People
pp. 107-109 · Read in the full issue
• Mr. Joketani Cokanasiga has been appointed general manager of the Fiji Visitors Bureau, and yet an other top executive post in indepen dent Fiji has been “localised”. Jo Cokanasiga (pronounced Thokana singa) takes over in July from ex civil servant Rory Scott, who has taken a job with a travel agency in Fiji and so remains in the tourist in dustry which he has graced for seve ral years. Jo’s rise in the tourist world has been a little more than rapid. He came into its orbit in Janu ary when he succeeded Peter Erbsle ben as executive secretary of the FVB. His rise to the top post in three months surprised even Jo, who looks on it as a great challenge. Jo is soft spoken, seems almost shy; something which will stand out in an industry which appears to have more than its share of the brassy, bold types, but he’s an efficient administrator. Aged 35 and married, with three children— wife Peniana is a nursing sister with the Fiji Medical Department—he was educated at Queen Victoria School in Fiji and obtained a diploma in Public Administration at the University of Exeter in England in 1964. He has been in government service for nine years, rising to the acting position of Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Fijian Affairs and Local Govern ment. Tourism has become Fiji’s sec ond biggest money-earner. Some say it’s the biggest but much of its “ex ports” are hidden. The Fijians have had a genuine beef about the big share they don’t get in its rewards.
As a Fijian, Jo will lend a sympa thetic ear to their complaints, and, as top man in the business, he may be able to do something about it. • From schoolmaster to sheep farmer and back to schoolmaster— is the professional career in a nut shell of Mr. John Connally, of Auck land, NZ, who has arrived in Tonga to take up a post of headmaster of St. Andrew’s School for two years.
He succeeds Mr. R. Hornsby, head master of the school since 1969. After 16 years as head of Dilworth School,
Auckland. Mr. Connally retired in 1966 and became a cattle and sheep farmer at Te Puke in the Bay of Plenty. Now he’s back in the teaching profession. He has had 40 years of commissioned service in the NZ Ter ritorial Force, holding the rank of Brigadier, and before World War II was a rugby player of note in the Auckland and Bay of Plenty areas.
He will teach mathematics and science in Tonga, • Mr. Siaosi Fanene F. Vaeau has been appointed superintendent of Western Samoa’s Faleolo airport in succession to New Zealander Trevor Fergusson, Mr. Vaeau was educated at Samoa College and Waitaki Boys’
High School in New Zealand. He at tended Victoria University before training as an aviation administrator.
He is one of the few Samoans to hold a commercial pilot’s licence and recently took part in a course of air port management in New Zealand. • Mr. Eric Francis Rothwell, a retired New Zealand stipendiary magistrate, arrived recently to take over a three months’ appointment as puisne judge of the Western Samoa Supreme Court, A graduate of Otago University, Mr. Rothwell spent 30 years in private practice in Lower Hutt and nine years as a stipendiary magistrate in Auckland. After retire ment in 1969, he was appointed sole member of the Shops and Offices Exemptions Tribunal for the North Island, and served at various times as relieving judge in New Zealand, Fiji and the Cook Islands. Meanwhile, the Western Samoan government is advertising for a chief justice as well as a puisne judge of the Supreme
Court. Mr. Rothwell is not new to Western Samoa. He was judge of the High Court there from 1956 to 1960. • Mr. Toua Kapena, former PNG Minister for Labour, has been ap pointed an associate commissioner of the PNG Electricity Commission for two years. He is one of five associate commissioners who, along with the Commissioner for the PNG Electricity Commission, Mr. D. Eakins, form a management board for PNG’s elec tricity supplies. • Mr. Bernard Narakobi, of Dagua in the East Sepik District of New Guinea, has taken over the job of Judge’s Associate to Mr. Justice Pren tice in the PNG Supreme Court. The first New Guinean to take up such a position, Mr. Narakobi, 28, gradu ated from Sydney University with a law degree in March. He hopes to be admitted to the New South Wales Bar and to practise law in New Guinea as a public defender in the Supreme Court. o Mr. Thomas Jackson, Norfolk Island’s Chief Magistrate for many years, has retired but intends to con tinue to work in the island court as an advocate. Born in Lancashire, Mr.
Jackson went to New Zealand before World War I and, during the war, served with the NZEF. A dairy farmer for 28 years, he was Mayor of Rotorua from 1929 to 1941. He retired from farming in 1947 and went to live on Norfolk Island in 1949. • Mr. Ron deHoghton, a senior electrical engineer with the Sydney County Council, arrived at Norfolk Island in April. His job is to do a survey of the island’s electricity supply. Electricity services are being reorganised and a new 462 kw generator was expected to go into service at the end of May. Another generator will be operating by Sep tember or October. • Mr. Goldie Vego, a Solomon Islander from Sasamugga on the island of Choiseul, has recently returned to the Solomons after a year’s study at the Methodist Train ing College and Bible School in Brisbane. Mr. Vego travelled to Australia under the Methodist Mis sionary Fellowship Scheme and successfully completed his Youth Diploma of Religious Education.
Educated at the Rarongo Theological College in Rabaul for four years Mr. Vego then served as a minister with the United Church in Honiara
Mr. Joketani Cokanasiga
before leaving for Australia. Since returning to BSIP he has been ap pointed chaplain of Goldie College and will thus be able to put to good use his interests in Christian education and youth work. • Dr. Sampson Shen, Nationalist China’s Ambassador to Australia, has been appointed his country’s Ambassador to Tonga, which is the first country to establish diplomatic ties with Taiwan in more than three years. During that time 15 countries have switched their recognition from Nationalist China to Red China.
Grateful for small mercies, Taipei, through Ambassador Shen, has offered to help the kingdom with its local land reform project. • Holder of seven medals won in the war in Vietnam, 18-year-old Fiatele Te’o, who, last June, became the 19th American Samoan to die in Vietnam, has been posthumously awarded two more medals, Military Merit Medals given by the South Vietnamese Government. Governor John M. Haydon presented the medals to Faitele’s parents, Mr. and Mrs.
Mutia Tualago Te’o, of Pago Pago, on April 7. • The Rev. Aminiasi Qalo, a Fijian minister working in the High lands of New Guinea, has been appointed Bishop of the United Church of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in succession to the Rev. Graham Smith who has been appointed state secretary of the Methodist Overseas Missions in Vic toria. Mr. Qalo left Fiji in 1965 to work in PNG and has been minister ing in the Mendi and Margarima circuits. • Prince Tupouto’a, Crown Prince of Tonga, celebrated his 24th birth day in May. He took the salute at a parade at Nukualofa on May 4 of the Tonga Defence Force and the Royal Guards of which he is Colonel in-Chief. • Mr. L. Hubbard, who was one Dt the United States Navy task force vhich supported US Marines in the Battle of Tarawa in 1943, went back o Tarawa in May with his wife to enew friendships he made on Betio. \fter the American victory, Mr. dubbard stayed on Betio for 15 nonths and became the base’s cinema iperator, taking his cinema show to ill the villages on Tarawa. Friends ie was searching for included Te akoba, who, in Gilbertese fashion, idopted Mr. Hubbard as his son, and Jenry Nitz, who taught him the jilbertese language. Mr. Nitz is now radio operator at Abaiang.
• Mr. Karlheinz Stellmach, Holly wood cameraman, who won an Oscar for his outside shots in the film Sound of Music, has arrived at Tarawa and plans to stay in the GEIC for a year to make a colour documentary film of the islands. The film, which has been ordered by the Roman Catholic Mission, will be in three parts—the mythological creation of the Gilberts, its history and the modern Gilberts. The Australian National University Library in Can berra is co-operating with Mr. Stell mach over the first two parts of the film ' Mr ' Stellmach won a first prize at the Venice and Cannes film festi vals for Drums of New Guinea. His latest film on the same country. Then Came Dawn, was to be shown at the S ° l " h PadfiC FeS ' iVa ' ° f Arts in Suva • Bishop John H. M. Rodgers has resigned as Bishop of Tonga after occupying the see as its first bishop since 1953. His resignation, accepted b V t,le Vatican on April 25, is seen 9 s £ phase in the process of “localis ,nB” church in the South Pacific, His successor, who occupies the see immediately, is Bishop Patelisio Punou-ki-Hihifo Finau, who was
named by the Pope as coadjutor bishop to Bishop Rodgers in February and was given the right of succession.
Bishop Finau, who was Vicar-General of the diocese and regional superior of the Marist Order in Tonga and Niue, was ordained priest by Bishop Rodgers in 1959. Bishop Rodgers, a New Zealander born at Wallaceville, Upper Hutt, in 1915, and ordained priest in 1940, arrived in Tonga in 1941 as headmaster of St. Peter Chanel’s College, a position he held until 1953 when he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of the Tonga Islands.
He became first Bishop of Tonga in July, 1966 when a Roman Catholic hierarchy was established in the Pacific. Future plans are indefinite, Bishop Rodgers said after his resig nation was announced, but he planned to leave Tonga in May for the Cook Islands where he is Apostolic Ad ministrator. The Rarotonga bishopric is vacant at present. • Mr. John D. Neas, formerly management accountant with the Gear Company in New Zealand, has been appointed Public Service Treasurer on Niue Island. The holder of a Bachelor of Commerce degree, Mr. Neas is a chartered accountant and was once adviser in Japan for the New Zealand Meat Board. • Captain J, Lancaster, Com manding Officer of the Royal Aus tralian Navy, training establishment, HMAS Watson in Sydney Harbour, has been appointed Commanding Officer of the naval component of the Papua New Guinea Joint Force.
He will take up his new post in June.
His successor at HMAS Watson is Commander I. W. Broben, executive officer of HMAS Melbourne.
It was only natural that Western Samoa would include a picture of the late "Uncle Harry", Afoaga Afoafouvale Misimoa, on this stamp to commemorate the silver jubilee of the South Pacific Commission. He was the first Islander to serve as the commission's Secretary General, a position he held from January 1, 1970, until his sudden death at Tarawa in the GEIC on February 18, 1971.
Bishop John Rodgers