American Sāmoan governor's suicide
Invincible Strangers 35 Chapter 15
In 1919 Commander Warren Jay Terhune, a 50-year-old with assorted maladies, arrived as American Sāmoa governor.
He could only walk short distances and had to have a truck modified to move him around. Suffering severe mood swings, he was unable to sustain a conversation. Whatever his condition was, it was not improved by Samuelu Sailele Ripley whose family home in Pago Pago had been taken over by the US Navy. He had lived in California from 1904, regularly returning home. He and wife Margaret called for self-determination and civil government. He believed American Sāmoa was in a ‘chaotic condition’ under naval rule. People had lost confidence in the honesty and integrity of the naval officers and civilian officials.
Ripley wrote to President Woodrow Wilson that God ‘never intended that the Sāmoan people should be exploited by the white race for personal gain…’ Another letter to Wilson was signed by 344 matai claiming ‘grievous wrongs’. A letter signed by 971 complained that people in Tutuila and Manu’a were ‘forbidden to assemble to consider Sāmoan affairs and the welfare of the Sāmoan people’. A petition signed by 178 chiefs called for a new governor and an end to marriage rules. They wanted better schools and roads. They wanted the US Navy to consult with them on changes. Ripley’s movement, labelled the American Sāmoan Mau, called for an end to ‘arbitrary navy rule’ and pushed for more autonomy and financial transparency. There were concerns about copra taxes, navy plans for selling land and how military rule impinged on fa’asāmoa. Terhune wanted the group banned. His attitude towards native Sāmoans was patronising and disdainful. Terhune enacted divisive and restrictive rules. With US Federal Judge A.M. Noble he did ‘everything possible’ to encourage black sailors and Sāmoans to marry. This was a eugenic response to the fact that white American sailors, in a continuation of a long South Seas habit, were often taken with the beauty they saw ashore. Local reporter Arthur Greene, related by marriage to Ripley, was provoking anti-imperialist sentiment.
Terhune’s executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Creed S Boucher, recognised the governor was unhinged. Boucher suggested to Terhune that he take over as acting governor. Terhune fired Boucher, appointing Commander Arthur O Kail as his executive. He promptly sided with the Sāmoans. He went to navy surgeon Lieutenant Commander Dollard and asked him to declare Terhune insane. The surgeon said Terhune was overrun by anxieties, but doubted he was insane. Terhune, aware of the plotting, imposed censorship to stop reports getting to the United States. Boucher was not done. As he left Pago Pago, his wife Dorothy, he had petitions from Sāmoans and naval documents sewn into their baby’s bedding. In San Francisco, she showed the documents to the press and forwarded them onto Washington. Dorothy said her husband had been unwilling to acquiesce to abuses on the island and had been trying to secure more equitable treatment for Sāmoans. William Hathaway, San Francisco manager of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, was shown the documents and told the press that what they revealed called for immediate investigation. Terhune’s racial superiority caused resentment: ‘The Sāmoan natives are not a mixed people and are just as proud of that fact as are any of us. They are superior in almost every way to the natives of Hawai'i and yet Governor Terhune recently issued a manifesto prohibiting marriage between any of the white Americans and the natives.’ Boucher formally complained to the navy that Terhune was incompetent, had stolen funds and abused Sāmoans. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels suspended Terhune and the navy ordered an inquiry. The battleship USS Kansas was sent to American Sāmoa to host a court of inquiry, headed by Captain Waldo Evans.
At the governor’s mansion, which had been stoned by locals, Terhune went to the bathroom where there was ‘an unobstructed view to the south through the entrance to the bay’. There he shot himself through the heart with his 45-revolver. Beside the body was Keil’s letter to the surgeon asking that Terhune be declared insane. Keil became acting governor and immediately moved against officials drawing illegal salaries, including the native chief of police, Jack Hunkin Ma'ilo. Boucher had alleged that irregularities of the Terhune administration included paying Ma'ilo as ‘beetle inspector’ as well as head of the police force, but that no beetles were inspected. When Kansas arrived, Evans was named as the new governor. A naval court was convened, consisting of two navy captains, a lieutenant commander and a Marine major. They held a court of inquiry, a board of inquest and court martials, all over a month. The court opened on 8 November 1920 with Evans surrendering governorship to run the court. Captain Edwin Pollock became governor.
The court heard from matai Mauga, Satele, and Tufele who said they had not been misled into calling for change. Mauga said he had struck a friendship with Boucher, discussing the reasons for Sāmoan agitation. Boucher initiated an undercover investigation into the allegations of corruption. Boucher claimed that had he not acted, Noble would have been murdered. Stone fights had begun between sailors and Sāmoans. Kail said that Noble and officers had taken over American Sāmoa. An official conducting a census had ‘corrupted and attempted to corrupt the morals of their young men and women.’ Reed, the island treasurer, had misappropriated funds and Dollard had ‘grossly neglected his duties’. After 20 years of American occupation, there was nothing to show for it: ‘There are practically no schools, no roads, I might say no public health service.’ Noble had offered no justice and he disregarded fa’asāmoa; ‘There was injustice in the courts, they said: they were dissatisfied with Judge Noble’s manner of performing his duties in conducting the proceedings of the court; that Judge Noble considered the people here as being “Niggers” and not fit to associate with except on official occasion.’
Lawyer Merrick W Creigh told the inquiry of meeting Terhune a few days before his death. He looked feverish and under severe strain. Asked what his mental condition was, Creigh replied: ‘I figured, sir, he was non-compos mentis.’ Terhune’s medical history, produced to the court, showed he had suffered from gout, diabetes and in 1917 had been diagnosed with neurasthenia due to overwork. Neurasthenia, no longer a recognised condition, was defined as a consequence of modern life, explaining why it came to be called Americanitis. Symptoms include headaches, muscle pain, weight loss, irritability, anxiety, impotence, depression, a lack of ambition, and both insomnia and lethargy. Vagueness suggested it was a home grown version of tropenkoller. The US Bureau of Medicine and Surgery concluded there was insufficient evidence to diagnose Terhune as definitively insane: ‘It is very probable that Commander Terhune’s mental processes were those of certain individuals who, under stress and responsibility, develop indecision, suspicion of the motive of others and egotistic super-value of their own opinions….’
The inquiry found Terhune ‘while financially honest, lacked tact and firmness, due to his mental and physical condition, as indicated by his failure to correct the feeling of unrest and discontent by immediate and effective action.’ Terhune and his administration were cleared of any wrongdoing. The copra tax process was declared above board.
Boucher was separately court-martialed for encouraging Sāmoan dissidence. He responded saying the government had operated in secret with Terhune, Noble and other men known as the ‘white mice.…’ Boucher was found guilty and dismissed from the navy. Reporter Greene was deported and Kail was reprimanded.
Terhune was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington DC. His widow successfully argued her husband’s death had been in line of duty, qualifying her for a pension.
Evans returned to governorship with Terhune’s policies of arrests, deportations and stripping of matai titles continued. Sedition was prosecuted, including that of a woman caught singing a song mocking the administration. Sāmoans boycotted the copra plantations in protest of the suspension of the high chiefs and Terhune’s treatment of Boucher, Kail, and Greene. Evans had Ripley deported, accusing him of aiding the unrest. Seventeen chiefs and orators were imprisoned for ‘conspiring to kill the high chiefs who had signified their loyalty to the Governor’. Ripley unsuccessfully sued in 1926 in a case funded by the American Civil Liberties Union which said American nationals had the right to appeal against abuses under naval administration.
Pollock became governor and before heading back to American Sāmoa, visited Ripley in California. Ripley maintained that American occupation of Sāmoa was usurpation, but he agreed not to challenge Pollock. When the new governor arrived in Tutuila he held a meeting with the Mau, which agreed to disband. Pollock alarmed Āpia’s overseers when he marked 4 July by reading out the US Declaration of Independence and having it published in O Le Faatonu, the official newsletter.
‘There was nothing to show,’ Tate protested to Wellington, ‘that the complaints of the American Colonists against King George the Third were not complaints against our present King unless the reader had some knowledge of history.’
©Michael J Field
