Deaths

of Islands People

Oala Oala-Rarua

Oala Oala-Rarua, a pioneer politician in Papua New Guinea and his country’s first High Commissioner to Aus tralia, died in Port Moresby in May. He was only 43, and died suddenly from a stroke.

Mr Oala Oala-Rarua, who leaves a wife, three daughters and two sons, was trained as a teacher, but in the early 1960 s the then Australian Adminis tration of PNG recognised his

outstanding ability and

employed him increasingly for

specialised administrative pos itions working directly with the Assistant Administrator Dr (now Sir) John Gunther. He formed one of the first active political groups in PNG, the United Nationalist Party, receiving heavy support in Port Moresby and from his home village of Pari near Port Moresby. Later he was one of the co-founders of Pangu, the party which led PNG to independence under Mr Michael Somare’s leadership.

He was a member of parlia ment from 1968 to 1972 and served as Ministerial Member

for Finance in the embryo Cabinet which preceded self government and indepen dence. When PNG became independent he became his country’s first diplomat abroad, chosen by Mr Somare to help maintain government to-government contact with Australia.

His funeral was one of the

biggest Port Moresby has

known and the mourners in cluded the Prime Minister, Sir Julius Chan, and Mr Somare who is now Leader of the Op position.

Asivorosi

Cabealawa

Asivorosi Cabealawa, 76, holder of the title Tui Daka and head of three villages in Vanuabalavu, Fiji, died in Suva recently. He was a tra ditional leader of long standing and had served in the Fiji Mili tary Force of World War 11, including action in the

Solomons Campaign.

William Tiden

William Tiden, who retired as Commissioner of Police in Papua New Guinea last year, has died in hospital in Rabaul following a long illness. He came from Matalau village in the Rabaul area and had been 41 years a policeman.

Bill Tiden was one of a num ber of police and soldiers who escaped from Rabaul during the Japanese invasion of 1942.

He was later captured and was

assigned to labouring work

when he refused to join the

Japanese Military Police. He

became known to hundreds of younger policemen in later years when he became an instructor at the Bomana Police College near Port Moresby, He was appointed commissioner in 1977 after holding a series of regional police posts. He held the awards of Officer of the British Empire and the Queen’s Police Medal.

James A. Milne

In Tarawa, Kiribati, James A.

Milne, 58, a member of the Milne family which has been widely-known in the Marshalls and throughout Micronesia for more than a century. Mr Milne had been active in business affairs and politics at Majuro in the Marshalls and his body was brought home there for burial.