Guns: a tourism

niche market

By David North

TOURISM is full of specialised sub markets. People gawk at nude beaches, lose money in gambling casinos, or go backpacking in environmentally-correct locations de pending on their whim and the tourist business caters to them.

Guam, with a long record of attracting middle class Japanese tour ists, has worked out a new niche for a subset of them legal access to guns ranging from pistols to assault rifles.

Japanese civilians are not allowed to own firearms, and, as a result, the nation has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. But the yen for playing the role of cowboy or gangster is very much alive in Japan, and Guam is making the best of it.

For example, one of the island’s

tourist publications, Guam Today,

carries an advertisement in colour

showing a Japanese man wearing a

camouflage bush hat; he is seen firing a pistol at a watermelon at the point of impact and its bits of bright red (watermelon) flesh fly in all direc tions. The dominant language in the ad is Japanese.

But the thrill of shooting does not

come cheap. The Top Gun Shooting

Range, for example, will charge you

$35 for firing 36 rounds from a .38 revolver at a snarling image of a gun toting soldier. If you prefer the .44

Magnum (of the detective stories)

those three dozen shots cost you $45, and it’s $5O for using either a Uzi or the Thompson submachine gun.

Elsewhere along Turnon Bay, where the high-rise tourist hotels catering to the Japanese look out at the Pacific, one can find galleries offering indoor shoot ing experience with a wide variety of weapons. There are, among others, the M-16 and the AK-47 assault rifles, which are outlawed on much of the US mainland. The tourist also has his choice of various pistols, rifles and shotguns, bearing well-known names like Colt, Clock and Smith and Wesson.

Similar gun galleries can also be found on nearby Saipan, which also

specialises in Japanese tourists. Saipan

and Guam, both held by the Japanese for varying periods of time earlier in this century, are the closest tropical islands to Japan, and are, by Japanese stan dards, relatively inexpensive. In March, for instance, Guam entertained some 110,000 tourists, most of them middle class Japanese. Tourism is the largest industry in Guam, accounting for an infusion of about one billion dollars a year into the local economy. □

AT&T phone service

available from Fiji

USADirect Service has now made it faster and easier for the estimated 30,000 travellers from the United States who visit Fiji annually to keep in touch with loved ones and business colleagues back home.

AT&T’s USADirect Service was made available in Fiji from last month. AT&T USADirect Service provides immediate 4 access to an English-speaking AT&T operator or automated English-language voice prompts, making it simple to place a call to the United States, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

To use the service from Fiji, callers dial the USADirect access code 004-890-1001. Calls can be charged to the AT&T Calling Card, AT&T Uni versal Card and most local telephone company cards, or placed collect. The cost of a call from Fiji is U 553.75 for the first minute and U 552.35 for each additional minute. There is an additional US$2.5O charge for a calling card call and a U 552.75 charge for a collect call.

Hawaii bank looking at

expanding into Solomons

THE Bank of Hawaii is planning further expansion in the South Pacific. It is already established in Micronesia, Poly nesia and Fiji. A few months ago it bought Banque Indosuez, in Vanuatu, and now it is looking at moving into the Solomon Islands. Bank vice-president William Ord was in Honiara last month to look at the possibility of setting up a branch there.

Ord has also announced plans for extensive renovations and expansion of the Banque Indosuez building in Port Vila and modernisation of its operations.

He said the bank was also looking at setting up a branch in Lugainville, on the northern island of Santo.

Solomons gets new

conference centre

THE Solomon Islands is expected to benefit greatly from the new Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) conference centre which opened in Honiara last month. The centre has been funded by the European Community for US$l.2 million. EC delegate in Honiara George Gwyer said the purpose of the building was to provide a place where the FFA meetings can be held.

PNG urban growth rate

among highest in region

PAPUA New Guinea’s urban growth rate is among the highest in the 19-member group of Pacific island na tions, excluding Australia and New

Zealand. With an urban growth rate of 4.4 per cent per year, PNG ranks fourth after Solomon Islands (5.3 per cent), Tuvalu (4.8 per cent) and Vanuatu (4.5 per cent).

In terms of population growth, PNG and Kiribati are both in sixth place among the 19 island nations at 2.3 per cent per year. The Marshall Islands, with a 4.2 per cent population growth, tops the table, followed by Federated States of Micronesia (3.6 per cent), the Solomon Islands (3.5 per cent), French Polynesia (three per cent), Vanuatu (2.5 per cent), and Guam and Palau (2.2 per cent).

Swiss invited to

invest in PNG

THE Papua New Guinea government would like to see Switzerland invest in the country. Acting governor-general Bill Skate said last month that Swiss investment in PNG was welcome and would strengthen bilaterall relations between the countries.

He said PNG would welcome invest ment from Switzerland in areas like forestry, fisheries, marine, mineral, pet roleum, agriculture and infraastructure development. Skate extended the invita tion when he received credentials of Swiss ambassador Peter Niegerberger.

Financial support for

Tonga Development Bank

THE Tonga Development Bank is to receive more financial support from the European Investment Bank (EIB). The EIB has granted approval for its fifth line of credit to the Tonga Development Bank of US$2.4 million. The EIB loan is intended for small and medium sized enterprise in Tonga in the industrial, manufacturing, agro-industrial, fisheries, tourism, transport and production infra structure sectors. The EIB has now granted the Tonga Development Bank five loans totalling US$6.6 million since its first line of credit in 1981.

Fiji’s US sugar quota

safe, Rabuka told

FIJI Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has been told by senior United States officials that his country’s sugar quota was secure.

The assurance came after the US signed a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, called the North American Free Trade Agreement. Rabuka was in Wash ington last month for talks with US officials.

Acting Secretary of State Strobe Talbott told Rabuka that Fiji’s allo cation of 0.9 per cent of the American sugar market was not threatened. He said the special payment granted to Fiji under the generalised system of preference would continue. □