People

• Mr. Rodney Cole has relin quished his position of Fiji Secretary of Finance to become deputy managing director of the Papua-New Guinea Development Bank. Mr. Cole, 42. was born in Suva and was in the Fiji public service for 20 years. His father was in the Fiji Lands Depart ment, and between them they had about 50 years unbroken service with the Fiji Government. Mr. Cole is succeeded by a Fijian, Mosese Qionibaravi, 32. • Jonathan Koshiba, 29, of the Palau District, Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, was promoted recently to the position of Executive Assistant in the Office of the Trust Territory High Commissioner, Saipan. Koshiba now holds a senior position in a key administrative unit of the government.

As principal staff member and advisor to the Executive Officer, Koshiba is also responsible for all administrative work in support of the offices of the High Commissioner, the Deputy High Commissioner and the Executive Officer.

Educated at Guam and the University of Hawaii, where he graduated in June, 1966, with a major in History, Koshiba had been employed for 3i years in the Division of Land Management as a Research Officer. For his entire working career, he has been trained by and was under the supervision of an Australian, William McGrath, now Chief of Land Administration and formerly with the Papua and New Guinea Administration (1953-1966). • First Fiji-Indian Methodist deaconess, Miss Susan Sunita Karan, who recently completed her training in Suva, was in January holidaying in New Zealand. As a deaconess in Fiji she will conduct occasional services, visit families and homes and help young people. She will work full-time at Nausori Methodist Church on probation and then will be ordained. Miss Karan’s family live at Ba, where her Hindu father runs a cane farm. The rest of her family are, like her, Christians. • Mr. Tom Muir, a man with plenty of Islands experience, has been appointed the New Zealand Volunteer Service Abroad’s first full time field officer in the Pacific. Based in Suva, he will travel throughout the

Islands visiting volunteers and as sessing assignments. Mr. Muir holds a Trained Teacher’s Certificate and a Diploma of Physical Education and Youth Leadership and has also com pleted a year’s study in community development at Columbia University, New York. In 1957 he was Assistant Director of Social Development in the Cook Islands and became director in 1959. In 1967 he became Sec retary of the Cooks Internal Affairs Department and was reponsible for establishing and maintaining youth services. • Mr. Abouke Dowati, of the Nauruan Lands and Survey Direc torate, retired on December 31, after a 35-year civil service career un broken except for the war years. The next day, Nauru’s Manager, Broad casting Services, Mr. Graham Leggott left by Air Micronesia at the com pletion of his contract with the republic. A New Zealander, he had formerly spent 15 years in Fiji, and now intends to see the world before settling in London. • Popular French TV star, Georges de Caunes, warned Pacific Islanders about female emancipation when he made a brief stopover in Noumea at Christmas.

The French broadcaster claimed that the feminist movement is getting so strong in Europe these days that it provoked a strange sight recently in the heart of Paris: a large group of women marched along the famed boulevard of the Champs Elysees to the memorial inside the Arc de Triomphe arch, where they placed a wreath in memory of the “femme

of the “soldat inconnu” —honouring the wife of the Unknown Soldier.

Georges de Caunes was on his way to Sydney, where he animated an hour-long television programme in colour, relayed direct by satellite, to show Parisians on New Year’s Eve how the festive season is celebrated in the South Seas. His film included shots at Sydney’s Manly beach, showing Father Christmas arriving in a surfboat from the waves—no doubt a strange sight to the winter bound inhabitants of France. • Medical Superintendent of the Auckland Hospital Board’s subsidiary obstetric hospitals, Dr. W. H.

McDonald, was to leave New Zealand in January for six months on Niue as temporary chief medical officer. • Thirty-seven tons of school books and clothes were due to arrive in Honiara aboard the SS Chengtu from Hong Kong recently—a gift from former Marine, Lowell Bulger, who 28 years ago fought on Guadal canal and never forgot the bravery of Solomon Islanders against the Japanese. Mr. Bulger was to formally present the equipment (for schools all over the Solomons) in Honiara, to Solomon Islander war hero, Sgt.- Major Jacob Vouza, • Mr. Robert McClellan, 40, former Auckland Star journalist, is now in Tonga as information officer in the Premier’s office. Working under the Volunteer Service Abroad scheme, he will be concerned with publication of the English-language Tongan Chronicle, and will also be involved in fostering interest in the kingdom’s programme of social and economic development. • King Taufa’ahau of Tonga will visit India sometime this year. Hisi plans have not been announced, but: in Tonga in December was Highi Commissioner for India in Fiji, Mr., A. P. Venkateswaran, who discussed! with the king arrangements for the: visit. And Western Samoa’s Head ofi State, Malietoa Tanumafili 11, has been invited to make an official visitl to New Zealand. He said in December! he would probably make the visit, his first out of the country, some; time in 1972, the 10th anniversary; of Western Samoa’s independence. • Archdeacon H. V. C. Reynolds has recently celebrated 40 years as a priest and 35 years in the Diocese of Melanesia. Serving with the Melanesian Mission in the New Hebrides from 1935 to late 1938, he then moved to the Solomons, where he is still based. He became Archi

Jonathan Koshiba

deacon in 1946 and in 1957 was awarded the OBE. • Ratu Edward Cakobau, Fiji’s Minister for Labour and a descendant of the once-powerful Tui Cakobau, ruler of Fiji, was knighted with the KBE in the new year honours list.

He becomes the third Fijian to have received a knighthood. First was to the late Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna. Fiji’s Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, was knighted two years ago.

Other citizens of Fiji named in the list were: CBE—Leonard Gray Usher, pub lisher of The Fiji Times and former Mayor of Suva; OBE—Adi Laisa Ganilau, community services, and Andrew Indar Narayan Deoki, former MLC; MBE Sethi Narain, Suva businessman, and Patrick Tasman Raddock, Senior Labour Officer and prominent sports admin istrator. • A New Guinean, Mr. Robin Vuaina Kumaina has been appointed Registrar of Savings and Loan Societies for Papua-New Guinea. He eplaces Mr. L. G. Thomas, who is etiring. Mr. Kumaina was appointed >eputy Registrar in May, 1969. • Mr. Nelson Pokari Nicholas is jack in Papua-New Guinea after a rear at the National Art School in Sydney, on a Churchill Fellowship.

Jis self-confessed aim is to shake he territory’s art world out of its ethargy. Originally from Fife Bay n the Milne Bay District, Nelson lopes to spur local artists into con entrating on fine art, rather than lave them “mark time”, as he puts t, with traditional art forms and rtifacts. He is to teach art at Ceravat High School, New Britain. • A Tongan doctor doing post raduate work in Sydney has proved o popular with the medical staff at tie Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, hat he leaves for Tonga in January arrying two cardiographs subscribed 3r him by resident and visiting doc- Drs. Dr. Villiami Tufui is expected ) present the cardiographs to lukualofa Hospital. • Mr. Tupuola Nuuausala, 57, is le first Samoan to head the Western amoa Trust Estates Corporation, irmerly the Crown Estates. He was jcently appointed acting general lanager to succeed long-time ;sident Mr. Pat Kelly who resigned nd returned to New Zealand in ►ecember. The corporation’s assets re said to be worth some SWSS mil on. • A US heavyweight wrestling lampion and a Samoan matai— lat’s Peter Fanene Maivia, who Jceived both titles in one week

before Christmas. First, on December 21, he defeated American heavy weight champion, “The Destroyer”, before a partisan crowd in Apia. He put the Destroyer out of action with an inverted headlock; then, three days later he became Muaau, a chiefs title from Samusu, Fagaloa, at the home of his uncle, Minister of Education, Amoa Tausilia, at Toga fu’afu’a. • Mr. A. O. Hall has been assigned to Sydney by American Airlines as maintenance and engineer ing liaison in the South Pacific with responsibilities covering NZ, Fiji and Australia. Qantas currently handles American’s maintenance requirements in Sydney and Nadi, and Air New Zealand in Auckland. • One Lord Howe Islander who had a grandstand view of the Pope during his historic visit to Sydney was Lance Wilson. Lance was cox swain of the VIP launch that took Pope Paul round Sydney Harbour. • Former Secretary to the Tongan Government, Inoke Faletau, arrived in Suva in January to take up his appointment as first Resources and External Relations Officer for the University of the South Pacific. Mr.

Faletau made a big impact in Suva last September when he headed the Tongan delegation to the South Pacific Conference. He will live on campus with his wife, Evelini, and two children. • A 20-year-old Indonesian prin cess, Carla Mengko, visited Tonga in January. She is the grand-daughter of the last Rajah of Sangihe, a group of islands north of the Celebes.

Since Indonesia became a republic the Rajah lost his title. Carla was

accompanied by her fiance, Joel Gaines, a Honolulu teacher. • Two Tongan students have gained academic distinction in Papua- New Guinea. Tukutau Taufa and his wife were two of six students who graduated as doctors at the Papua Medical College, and Tukutau’s brother, Liuaka, emerged as star scholar at the Papua-New Guinea Institute of Technology. Tukutau in particular had problems. His Hanua badan wife, Reia, gave birth to a baby in the middle of their studies.

The brothers are sons of the Rev. and Mrs. J. Taufa, Tongan mis sionaries working in Bougainville. • Mr. Keith Franzheim, US Ambassador to New Zealand, has also been appointed US Ambassador to Western Samoa. Mr. Franzheim will reside in NZ but will visit West ern Samoa later in the year to present his credentials. • Western Samoan doctor, Hani pale Mose, has been granted a World Health Organisation fellow ship for an observation tour to study public health planning methods in Manila, Taipei, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Wellington and Suva. The tour will last three months. • Leota Leulua’iali’i Ituau, Mem ber of Western Samoa’s Parliament for Anoamaa West, left Samoa on January 8 on a fact-finding tour of New Zealand. He said although his fares were being paid by the govern ment, his trip was not an official one. He would have talks with NZ ministers involved in Pacific affairs and find out whether information received in Samoa through official channels would be the same as any released to him as a private MP.

Inoke Faletau, first USP resources and external relations officer, with his wife, Evelini, and two children, Susana (5) and Mapa (3).