A SIMPLE EXISTENCE
PEOPLE OF NEW CALEDONIA (Special) NOUMEA, Nov. 12. The number of foreign residents in New Caledonia on January 1, 1942, was 307, whereas a year before ir was over 1400. Why? Because 1126 Japanese residents were interned on December 8 last after the attack on Pearl Harbour. At that' time they formed 78 per cent, of the foreign population. Of the French colony’s present foreign population 104 are women and 203 men. British residents are in the majority, but 19 other nationalities are represented.
Allied soldiers arriving in New Caledonia for the first time all seem to ask the same question: What is the island's population? The answer is that there are rather more than 20,000 whites, of whom many are children (for large families are the rule), nearly 30,000 native Melanesians (inculding Loyalty Islanders), and 11,000 Javanese and Indo-Chinese mining, agricultural, and domestic workers under contract. The total civilian population is about 61.000. It is not a country fitted out on an extravagantly up-to-date scale: for example. there are only 1153 wireless sets in the island, of which 895 are in Noumea and only 258 in 250 miles of isolated bush, and this although the listener's tax is not very heavy. Th* island has only 560 miles of roadways, most of them built since 1929.
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Bibliographic details
Otago Daily Times, Issue 25090, 4 December 1942, Page 3
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219A SIMPLE EXISTENCE Otago Daily Times, Issue 25090, 4 December 1942, Page 3
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