TIDAL WAVE SWEEPS YAP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17729, 26 December 1925, Page 1

TIDAL WAVE SWEEPS YAP.

NOT A HOUSE REMAINS STANDING ON ISLAND. By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Reuter’s Telegrams. SAN FRANCISCO, December 23. A report that Yap, a small island in the Caroline group in the North Pacific, was swept by a tidal wave and devastated is published in the “Hochi Sha,” a Japanese language newspaper of Honolulu. No confirmation of the report has been received from any other source. The cable between Guam and Yaphas been interrupted since December 16. The “Hochi Sha" not a single house on jthe island, which has an area of seventy-nine square miles and a population of several thousands, is left standing. Fear is expressed that other islands in the group • suffered a similar catastrophe. Yap is a small island of eighty square miles in the Caroline Archipelago, which lies in the Pacific, east of the Philippine Islands. It is 1156 miles from Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and 451 miles from the United States naval base, and the cable station at the small island of Guam. Its strategic importance is that it lies on the flank of the sea route from Guam to Manila, so that submarine or torpedo craft operating from it might render it difficult to maintain communications between the United States and Manila. Before the war it was a German possesson, having been sold by t Spain to Germany after the Spanish-American war of 189 S. Three cables run from it, one to Guam and San Francisco, a'second to Shanghai in China, and a third to the Dutch East Indies. All these were formally ownedU by Germany, and became the property of the Allies. By the terms of the Peace Treaty, Yap and the Carolines were entrusted to Japan as a mandatory area, under the League of Nations. The island was actually occupied by the Japanese in 1914, and has since then been in their hands. There was a dispute over the control of the island, when the United States claimed that the cable stations at Yap were intended to be internationalised, and not handed over to Japanese control. By Japanese law, which extends to the mandatory area, no foreigner may be employed in the telegraph service. The whole question was the subject of diplomatic correspondence between Japan and the United

States. In 1921 an arrangement acceptable to the United States solved the problem. The Americans were granted the right of working the Y'ap end of the Guam cable, free of Japanese control, and erecting any required buildings.