Portraitists

Closer ties

Japan hopes to establish diplomatic relations with Fiji within the next six months, Mr. Seiya Nishida, deputy chief of the Japanese Embassy in Canberrra, said at the end of Nov ember. “Japan is interested in this region,” said Mr. Nishida just before leaving Suva at the end of a four day visit.

Upward trend

A $3 million block of shops and offices which W. R. Carpenter (South Pacific) Ltd. will build in downtown Suva is the biggest single investment m Fiji announced by the company for some years. To be called Dominion House, the nine floor build ing will replace a ramshackle wooden building between Scott and Thomson streets, near the Suva Post Office.

Fhe latest overseas hotel company to mnounce its firm intention to move uto Fiji is America’s huge Holiday Inn chain. It says a 120-unit hotel vill open at Saweni Beach, five miles mtside Lautoka and 10 from Nadi \irport, in 1973.

BSIP workers’ fund

The Solomons may have a National rovident Fund like the one which as been going well in Fiji and which irovides, on retirement, a lump sum r a pension for all wage earners, ne Fiji scheme is compulsory with ontnbutions coming from employers nd employees. The fund now counts s , to^ al contributions by the million nd has become a valuable source m loans for both government and avate developers. Mr. Robinson, ho manages the Fiji National Pro dent Fund, carried out a survey in le Solomons last year. His report idicates that such a fund could be in successfully in the BSIP.

’olynesian theory

On a busman’s holiday in Sydney December was PlM’s old friend id one-time assistant editor Robert mgdon, these days executive officer the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau,

Autralian National University, Can berra. Object of the visit: To do the last few pieces of research at the Mitchell Library for a spare-time book he is writing tentatively entitled The Lost Caravel. The book is about a Spanish ship, a caravel, that disappeared in the eastern Pacific in 1526. Langdon believes that the ship was wrecked on an atoll in the east ern Tuamotus, that the crew survived, inter-married with the local women, and that over the next two-and-a half centuries their descendants spread throughout eastern Polynesia, thereby creating a Hispano-Polynesian community by the time of Captain Cook. This is the explanation, Lang don thinks, for the Caucasian strain among the Polynesian race that has long puzzled scientists. It sounds like a book that might set the cat among the pigeons.

Festival stamps

Philatelists will have a field day it the first South Pacific Festival of in Fiji from May 6-20 next fear. At least eight Island territories vill produce a special stamp or a tamp series to mark the festival. Fiji md Western Samoa will produce one tamp, Papua New Guinea, New Nauru, Niue, and Tonga ire planning a series.

The Gilbert and Ellice Islands are lesigning a special souvenir cover on vhich to display their own stamps, tamps will also come from the tooks, the Solomons, the New lebrides, Pitcairn Island, Norfolk sland, the Tokelaus and Tahiti.

Cheers! Ooops!

Mr. Moukunu Kokare, of Pan una, Bougainville, came up with a right idea for curing the drink roblem in PNG.

He told the PNG Commission of iquiry into Alcoholic Drink, which as been sitting for several months, lat it would be better if some way )uld be found of limiting consump □n. He suggested a compulsory ad tive to alcohol which would make jople so violently ill after about ie fifth drink that they would be lable to carry on drinking.

On the subject of total prohibition, [r. Kokare said he had been told at if prohibition came all the Aus ahans would go home. But he ought prohibition for indigenous inkers should be considered.

He would remind those who cried discrimination” that they had a ecedent for discriminatory legisla >n in the laws on adultery.

Peace peals

Japanese ex-servicemen, who fought in the Solomons, have clubbed up to buy a bell for the Roman Catholic mission church at Logu in the Shortlands, just south of Bougainville.

Japanese newspapers gave wide publicity to an appeal for a 5-cwt bell from the Shortland Develop ment Company and the ex-service men rallied round and bought the bell which was cast in Japan. It was shipped to the Shortlands in a Japanese ship, the Taiyo Maru 25, and now takes the place of an old gas cylinder gong.

Land of hope

Land prices in the New Hebrides are shooting up so fast and high that developers, especially those in the tourist industry, were being frightened off, Mr. Joe Mulders, sec retary of the NH Chamber of Com merce, said at November’s end.

A 4J-acre block near Vila, which was not serviced, had been on the market for the last 16 months; ask ing price—s2so,ooo. Another block, only about two acres and not suit able for a hotel site, was offered at between $lOO,OOO and $llO,OOO.

Mr. Mulders suggested New Heb ridean people should lease their land for development, not sell it, and make as a condition of the lease a seat on the developing company’s board, and shares.

Japanese volunteers

This Peace Corps, VSO, VSA, call ’em what you will volunteer scheme, is rapidly becoming an all nations effort. There are Australians, New Zealanders, British and Ameri cans doing volunteer work in the South Pacific. Now they’ll be joined by Japanese.

The Western Samoa and Japanese governments have signed an agree ment for the employment in Wes tern Samoa of Japanese volunteers, the first in the South Pacific although there are about 1,000 work ing in Asia, Africa and Central America,

Doctor in politics

Dr. Tom Davis, renowned Rarotonga-bom research physician, has formed his political party with which he hopes to topple Premier Albert Henry from his seat (PIM, Nov., p. 31). Dr, Davis, who left his job in the United States to become a Cook Islands politician, has named

the new party the Democratic Party and has been elected leader.

Defending criticism of the govern ment, Dr. Davis said: “A good gov ernment stays in power because of its good deeds, not because of its threats of reprisal to individuals or groups, who criticise it or do not sup port it. . . . Blanket acceptance of all policies of a government is a cer tain way to ensure the eventual cor ruption of that government.”

Asked about the premier’s offer of help in getting a job, Dr. Davis said he would be glad to have Mr. Henry campaign for the Democratic Party.

Young Hero

Seven medals won in Vietnam were presented at a ceremony in Pago Pago in November but their winner, Fiatele Te’o, was not there to receive them. He was killed in a brush with the Vietcong in June, be coming the 19th Samoan to die in combat in Vietnam.

Fiatele’s parents, Mr. and Mrs.

Mutia Taulago Te’o, received the medals from Governor John M.

Haydon. They were the Bronze Star for heroism, the Purple Heart, the Good Conduct Medal, the National Defence Medal, the Vietnam Service and Vietnam Campaign medals and the Combat Infantry Badge.

Fiatele was only 18 when he died.

Airport move

Lae, may move its airport 25 miles to Nadzab, one of New Guinea’s famous wartime airfields.

At present just a strip of bitumen hidden by tall grass, the airfield was the major base for allied assaults against the Japanese positions in New Guinea. Now, town planning experts 1 Russel, Taylor and Partners want it brought out of retirement to serve Lae which, they forecast, will be come the territory’s largest town with a population in 1990 of 99,000.

Exodus

New Zealand MP Mr. D. A.

Highet wants to do a deal with Fiji over the “more than 24,000” Fiji people who, he says, wish to emigrate to NZ. “We should do all possible to bring these people out in as large a number as we can assimilate”, he told the NZ Asia-Pacific Association. In return a large percentage of tourists visiting Fiji could be diverted to NZ instead of Australia. According to Mr. Highet there are more than 24,000 applications for entry into NZ on the files of the NZ High Com mission offices in Fiji.