yesterday

“The South Pacific should soon be clear of the Jap ”

FIM said in an editorial in April, 1944, commenting on the progress of the Pacific war. It said the elaborate Japanese defences in the South and South-west Pacific had collapsed before the slowly-gathering forces of the United States and Australia. The next phase of the war would probably be fought around the Philippines, off the Chinese coast, and on the Asian mainland.

MOST other items in that issue of PIM of 20 years ago were in some way concerned with the war. They included the following: Sergeant laking Iwagu, of the Royal Papuan Constabulary, had been awarded the George Medal for outstanding courage and devotion to duty during Allied operations against Japanese forces at Finschhafen. * * * The production of copra, cocoa and bananas in Samoa had been hampered during the previous 12 months by lack of labour, which had been diverted to war work.

“Though there is now ample labour available”, PlM’s corres pondent reported, “the plantations have been neglected and it will take a considerable time to clean and replant plantation areas”. ❖ * * The British Phosphate Com pany had high hopes of resum ing phosphate shipments from Nauru and Ocean Island in “the near future”. Although those islands were still occupied by the Japanese, PIM said it was expected that “the stay of the Sons of Heaven in those valuable islands will be swiftly terminated”. * * * Australia’s Minister for External Territories, Mr. E. J.

Ward, told a questioner in Parliament that Government policy on Papua had not changed since Mr. Leonard Murray’s assumption of the position of Administrator of Papua. But in vestigations by the Government had established the need for pro tecting the natives against many abuses to which they had been subjected in the past. “The welfare of the natives shall be a guiding principle with the present Government in its plans for the post-war period”, Mr.

Ward added.

After a year of turmoil in the Fiji sugar industry, the British Government had appointed an expert to investigate the situation.

He was Dr. C. Y. Shephard, Carnegie Professor of Economics in the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture at Trinidad.

The cause of the turmoil was that the Indian canegrowers were demanding higher prices for their cane. * * * Cuthbert’s Misima Goldmine Ltd., which PIM described as “that famous Eastern Papua money-spinner”, was steadily being prepared for the resumption of mining. Although the Japanese were in the Louisiades in 1942, the mine had suffered no direct damage through the war and late in 1943 a mine maintenance party had returned to Misima to restore it. * * * In a little more than two months, the Fiji battalion on Bougainville had killed about 155 Japanese for the loss of one man and two wounded. sjs sfc H 5 According to Mr. Maurice Reymond, who lived on Makin Atoll throughout the Japanese occupation of the Gilbert Islands, the Japanese had talked endlessly of the joys of their New Order and of the pride which the G'ilbertese should feel in being admitted to the Co-Prosperity Sphere. But nothing was done to make this New Order seem attractive.

Mr. Reymond, who was then living in Suva, told a corres pondent that every able-bodied man had been brusquely mobilised to work for the Japs without pay,