People

• President Hammer Deßoburt of Nauru made a state visit with his wife to the Cook Islands for eight days in June/July. He was lavishly entertained by Premier Albert Henry and did the usual round of visits and inspections. When he left on July 5 he took with him as gifts from the Premier and gov ernment a 2 ft high tiki Tangaroa and a hat. • Do airmen make the best Island administrators? The Australian Gov ernment seems to think so. It has appointed another Air Commodore to succeed an Air Commodore as Administrator of Norfolk Island. The new man is Air Commodore Edward

Thomas Pickerd, OBE, DFC, who takes over from Air Commodore.

R. N. Dalkin, DFC in August. Air Commodore Pickerd, who is 54, is at present Officer Commanding RAAF Edinburgh and Air Officer, South Australia. He enlisted in 1941 and has served in Washington (DC) and in New Delhi in service jobs attached to Australia’s diplomatic missions in those places. He is married and has two daughters and a son. • Robert L. Clifford, former UN Economic Adviser to the Government of Western Samoa, has returned to the US and held talks at the UN headquarters in New York, also at the World Bank and Monetary Fund in Washington. Mr Clifford looks like being posted to UN headquarters, so islanders who met him in Noumea and elsewhere can hope to have some of his sound ideas on development planning being put to good use.

Between times, Mr Clifford has found a publisher in the US to put out Captain Fred Williams’ log of his 1917 encounter with the German Count Von Luckner’s raider, the “Seeadler”. • Mr lan W. Hatcher, 33, of Port Moresby, has been appointed Public Relations Officer for the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary. He was born in Queensland and was educated at the Church of England Grammar School, Brisbane. He trained as a journalist with the Brisbane Telegraph and subsequently worked for some years on the Mel bourne Age and the Brisbane Courier- Mail. Mr Hatcher went to Papua New Guinea in 1969 as an Informa tion Officer with the Department of Information and Extension Services and later was promoted to Public Relations Officer. For the past 12 months, he has been in charge of the Government’s Information Branch. • The Venerable C. W. Whonsbon- Aston of Suva, archdeacon emeritus in the Anglican Diocese of Polynesia and one of the South Pacific’s best known clerics, headed the Fiji list in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. He received the OBE, a tribute to a record of 40 years unbroken service. • Dr Jose D. Torres, one of the oldest professional workers for the US Trust Territory Government, has retired at the age cf 77, but his name will live on in the medical service.

The hospital at Saipan was named the Dr Jose D. Torres Hospital in 1962.

He began his medical career in 1914 as a medical assistant under the German administration. He continued his work under the Japanese and has completed it under the Americans.

The Saipanese gave him a cheque for

S5OO at a farewell ceremony at the hospital where all agreed that he “had touched more lives and had meant more to the people of Saipan than any other man”. • Mr Charles Hayes, eight years resident in the Goroka, New Guinea area, manager of the Collins and Leahy hotels and a Goroka councillor for the last 12 months, is leaving the town. He has bought his own hotel, Bluff Hotel on the Sogeri road in Port Moresby. His advent into hotel circles was preceded by work on Jim Leahy’s coffee estates and at the Sports Club, • Netherlander Rev Father Davis, now 81 and living in New Zealand, is back in the Cook Islands where he worked from 1926 to 1954. He has come “back home,” he says, for several months. Fr Davis, known to the islanders as Te Metua Tavita, worked in Chile for 10 years before going to the Cooks. After settling in Ponsonby, NZ, he worked for 18 years at the Catholic Cook Islands Centre. • Mr M. J. Holz has been ap pointed manager of the recently established company, Pacific Inter national Trust Co. Ltd, in Vila, New Hebrides. Mr Holz was previously deputy manager, investment manage ment department of the Bank of New South Wales. e Mrs Afioga Malietoa, of West ern Samoa, has been appointed director of extension services at the

This painting of one of the most famous coastwatchers of the Pacific War, Mr Paul Mason, which has been hanging in the New Guinea Club in Rabaul, has been accepted for hanging in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Attached to the frame when it hung in the club was a plaque which read: "Lieut. Com. Paul Mason, DSC (Brit.), DSC (US), Bougainville Coast Watcher. The messages from Bougainville saved Guadalcanal, and Guadalcanal saved the Pacific—Fleet Admiral Wm. F. Halsey USN". The portrait was painted by Mrs Olive Kroenmg, wife of Bruno Kroening, of Kieta. As one of the deadliest guerilla fighters in the Pacific, Paul Mason was credited with killing several hundred Japanese.

Victory smile for Fiji girl, Miss Roshni Pal, a first-year student at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. Roshni has been crowned this year's USP Queen.

University of the South Pacific in Fiji. She is a graduate of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zea land and took up duties in Suva at the end of June. • Mr. John C. Dorrance, the US political adviser in Micronesia, was due to leave the TT on June 17 for a new job in Washington as a special assistant in the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau. He is suc ceeded by career officer Miss Mary Vance Trent, who has served in London, Paris, Oslo, Prague, Djakarta and Wellington. Mr Dorrance was a US vice-consul in Fiji. Miss Trent’s last job was with the US Embassy in Wellington, NZ. • Mr. Robin Pitts has been ap pointed general manager of Carreras of Fiji Ltd. He came to Fiji from Australia in 1963 as a bank employee and he first joined Carreras in 1966.

He left four years later to become Unilever’s South Pacific regional representative—and has now rejoined Carreras with the particular respon sibility of marketing that company’s products. • A new Commissioner for the United Kingdom has been appointed to the South Pacific Commission. He is Mr Leonard Sidney Price, who has been first secretary at the British High Commission in Suva. • Mr Frederick Cooke has been sworn in at the Western Pacific High Court in Vila as British judge of the Joint Court and judge of the High Court of the Western Pacific. His appointment came through the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific in Honiara. Mr Justice Cooke will be taking the place of Mr Justice Trainor while he is on leave. • Air New Zealand has appointed Mr. H. K. Marlow, formerly district sales manager, western Fiji, to the position of sales manager, Pacific Islands based in Suva. In his previous position in Nadi is Mr W. J. Gibbes, who was district sales manager, Samoa. Mr M. Squires, the airline’s senior sales representative at head office in Auckland, becomes district sales manager, Samoa. • King Taufa’ahau Tupou of Tonga and Queen Mata’aho left Tonga on July 3 in the Bank Line’s copra carrier “Rowanbank” for a private visit to the United Kingdom and Europe. With them is their second son, Prince ’Alaivahamama’o, who is going to school at Leys School in Cambridge. The voyage is scheduled to last 40 days and their Majesties are occupying the owners’ suite. They expect to be back in the kingdom in mid-September.