Treasure Island

Wanganui Chronicle, 17 January 1948, Page 6

Treasure Island

scores of machine-gun posts, batteries of anti-aircraft weapons, were sited. Much of the phosphate machinery was dragged on to the protective reef around the island as a defence against any Allied amphibious landing; tank traps were dug; hundreds of coconut palms were ruthlessly cut down to clear the way for airstrips. The Japanese, in a remarkably short time, created a fortress and a responsible Australian military authority estimated after the surrender of the Japanese that a division of troops would have had the bloodiest task in the world to overcome the defending force of 3500 Japanese, so strongly were they entrenched. JAPANESE REPRISALS In the meantime American planes began to bomb the island to an increasing degree. Their plane losses at times were heavy—in fact at one stage of the war, Allied air losses were out of all proportion to the number of sorties flown. However, after one successful and damaging Allied raid the Japanese ,as a reprisal, executed the Administrator and his four colleagues—a crime for which the perpetrators paid the full penalty at the war crimes trials at Rabaul. The Japanese reign on Nauru was cruel and harsh. Their force of 3500 threw a tremendous load on to the food resources of the island and in order to conserve supplies their first inhuman act was to put 39 lepers in a canoe, tow them to sea, and set them adrift. "They were not heard of again,” laconically states a report. Next, the Japanese deported twothirds of the Nauruans to Truk Island m the Carolines. Although, by Japanese standards, they were not badly treated, malnutrition, neglect and the usual Japanese contempt for the rights of other peoples, took a severe toll. Of 1200 odd taken to Truk, 481 died, chiefly from scabies, yaws and other tropical diseases. A total of 759 were finally located by an official of the Nauruan Administration and returned to Nauru just two years ago. Since then a few others have been repatriated. The Nauruans who remained on the island fared little better than those who were deported. Some 244 died, and the total excess of Nauruan deaths over births during the Japanese occupation was 549. Some 1300 Nauruans survived. At the end of last July ■ the total population of Nauru was officially given as 1383. Before the war it was nearly 3000, Including a high pronortion of Chinese labourers.

The one thing that the Japanese did to implement food supplies was to grow pumpkins on every available scrap of ground. The native population was also ordered to grow them, and it was an offence for the Nauruans and the Chinese to keep a pig because the animals made such inroads on the supply, but it is on record that the day after the Japanese surrendered a Chinese appeared with a sow and six piglets. How he managed to conceal them from the Japanese for so long was one of the major mysteries of the island. DESTRUCTION AND RUIN

Death by execution was the penalty for stealing pumpkins. Thousands and thousands were grown by the typically Japanese method of using human waste as fertiliser. Nauru, which formerly enjoyed a high standard of hygiene, was now attacked by flies and the menace was the cause of a great deal of illness and deaths among the population. When an Australian force, accom?anied by representatives of the ormer administration and the British Phosphate Commission, returned to the island in September, 1945, they found a scene of destruction and ruin. Not only had the Japanese literally reverted to the "blacklegging” era, which was one of terror for the islanders a century or more ago, but the condition of the entire island was vile. There were no sanitary arrangements; the filth was indescribable, and there was chaos everywhere. All native houses had been destroyed except those in three small districts, but these were in such a state that they were immediately demolished. The civil administration, despite the herculean task ahead of it. tackled the serious clean-up problems, and by now good order has been restored, but only after the expenditure of about £250,000 to effect complete restoration, exclusive of the commission’s part. Damage to the phosphate installations exceeded 11,000,000, but temporary repairs enabled production to begin again in July .1946. The output, however, was limited to about 250,000 tons for the first year and official sources consider that it will not be possible to reach the pre-war output much before 1950. By agreement the allocations of phosphate produced have beeh fixed at 42 per cent, for both the United Kingdom and Australia, and 16 per cent, for New Zealand. GREAT FUTURE PROBLEM Advantage is being taken of the almost total destruction of buildings on Nauru to remodel villages and townships on modern lines. As before, Chinese contract workers are being used by the commission, but both it and the Administration are finding work for all Nauruans who desire it and, in contrast to their pre-war disinclination for regular employment, most of them are seeking jobs. Nauruan operators are i employed at the wireless station and Nauruans perform much of the . junior clerical work of the Administration. The natives, too, have reopened their own co-operative store. From all points of view prosperity I should not be long in returning to Nauru. _ There is no public debt, 1 crime is minor .taxation negligible. I Phosphate is beginning to flow along the conveyor belts in increasing ! quantities, and New Zealand farms | which have been nearly starved of ; adequate supplies, will soon benefit. I While not immediately pressing, the great problem of the future will be: What will happen when the phosphate deposits are exhausted? There is sufficient for the next 50 years ,but by then four-fifths of the island will consist of a mass of barren coral pinnacles, bared by the removal of the covering phosphate rock.