Are Coming?

New Hebrides

The Yanks

From Ken Hutton in Santo After the Eugene Peacock de bacle when the two adminis trations. acting jointly for once, scotched his ideas of 20 000 Americans living at his sub division at Santo’s Hog Har bour, or Lokulu Beach as Peacock called it, there has been a lull in the American interest in New Hebrides. It was a case of administrative fear of having to support the infrastructure of a village of 20 000 Yanks. So, using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,

they legislated against the Pea

cock subdivision. They could have been more subtle and simply utilised the restrictive

immigration policy they had

jointly agreed to some years before. So much for that. In fact, there is only one

American family living on

Santo who came out under the Peacock scheme.

Then came the construction of the International Island Inn in Vila, and a few other oddball Americans who became chicken farmers and the like.

More recently, in fact over the last two years, a number

of plantations have changed

hands from their former French owners to Americans about six or eight properties in all.

These appear to be a dif ferent breed of American to those we saw in Peacock’s day.

These are investors in rural

agricultural projects, copper,

cocoa and cattle. Up to SUSI million has changed hands for the bigger of these plantations, half a million for medium sized ones and lesser amounts for smaller ones.

One thing which makes this type of American investment attractive is a US Government guarantee that their investment will be reimbursed and pro tected in case of nationalisation or other type of takeover. This apparently costs the investor 1% of his investment annually I guess, a sort of insurance.

There have been a number of nostalgic visits of American ex-servicemen, who, now their kids are grown up and they are

nearing retirement age. are free to revisit their old World War II haunts. Notable among these were the 43 ‘Fighting Seabees’ who built most of the big Santo Base in 1942/43. There is every indication that there will be more such tourists.

A timely reminder of the American WWII period was the photographic exhibition

put together recently by Reece

Discombe, of Vila. Apart from photographs of the New Hebrides Defence Force and famous American fighting men, such as Lt-Col H. W.

Bauer (of Bauerfield), there were shots of Eleanor

Roosevelt, Bing Crosby, Bob

Hope, Carol Landers and other famous film stars who came to the New Hebrides during

Wwii.

One story told by Reece Dis combe at the opening bears repeating - the French district agent in Santo during the 1914/18 war was based at Segond Channel. His British colleague was based at Hog Harbour (in fact where Lokulu Beach Hotel now stands). They met in the Channel one day.

The French district agent remarked that he had not seen the British district agent for some time and why was he

limping.

‘Oh, I was shot by a Ger man.’

FDA: ‘ Merde, I did not know there were Germans at Hog Harbour!’

BDA: ‘Not at Hog Harbour, old chap, but in France. I have been at the Front for the past two years.’

What makes the story even more bizarre is that it’s true.

The British district agent applied to Vila to go to World War I and was refused. He simply went AWL for two years, got wounded and re turned to his post and appar ently no one in Vila knew he had been away! They were the

good old days.

I suppose our most famous Yank was James Michener a young naval officer based in Santo during WWII, from where he got his idea for Tales

of the South Pacific.

Although he uses a lot of journalistic licence, there is no doubt Santo was the scene of the musical South Pacific. In spite of the claims of other Pacific territories where else were there Tonkinese, pig kill

ing, Bloody Mary and Bali Hai,

which I think is actually the island of Aoba, the ‘now

you-see-it, now-you-don’t’

island 40 miles east of here.

Anyway, James Michener confirmed this when he came back in 1956 and looked up his old cronies, then wrote Return to Paradise. I hope he is still well and writing a very fine gentleman indeed. His sub

sequent writings have only

enhanced his reputation.