Islands

From the

Press

For the past 18 years the monthly page From the Islands Press has become a popular PIM feature, reflecting not only many facets of life in the Islands but also the styles of the newspapers and newsletters which recorded them. The feature has combed the press of the Islands, drawing on news reports, editorial com ment, letters and advertisements and presenting them in the same words as they were first published. For PlM’s 50th anniversary issue we present here a selection of Islands Press items covering the period from when the feature first appeared in October 1962, and starting with the very first Islands Press item used in that issue. Many of these items today are of particular historical interest because they reflect national names, events and attitudes which existed before major social and political changes occurred in the countries where they were published.

Editorial from Samoana, Western Samoa The incredibly rapid increase in population of Western Samoa emphasises the great urgency for action in meeting the problems of feeding, finding work and providing a rising standard of living for the inhabitants of Samoa who could number more than a million in another hundred years. The fact that over the next 10 years for every male retiring from active work through old age there will be nine young men to replace him shows that the problem is not one of the distant future but is at our very doorstep.

Editorial comment in The Norfolk Islander When tourist figures fall and pockets are feeling the pinch, the service of the Chamber of Commerce is called upon to ‘do something’, and the meetings are correspondingly well attended.

It’s quite apparent the Christmas/New Year period has been a good one. Only 17 people attended what was to have been the annual general meeting.

From the Solomon Islands Newssheet A round stone ball was found on South Malaita this month and was thought to be a fossilised coconut (a fossil is a plant or animal from a very long time ago which has turned to a stone). A spokesman for the Geological Surveys Dept, says, however, that the stone ball is not a fossil. Stones like this are sometimes found in the Solomons and tests carried out at the department have shown that they were formed long before coconut palms were found in the world.

Columnist’s item in the New Guinea Times-Courier, Lae There are some funny laws still on the statute books in New Britain. Under one law a native can still be arrested for wearing a wet shirt. & Letter from leremia Tabai in Colony Information Notes, Tarawa Tourism in a general sense is inevitable in view of our external xmnections. But we must be warned against any deliberate promotion of such an industry at this stage because it will certainly

be not in our national interest. Our talk about tourism is premature. Why not wait until the next 50 or 100 years before talking about such a subject?

Editorial in Samoa News, Pago Pago

We did not think it was proper for the [Acting] Governor of American Samoa to be best man at a local wedding. It is the agreement among all who cared that he exercised poorjudgment when he elected to serve as second man. Samoans have laid down their weapons and put aside their quarrels and have come together to support a central government under a United States administration. Those who considered themselves kings no longer do so. They have taken second place in their desire to make their US chosen leader the first and never the second man on the islands.

News item in the Times-Courier, Lae An octopus caught an eagle in a West New Britain river last week.

A correspondent, Mr. James Tomalagene, said he was walking near the Russemi River with a friend when he saw the eagle swoop down into the river, apparently to catch a fish. When the eagle did not come up again, the two men went to find out what had happened. They found that an octopus had caught the bird. Mr.

Tomalagene said he and his friend killed both the eagle and the octopus.

News item in the British Newsletter, Vila When a little girl on Emau grows up she will always remember on what day the New Hebrides’ first census was taken. When the enumerators called for the household schedules they found a baby girl had been born on May 28. She was named ‘Cenite’, which means Census Day and her name was added to the household schedule.

Editorial in The Fiji Times, Suva In defiance of rational argument, of bitter experience in many parts of the world, and, above all, in complete defiance of facts, the United Nations General Assembly’s Trusteeship Committee has issued another UN demand for the political and economic ruination of Fiji. Like the Committee of 24, the Trusteeship Committee commits its blunders in terms that make crystal clear its ignorance of some of the subjects with which it has the temerity to deal. The committee, we are told, reaffirmed the ‘inalieanable right of the people of Fiji to freedom and independence.. . .’ What the people of Fiji need most urgently today is complete freedom from people who are determined to make Fiji another Congo or another Cyprus.

Columnist’s item in the Apia Advertiser, Western Samoa The new minimum wage rates in American Samoa are enough to give most Apia businessmen heart failure on the spot. Fish cannery workers in Pago now get a minimum of $ 1.05 per hour, rising to $l.lO next June. Stevedores get 55 cents an hour, carpenters 70 cents rising to 80 next June, and shop assistants 80 cents an hour rising to 85 next June. It takes the average American Samoan less than two days to earn what the Western Samoan gets in a week!

Report in BSIP Newssheet A highly dangerous practice has been reported for which wartime ammunition is being used. Several people have heard a number of explosions in the Bumburu area of Honiara recently and the bomb disposal expert reports that an unexploded 105 millimetre shell has been removed from a burnt out tree in the same area.

It seems that people are placing old shells in trees and lighting a fire as a quicker way than cutting down the trees to clear the land. Any explosion which follows, kills the tree, but is also a danger to life and surrounding property.

Comment on Queen’s birthday celebrations in British Newssheet, Vila On Tanna, apart from an early light shower, the weather was fine and the magician who is employed to keep rain away earned his traditional reward the head of one of the two bullocks killed for the midday feast.

From Our News, Port Moresby A policeman was hurt after fighting with a snake in Rabaul. The policeman was in a small police car when he saw the snake moving across the road on Namanula Hill in Rabaul. The policeman tried to run over the snake and kill it. But the snake jumped into the car and coiled around the policeman. The policeman and snake fell out of the car. The policeman fell on his arm and hurt it.

Other policemen killed the fighting snake.

From the Pitcairn Miscellany The Tasmania Star arrived at 5.30 a.m. from Wellington with mail and six passengers. Once again we were disappointed store-wise as the Island’s supply of meat, eggs and butter failed to arrive on this ship. However the pineapples and melons are plentiful so we will all get by no doubt until ‘our ship comes in’.

Note in The Bulletin, Nauru In the interests of safety the public are requested not to congregate around any aeroplane which may be parked on the area in front of the basketball and tennis courts.

From The Fiji Times Five men were fined $5 each in a Solomon Islands’ court recently for assaulting a man when they found his name written on a girl’s ukulele.

From the Norfolk Islander Can anybody tell me what is the point of a small body of well-meaning people organising a ball, when all most of the men do, is go straight to the bar and drink and stay there? It is a great shame to see the women and girls in their beautiful, quite expensive, ball gowns, hoping to have a good time and becoming drooping wallflowers. Drinking can be done at any time why wait to attend a ball to do so? In future, the only ball my family will attend will be the Bounty Day Ball at which, thank heavens, there is no bar.

A letter from Fed-up Wife in Papua New Guinea Post-Courier Australians must be mad! We could be home in our own beautiful country yet we stay up here where we are forced to listen to political ravings, as Oscar Tammur’s talk of‘reprisals’ so clearly indicates. Independence for people who can talk of reprisal killing! Someone’s surely joking. Let’s go home and leave them to it, I say.

Letter from Old Territorian in the South Pacific Post,

Port Moresby

In all the years I have lived in this Territory [of Papua New Guinea] I have seen many changes for good and bad. The bad changes are the people. They come here for a year or so and do untold damage. They refuse an aspirin or quinine tablet to a sick houseboy. They wear obscene clothes at home and in public and get innocent people raped. They chop down the loveliest trees in our towns. They allow their boys to light fires during dry and windy weather (sometimes they do it themselves) to the loss of other people. To informal gatherings they bring their unsuitable down-south-clothes’: funereal suits for the men, long sleeves and stockings for women. Odd characters and con-men figure in our

Social Pages along with the more respectable folk. Perhaps these newcomers have done me one good turn. I can leave the Territory any time now without a qualm. Such are the winds of change that blow.

A letter by Planter In the Tohi Tala Niue, in reply to complaints by resident Europeans on a vegetable

shortage

If I had known that the palagis were short of food. I could have invited them all to my bush garden and tell them to help themselves to my cabbages, beans, tomatoes and onions. But then I thought, while I’m out in the hot sun planting my crop, the palagi is out at Fonuakula hitting a little white ball into a round hole.

Suggestion by James Kyle, of Scotland, in the Atoll Pioneer of a new name for the Gilbert Islands Why not adopt the old Banaban name Abarringa, the Sunlit Isles beside the bright water? . . . An additional advantage is that it would ensure that your country always came first in any alphabetical list of the countries of the world. The first place is

always the best place to occupy!

From the Samoa Times A young man was acquitted of rape at the Supreme Court Tuesday afternoon by a panel of four assessors ... He told the court that he had sexual intercourse with the woman as payment for her ride on his bicycle.

Letter from Hawk Eye in the Tonga Chronicle To illustrate the disrespect for the Sunday Laws 1 refer to a recent incident. On Sunday night, while in the vicinity of the Police Training Barracks, I saw a policeman hanging his washing on the line. This tends to suggest that he had also washed them on the Sabbath. I cannot blame the policeman for such action as on several occasions I have wished to do the same thing myself.

But I consider this incident and others unmentioned to be a reminder to Parliament that the Sunday Laws are being rejected

by the people.

From a letter in the Micronitor, Saipan, signed A Pissed-off Yankee . .. My fondest desire is to see the US of A pull all our people out of Micronesia. Plus all the millions of dollars with exception of that used for restitution purposes . . . Don’t be such hyprocrites.

You cuss the American, yet you smoke his Kool cigarettes and drink his Olympia beer. You complain on one hand yet take everything you can with the other... You ask for wages equal to Americans, yet show up for work whenever you desire. You want to run yet you have just begun to crawl. Since you dislike Americans, be assured you do not have to pick up anythingjust because they lay it down. You do not have to pattern yourselves after them.

From the Colony Information Notes, Tarawa A non-scientific planting expedition by a Bairiki non-agriculturist, Ron Wigzell, has proved one additional use for our life-crop, the coconut. Concealed behind his garage and well guarded by a fence of coconut leaves, is a host of green tomato plants living cheerfully, but almost exclusively on coconut fibre dust. Mr Wigzell had a number of wooden boxes lined up with thin layers of fine gravel embedded in them and then topped them up with pure dust liberated from the coconut fibres he uses for making coconut string at the handicraft maneaba. The only other nourishing substance for these tomato plants is water mixed

with Spring fertiliser. Incidentally we gathered that Mr and Mrs White of the SDA Mission at Korobu, have managed to prove that lettuce can be grown on sea weeds.

The Pitcairn Miscellany reporting the birth of a daughter to Tom and Betty Christian As one lion said to another lion at the Coliseum - Ah goody, here’s another Christian.

From the Lae Nius The ‘girls of the night’ are operating along the Highway again, this time in broad daylight and only 10 miles or so from Lae.

Fee is Kl.

Letter from Philantropica in the Tonga Chronicle This letter is indicative of the disgust with the way the Police treat certain members of the public. On Wednesday, June 2, 1971, I met a man from Kolomotua and it was very pitiful to look at this man who could not see his way home properly. His eyes were both black and were almost closed. I asked him what had happened to him and he told me that the Police ran him in the previous night and beat him in the cell. I was so disappointed with the Police being so brutal to the people ... 1 beg that special attention should be given to this matter for surely this is no way the people of a Christian country like Tonga should be treated by their Police. However, if the Police have a very good reason for doing this, then I must express my thanks to them for keeping peace and order in this country.

Extracts from a letter by Yours in Truth in the Cook Islands News When is a doctor not a doctor? When he is a politician! Do we need second class politicians or first class doctors? ... Almost anyone with half a brain can be a politician . . . Not everyone can be a doctor... With our growing population and with the shortage of doctors, can we afford the luxury of four doctors abandoning their gifts of healing in order to acquire the power of law-making? . . . Let’s give these men a vote of confidence in their medical abilities by not voting for them and showing them that we need them at the hospital.

From New Hebridean Viewpoints There are quite a number of New Hebrideans who try to become either a Frenchman or an Englishman. There are some of our girls who like to dress up like French or English ladies. Lipstick, high-heeled shoes and the mini-skirt make them think that they are Europeans. A few of these men and women are against such movements as the New Hebrides National Party because they have got used to imitating other people and have lost their power of good reasoning. We would like to say that you will never become a Frenchman or an Englishman. You are a New Hebridean and you will be one all your life. Do not follow others blindly. The French think you are a fool and the English think so too. The National Party wants to give you identity as someone from the New Hebrides. No matter how well you know English or French you are still a New Hebridean and you should be proud of it.

From a parliamentary report in The Fiji Times Mr Apisai Tora (National Federation Party, North-Western national) told the House of Representatives that women’s liberation and marihuana smoking were two evils people had wrongly imagined would not spring up in Fiji.

Definition from the Micronitor, Saipan DEVELOP, v.t. to irreversibly destroy the life-supporting capacity of land in the name of progress (fr. old American. ‘develop the West’, in which the original American Indian inhabitants were dispossessed of their lands).

DEVELOPMENT, n. act of subversively undermining a people’s means of livelihood. Mic. si. the entrance of large American firms into the islands, syn. getting screwed.

Letter from Michael Pongetonolo, Choiseul, in the Solomon Islands Newssheet Very soon we are going to have independence. Well, I think most people are happy about it. But I am not very happy about independence because I think we are not yet ready to get it. I say this because most of us in Choiseul when we wear trousers or calicoes, it is three weeks before we wash them. And sometimes when it is wet we sleep in them. That is why I say we are not

yet ready for independence.

From Private Eye in Unispac, the University of the South Pacific students’ newspaper, Fiji To solve our accommodation problem at USP, the Director of Student Services has suggested students volunteer to get married so that two can share one bed. Application should be addressed to the office of the Director of Student Services.

Advertisement in The Fiji Times Marlows Ltd announcement: Under pressure from the Building Workers Union our Building, Plumbing and Electrical Departments will be closed on Saturdays. Electrical and Plumbing emergencies may be catered for at overtime rates. Ora pro nobis (Pray for us).—Alf. H. Marlow, managing director.

Extract from a Tonga Chronicle report of an interview with King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV after his visit to Saudi Arabia ... As far as Saudi Arabia is concerned, they want to render assistance to any country that requires it but Tonga is the first country in the Pacific to seek relationships with them and as far as they are concerned, Tonga is the largest country in the Pacific.

From a PNG Government Press release The Member for Hagen, Mr Pena Ou, has appealed to village people to retain their traditional costumes. He said he had noticedb during last year’s Mount Hagen Show that many people had decorated themselves with European artifacts, such as fish tins and trade store towels. He said people did not come from all over the world to Mt. Hagen Show to see rubbish like this. He said in preparation for this year’s show members of clans in the Mount Hagen and Dei Council areas were competing to see who could get the most people in good traditional dress to come to the show. The prize for the competition was a Golden Bird of Paradise plume and two pig tusks.

From New Hebrides News I am an indigenous New Hebridean. I used to be a sober and a happy little fellow. My face was bright and broad. But now I am a day-dreamer in the world of politics. The shadow of politicso has shattered the happy days, makes them gloomy and dumb.

My people have adopted politics. Politics now spreads throughout!, the country. It chilled my flesh and into my spine. Politics brings fear and violence. Politics brings discrimination. It breaks up unity and love. My country is soaked with politics like a sponge in water of politics. My country stinks with politics as a rotten egg is crammed with stinking meat.