yesterday

An eight-page supplement listing all Islands servicemen and civilians who were killed, wounded or decorated in World War II was published in PIM for January, 1946. “In total number,” PIM said, “the men and women of the South Pacific Territories who served (mostly as volunteers ) in World War II may not be impressive; but, in proportion to the total population of the communi ties from which they came, and in relation to decorations won, it is a record not equalled anywhere else in the world”

OTHER features and news items in the issue of PIM for 20 years ago were: NEW rates of income tax had been introduced in Fiji on a sliding scale rising from a mini mum of 1/3 in the £ to a maxi mum of 6/3 in the £ on incomes of £5,000 and over. “The new rates do not seriously affect in comes under £l,OOO per annum”, PIM said. “It is company profits and personal incomes sub stantially over £l,OOO which will bear the really heavy increases.

Fiji still may be regarded as a place of refuge for the family that is trying to live reasonably well on an income of between £5OO and £1,000”.

A DISMAL result of World War II and its aftermath in the isolated Cook Islands, accord ing to a correspondent on Mangaia, was the increasing scarcity of charcoal irons for pressing clothes. “These irons”, the correspondent said, “are hollow, and the palm-bark fuel is slowly consumed inside, the smoke escaping through a curved chimney tube. The toko soon rusts, and at the end of its useful ness the bottom falls out. In normal times, one then buys a new one for 15/-. But Birming ham has, for the past five years, been making goods of a sterner sort; so no new irons can be obtained at all”.

MR. A. WILSON, former member for Wimmera in the Australian House of Repre sentatives, had taken over as Administrator of Norfolk Island.

PERMANENT heads of depart ments of the Papua-New Guinea Provisional Administra tion had not yet been appointed, but acting appointments were: Government Secretary, R. Mel-

rose; Treasurer, W. N. M.

Chester; Public Health, Dr. B. A.

Sinclair; Trade and Customs, T.

B. M. Byrne; District Services and Native Affairs, E. Taylor; Native Labour, J. L. Taylor; Land, Survey and Mines, E. P. Holmes; Forests, J. B. McAdam; Agri culture, W. E. Cottrell-Dormer; Public Works, J. O. Lyons.

Mr. A. C. Turnbull, Ad

ministrator of Western Samoa, who was retiring after 15 years in that territory, had re ceived a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List. Another new knight was the Fijian leader Ratu J. L. V. Sukuna, who be came known as Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna.

Brigadier-general e. a.

Wisdom, Administrator of the Australian Mandated Terri tory of New Guinea from 1921 to 1932, died in Australia on December 9, 1945. He was the founder of the cadet system in the Territory, which produced a

team of zealous young Australian field officers, many of whom were lost in the Montevideo Mam.

MR. H. S. BARNETT had been appointed Australia’s first consul in New Caledonia. For most of the war, Mr. Barnett had served as Naval Liaison Officer in Noumea.

THE Australian Department of External Territories was try ing to trace 1,200 Nauruans who had been shipped out of Nauru by the Japanese during the Japanese wartime occupation of that island. Police Inspector T, H. Cude, of Nauru, had been detailed to find the Nauruans, who, it was understood, had been taken to Truk (Caroline Islands) in 1943. [The Nauruans were later found to be on Truk].

THE 100th anniversary of the coronation of King George Tupou I, first ruler of a united Tonga, was celebrated in Nukua lofa on December 4, 1945.

One of the most influential literary figures in the history of the South Pacific was a French naval officer, Julien Viaud, who is better known by his pseudonym, Pierre Loti. Loti visited Tahiti in the seventies of last century and wrote an idyllic novel called "The Marriage of Loti". This novel, which has been described as "exud ing the very essence of that romantic charm for ever associated with Tahiti," in duced the artist Paul Gauguin, among others, to migrate to Tahiti.