Frisbie Hebenstrei

Popoville, Dunedin, NZ.

P.S. I was tempted to write th note in Rarotongan but wanted be sure Mr. Symes got the poir Alas, perhaps even in English he w: not!