yesterday
p. 85 · Read in the full issue
“The lasf four weeks have been filled with great events,”
PIM said in its issue for June, 1944, “and we should know definitely by the end of July whether this global war is likely to end soon, or whether it will continue for a further period
of years.”
The great events that ‘ PIM” referred to were the Anglo-American invasion of France, the breaking of the German line in Italy, the invasion of Rome, and the defeat of Japanese armies in the South-West Pacific and Burma.
OTHER news items in that issue of PIM of 20 years ago were: — When United States forces drove the Japanese out of Hollandia in May, 1944, they found and succoured about 90 men and women missionaries who had been suffering severely from imprisonment, cruelty, sickness and starvation. They also gained tidings of some 65 north coast missionaries who had died or been killed, and were told that about 50 had disappeared. * * * Suva’s Central Medical School had received what PIM called “some well-merited publicity
abroad” since the British Colonial Office launched a £600,000 scheme for Central Pacific medical services. America’s Time magazine and the British Medical Journal were among the publications that had “written up” the school. * * * Rumours that the United States Government was paying $25 to Levers Pacific Plantations Ltd. for every coconut tree destroyed by American war operations in the Solomons were officially denied, and it was stated that there seemed to be no basis for the rumours. ♦ ♦ ♦ A ship laden with petrol and onions had arrived from the United States in petrol-less and onion-less Tahiti, and, according to PlM’s Papeete correspondent, the people were about to “return to a life of peril and suffocation, after a season of tranquility and the enjoyment of Nature’s fragrance”. * ♦ * The work of two European artists living in Samoa was attract ing attention overseas. The artists were Charles McPhee and Charles Reed.
The Rev. J. F. Goldie was about to return to his post in the Solomons as head of the Methodist Missionary Society of New Zealand. He had just com pleted 43 years’ service as superintendent of the mission, and claimed to have lived in the Group longer than any other European ordinarily resident there. * * * Stately ceremonies were held at Arue, Tahiti, in May, 1944, to mark the centenary of the death of the Rev. Henry Nott, pioneer London Missionary Society mis sionary, who worked in Tahiti for 47 years from 1797 and translated the Bible into Tahitian. * * * After 35 years, the branch of the Bank of New South Wales at Levuka, Fiji, had closed —like many other branches of the bank in Fiji. The reason? Lack of manpower. * * * Mr. F. P. (Fred) Archer, formerly a planter on Buka, was serving as a lieutenant in the British Solomon Islands Labour Corps. He sent word to PIM that there were still some Japanese on Buka “very depressed and hungry Japs, but still willing to shoot at European visitors”.
When this picture was published in PIM for March, 1938, it was a general custom among mothers of the Mekeo district of Central Papua to balance their babies on the palms of their hands in the belief that it strengthened their legs. It probably still is. The baby pictured was three months old.
The "Laurabada", the yacht of the Governor of Papua, had just made a mercy dash from Port Moresby to Thursday Island with a dangerously ill boy when this picture was published in PIM in July, 1931. Now, 33 years later, the yacht, rebuilt, is again in service—as a trader. Old New Guinea hand Ivan Champion is to take over soon as master. (See p. 85.)