A Bishop's diaries:

Books

A Bishop's diaries: Old issues revived?

The New Guinea Diaries of Philip Strong -1936-1945.

Edited by David Wetherell. Pub lished by the Macmillan com pany of Australia Pty Ltd, with the assistance of the Australian Literature Board. 1981. $A14.95 from the Australian Board of Missions, Sydney. ISBN 0-333- 33722-0.

The publication of the New Guinea diaries of Philip Strong, who was Anglican bishop of New Guinea for 26 years until 1963, will probably reopen some old arguments.

Was Bishop Strong right in asking his missionaries and mis sion workers to stay on in face of the Japanese invasion of World War II? Did he do all that he ought to have done to protect two missionary workers, in particu lar, Sister May Hayman and schoolteacher Mavis Parkinson, both of whom were bayoneted to death by the Japanese at Popon detta? The women were among a number of Anglican mission workers, black and white, who died at the hands of the Japanese.

The diaries shed light on Bishop Strong’s attitudes and ac tions at that grim time, and show that his part in the tragic events became a heavy personal cross which he bore throughout his remaining years in Papua New Guinea, and no doubt later still.

Today, aged 83, Sir Philip Strong lives in retirement in Australia, full of honors as a former Primate of Australia (1966-70).

The mission for which he was responsible in the years of these

diaries (1936-45), was not a large one, and certainly not a rich one, and despite his rather grand title of Bishop of New Guinea, its area covered little more than the north-eastern coastal regions of what was then Papua (and which had earlier been British New Guinea, hence the title).

Today the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea is an inde pendent province of the Anglican union, with its own archbishop and bishops, but at that time it was tied to Queensland.

Although Bishop Strong kept

diaries throughout his career, the years covered in this volume were selected by the book’s editor, Dr David Wetherell, be cause, Wetherell says, “they are a personal record of a series of critical events in the history of the Pacific.”

Indeed they are, and Dr Wetherell (himself the author of Reluctant Mission, The Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea

1891-1942 ) deserves credit for his decision to let the diaries speak for themselves, without interpretation, but with the in valuable addition of footnotes identifying personalities, dates, etc.

The Bishop Strong of those days, fresh out from England where he had just been elevated and consecrated for the New Guinea post, is revealed in his diaries as a somewhat pompous and unimaginative man, ruled by his own unbending sense of duty and honor, and of “Call.” At the end of the day of his consecration he wrote, “So ended a truly great, wonderful and sacred day.

To this end was I bom, and for this purpose came I into the world.’ ”

His wartime actions and deci sions in Papua were entirely the actions to be expected from the sort of person he was, and it is irrelevant to speculate what another man might have done.

It is clear that what he did he did because he believed it to be the right course. Hindsight shows us that he lacked the knock-about experience of the world that was part of the charac ter of a number of government officials, such as “Kassa”

Townsend and Syd Elliott- Smith, who warned him re-

Officers of the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit, which figures prominently in the wartime sections of the Strong diaries. The illustration, from the published diaries, shows (left to right) Captain Ron Hicks, Major-General B. M.

Morris and Major S. Elliott- Smith. The names of the Papua New Guinean NCOs are not given.

A sketch from The Bulletin, Sydney, pub lished soon after Philip Strong began his work as Bishop of New Guinea.

peatedly that the Japanese would be ruthless, and that wartime Papua was no place for missionaries.

Nevertheless, such was his sense of Call, it is unlikely that anything short of physical depor tation would have got him out of the country. He was unrepentant even as late as March, 1943, when he was critical of his col

league, Archdeacon Romney

Gill, who had been shown a secret document, which Strong had also seen, describing the

official Japanese policy towards

missionaries found in the ter ritories they invaded.

The document showed that the missionaries were to be given no quarter, for they were regarded as spies (“if they weren’t spies why hadn’t they been interned by Australia as the German mis sionaries had been?”). It was important also, the Japanese felt, to suppress the Christian

religion.

“Romney surprised me very much,” wrote Strong, “when he said that if we had known this earlier, our attitude about mis sionaries staying would have been different. I told him that it could not have been rightly any other than that which we took up; even if we had known this policy we still did not know that the Japs would invade our territory and there was right up to the last moment hope and possibility that they might not, and that God would spare Papua and in par ticular our mission area from the enemy ... that even if we had known that the invasion was bound to take place and that certain death certainly awaited us, we still would not have been right to leave a work to which we had been called and sent by God, otherwise we made that work of little or no importance and our own safety of great importance.

Romney had expressed this view before the Archbishop, and the Archbishop agreed with me, and

Rommey freely acknowledged

that he had been wrong to think and speak like that and that I was right in that we were bound under all circumstances and con ditions to stay by our trust.”

Strong himself was steadfast in every respect, and before the war had finally passed over his area he had personally experienc-

ed bombing raids, been bombed, machine-gun attacks and had generally been assaulted from all sides (the Americans having oc casionally got their targets con fused), emerging unscathed, convinced that God was respons ible for his survival. Of his own fearlessness there can be no doubt.

The family of the murdered Mavis Parkinson were not so positive that God should take all

responsibility for her tragic

death; they believed that her “martyrdom,” as it soon came to be called in Strong’s diary entries, could have been av oided. Some of the most painful entries in the diaries record

Bishop Strong’s later dealings

with the Parkinsons.

There is for example this entry dated Brisbane, April 14, 1943: After lunch left by train with Thomas for Ipswich to see the Parkinsons ... Had learnt from Cornish over the phone of the kind of mood that P. was in, and that he

only wanted it to abuse me, but that Mrs P. would be there and would counsel him to moderation, but that little good could be expected to arise from it, that he simply desired to have an opportunity to get off his chest all the vile things he could think of to say of me and to me ... I had resolved that I would not argue with Parkinson or try to defend myself from the charges that he makes against me, but let him say all that he wanted to, and leave it at that. My conscience is clear ... When the Parkinsons arrived, 1 read them first of all an extract from my diary that I had made out regarding the events as I remembered including the permission to Mavis to stay which they had sent in January 1942 which she heard of when she was on her way out at my instructions, and upon which when she heard she immediately turned back and returned to Gona. However they did not accept the facts as I gave them and said that they were all untrue, and that I had told her to radio to them for permission to stay ... Parkinson then let off steam, and said all the worst things he could to me. 1 simply said that I was sorry that he felt like that, and that such an attitude of mind could only be painful for himself and must too be a grief for Mavis whom they would wish to be at peace in Paradise ... It was a very painful interview and it seemed to have done no good.

Later that year, in October, J ..

Bishop Strong addressed a public

meeting in Brisbane on the work

of the New Guinea mission, and

recalls:

I spoke first after Bishop Dixon, and

was interrupted and challenged by Mavis

Parkinson’s sister who was sitting in the front row in khaki uniform with a friend: had noticed her looking rather strained and staring at me, but did not know who she was: she had ev.dentiy come there to try and wreck the meeting and discredit me:

challenged me over the question of the missionaries remaining and not wishing to go. She shouted out “That’s a lie: I challenge that statement.” I resolved to make no answer which brought forth volumes of abuse against me and against the church, accusing me of killing her sister just as truly as if I had shot her, and saying that the church and the Bishops and the work for which her sister died were rotten etc. It was a very painful and upsetting scene and for a long time she would not sit down; eventually after about a quarter of an hour she was persuaded to leave with her friend; and I then asked the audience to stand and spend a few mo ments in silence praying for our sister who has gone out and her relatives and friends that they may come to know the truth and that the truth may set them free, and also to remember before God our martyred missionaries ... then I continued my address ... I was still further upset when Bishop Cranswick got up to speak and prompted by Bishop Dixon said he was going to reveal a secret, and that when my name had been brought forward for con sideration as Archbishop of Brisbane I had refused even to allow it to be considered as I felt that I could not leave my people in New Guinea. Bishop Dixon had no right to have this divulged as we were all pledged to secrecy as to what happened at the Election (la,er > . ran B “ P * e Ere “ reporter to assure that nothing should be published of the two things which had distressed me ...

There can be no full answer as t 0 whether Strong was right or wrong in his determination to , . NT

keep hts missionaries in New

Guinea. He believed that to run

away” was something that the

p apuans did not expect of real , Christians; that to run away was to let the side down. Once he

The graves at Sangara Mission Station, Papua New Guinea, of Australians Mavis Parkinson and May Hayman, and Papuan Lucien Tapiedi. They were kill ed by Japanese troops in 1942, and Strong's diary reveals deep self-questioning about whether he should have ordered them out of the area ahead of the Japanese presence.

took that stand, the “martyrs” were no doubt inevitable, but in any case it is clear from the diaries that he put no obstacles in the way of the murdered women to prevent them from leaving.

They supported his policy, they stayed, and they were killed ruthlessly.

Strong was strongly conserva

tive, even taking into account the attitudes of the time. There are many diary entries which illus trate his views particularly his comments on the work of other missions.

In August 1941 he records a

meeting where representatives of

different missions, including the neighboring Kwato Mission, gave talks, and where the Angli can, the Rev J. D. Bodger, who was a member of the Legislative Council of Papua, “told the Pa puans about his work for the

Papuans on the Legislative

Council.” The entry continues: “The captain of the Kwato Cricket Team (Merari Dickson)

said, ‘Why Mr Bodger, why not

a Papuan to represent the Pa puans!’ This thought had come to him in his quiet time. We felt he

had been put up to say it. Felt rather disquieted on hearing of this, as it seems to indicate that the Kwato influence tends to instil nationalistic ideas into the minds of the Papuans.”

It is interesting that after the war this same Merari Dickson was appointed a member of the

Papua New Guinea Legislative

Council, as was Strong himself.

Stuart Inder.

Canon John Bodger. “Why not a Papuan to represent Pa puans?” he was asked.