Samoans Have

Never Had It

So Good, He

Says

Pago Pago businessman

Mr. Gus Annesley, who re cently visited Sydney, is a man with some very definite views on American Samoa.

ONE of them is that the American Samoans have “never had it so good” as they have it now.

Mr. Annesley was born in Pago Pago, but lived for about 20 years in New Zealand, where he prospered and became the proprietor of an apartment house.

In 1961 he and his wife visited Pago and found conditions so buoyant that they decided to sell their New Zealand assets and settle there.

Now the couple jointly conduct a retail business, Ho Ching, Annesley & Co., which Mr.

Annesley says has succeeded beyond their wildest hopes.

Mr. Annesley is an ardent sup porter of the present Governor, Mr. H. Rex Lee, and his policies.

He says that to attract tourist spending, Mr. Lee has made Pago Pago a free port, and that the decline in copra production has been more than offset by the in come from the fish-canning in dustry, fed by fish brought in by Japanese fleets.

All this has brought a wave of unprecedented prosperity, yet the Samoans themselves, especially the older folk, look on the changing face of their islands with less than unqualified enthusiasm.

Mr. Annesley says they wonder whether they are losing their racial identity and even integrity; and the remark is often heard that soon you will have to go to Western Samoa to find the true Samoan way of life.

"Embarrassment"

Mr. Annesley says that Ameri can Samoa, once valuable to the US as a naval base, is becoming an increasing embarrassment be cause, in an age when colonialism is almost a dirty word, it is hard to present Pago Pago on the international stage as anything but a colony.

He says Uncle Sam would like the people of American Samoa to decide either that they would like to become re-united with Western Samoa and thus be part of an independent country, or become part of the State of Hawaii. But their answer in variably is that they are quite

happy to go along under the present set-up, thank you very much.

This, Mr. Annesley says, is not as flattering to America as it might seem, because Uncle Sam is now spending five times as much money in Samoa a year as a few years ago. In addiiton, much American capital is going into the island.

It is Mr. Annesley’s opinion that Washington’s present policy is to build up Pago Pago to rival Tahiti and Hawaii as a tourist

centre.

G. B. Bowman.

Mr. Annesley.