Five days after leaving Suva they arrived off Niulakita at the southern end of Ellice Island group. Heenan’s notebook recorded ‘no natives, plenty fruit’. Heavy swells prevented a landing and the radio operator and two soldiers assigned there had to return two months later. The trip onward was delayed after a strong Morse signal was picked up and then identified as an American ship. Mullins had his doubts that such a ship was in that part of the world so diverted Viti away from where he thought the signal came from.
Viti arrived at Funafuti, the main island in the Ellice Group, on 24 July 1941, passing through the reef into the 170 square kilometre lagoon. John Jones thought it looked ‘real South Sea-ish…. Natives paddled their big canoes around our ship singing songs of welcome and that evening we were entertained in the village by the natives who put on their regalia and danced and sang for hours.’ While unloading went on, rugby was played between Viti’s crew and islanders. The crew won the rugby but the islanders knew cricket in the Polynesian version, kilikiti.
‘The bat is like a baseball bat and the ball was about half the size of our NZ one, also they have one wicket and it is surprising how quickly they can bowl anyone out,’ Heenan reported. ‘Runners are also supplied so all one needs to do is to bat. A team from the boat made 35. I made 8 runs, tied with another chap for top score. They made 175.’
Relay races were held with victory to the ship; a tug-of-war with a win to the island.
‘After that the Fijians and natives had a game of soccer. It ended in a draw but it was a very good game to watch.’
The sports day was rounded out with a dance and a haka from the New Zealanders: ‘just as good a day’s sport as anywhere in New Zealand.’
Funafuti had a small part in global science when, in 1897, Sir Edgeworth David of Sydney University drilled 330 metres into the reef to prove Charles Darwin’s geological theories and the radical notion that atolls were what were left after a volcanic island had sunk. His wife passed time there writing a book on atoll life. Although British, the Americans claimed Funafuti under the 1856 Guano Act that said if an American saw an island first, and it had guano, then it was American. It was no paradise. There were a couple of western style houses in a government compound and little land. Like many of the atolls they were to come to know, Funafuti was covered in coconut palms rising to around 20 metres or so, while lower down were breadfruit and pandanus trees. The ocean slapped up against the seaward side while the lagoon side had long stretches of white sand with crystal clear, warm water lapping ashore. A crippling heat accompanied an oppressive bright sun. Atoll living was about different perspectives too; the horizon seemed to rise up in the absence of any elevated land and the sky was vast and overwhelming. Sky and sea, was united and pressing in on the thread of land never more than five metres above sea level.
Vaughan set up his radio base there as the hub for Ellice Island coast watchers. School teacher Donald Kennedy had already built a lookout that extended above the coconut trees, and for this reason was not used by the coast watchers. By the time Viti arrived Kennedy had moved to the Solomon Islands where he was to become a celebrated coast watcher.
Viti made several voyages from Funafuti to nearby atolls and on a couple of occasions had scares. Jones remembered one: “We had a couple of radar scares… everyone getting very excited and peering out at the horizon.”
At sea one time a Pan American clipper, probably a Boeing B-314, passed over them at around 1000 metres. Such flights worried the German raiders. The US was neutral but Pan Am made a point of reporting all shipping they saw.
After the Ellice Islands were serviced, Viti moved north and at around 3am on 14 August 1941 they reached Tamana, the southernmost of the Gilberts. At daylight they put radio operator Cliff Pearsall and soldiers Joe Parker and Rod McKenzie ashore. Stan Brown, then 27, was struck by the youth of the men going ashore. Hearn stood out: ‘He was the leader of young men; he was really at the front of any mischief.’
Viti wended its way up the Gilberts, always finding the Micronesians friendly and willing to help. At Tarawa, the main atoll, they dropped off John McCarthy, Robert Hitchon and Dallas Howe. They were transferred to a schooner, Nimanoa, and taken to Abemama atoll. Sister Delores of the Catholic Our Lady of the Sacred Heart remembered them: ‘I saw them, nice boys they were.’
Hitchon, 28, came from Waitoa near Te Aroha. His mother was Yorkshire-born, father a Lancashire man who had fought in the South African War before moving to New Zealand. With his red hair and something of a temper, he was known as a real spitfire. The couple broke-in a farm and raised two boys, Robert and William. Robert was in the Gilberts, William with the New Zealanders in North Africa. Neighbour Mick Fergusson, later a gunner on a Venture bomber, would be in Funafuti in 1944.
‘Robert, Bob, was given a send off in the Springdale Hall,’ Mick recalls. ‘Bill had a send off but didn’t come, he was extremely shy… I can remember him going, he was quite happy about being in the army.’
Bill Langdon had worked with Dallas Howe, 32, tall and fair-haired, a bricklayer from Thames. He was building the convent there when his military call up came through.
‘He was a very pleasant chap, I cannot remember him without a smile on his face,’ Langdon says.
Jack Lang grew up with Howe. He lived in Tararu, just north of Thames and went to the same high school. Howe was tall and could throw a cricket ball further than anyone else. He was the eldest in the family and was left without a father at a young age.
‘Dallas was an absolute true gentleman, he was very quiet, but sociable.’
Lange, who served in Greece and ended up a prisoner of war, said he and Howe were called up at the same time. There was no debate about doing their duty; ‘He was such a straightforward thinking bloke, he would have wanted to do his part.’
Nimanoa dropped Arthur McKenna, Claude Kilpin and Jack Nichol at Nonouti. A note in Heenan’s diary told of Hearn’s landing: ‘Arrived Kuria Shag 1/30pm 17.’ His own arrival with Charles Owen and Les Speedy was noted: ‘Arrived Maiana 18th Aug 1941. Destination.’
At Maiana, John Jones was initially told he could not go ashore but when a man paddled past he was told he could, as long as he returned with the shore party already on the atoll. Jones ended up a long way from the shore party and by the time he got to the place, the party had left. He missed high tide and had to wait until midnight for the next one. He was not given a warm reception. It was not entirely his fault for through the darkness the Viti crew had seen a dark shape coming toward them. They had thought the worst but it had turned out to be the Catholic Church schooner Santa Teretia. Heenan got one last letter off to his father before the ship left them.
‘Don’t worry if you don’t get a letter for a long time as it will be quite a while before I have another chance to write.’
Despite letters “Passed by Censor” Jones managed to give his readers some clues. He wrote of Banaba (Ocean) without naming it, saying it was ‘high up out of the water and sure was an industrious looking place having big phosphate works…. A mixed population of different types of nations and Chinese. Didn’t like this place at all.’
Banaba was the main base for coast watchers. Ron Third had gone direct from New Zealand and two other operators, Phil Thorburn and Rupert Bastin, were to work with him. Beru Atoll would be the back up. Soldiers were not assigned to Banaba as there were other white people on the island. It was expected to be a dangerous spot as phosphate was a strategic product and the Germans had raided shipping around it and Nauru. While off-loading at Banaba, the Australian armed merchant ship Westralia arrived, as part of patrols protecting the phosphate trade.
Some religious thought had gone into the deployment of men. Catholics went to the northern three islands – all Catholic atolls. Jones was Catholic but hadn’t been to church for a long time. It was just that the paperwork required a religion. Viti moved north to Beru, putting Allan Jones ashore. He was alone and he did not want to be there. As they were off Beru, a German raider, Atlantis, seized the Norwegian freighter Silvaplace, southwest of the Cook Islands. It was the last raider action in the South Pacific although no one knew that at the time.
At Butaritari, near the Japanese held Marshal Islands, Jones and brothers Jack and Michael Menzies, both soldiers, were put ashore. On 1 September Viti sent ashore its last coast watcher party. Max McQuinn supported by soldiers Basil Were and Lewis (Jim) Muller stepped ashore at Makin Meang.
The Gilbert and Ellice Island Colony was among Britain’s more challenging creations. The fantastic distances involved were greater than any other colony. Its 38,000 people lived on atolls so small and low that survival was often doubtful. The harsh and cruel environment produced rugged looking people, dark and small. Among the most skilful people in boats, they also suffered epic tales of loss at sea. Banaba had regular shipping for phosphate, but the rest of the colony seldom saw visitors, other than an occasional Burns Philp ship calling by to pick up copra. Ellice was Polynesian and the Gilberts Micronesian. It was not a good fit and when independence finally came much later, they both went their own ways. Until the British arrived and offered protection, most of the atolls were kingdoms to themselves and hostile toward the neighbours. Visitor Graham Belfour, travelling with cousin Robert Louis Stevenson, described the atolls in the late 19th century:
Scenery in all of them is reduced to the simplest of elements – a strand with cocoa-nut palms and pandanus, and the sea – one island differing from another only in having or not having an accessible lagoon in its centre… This very flatness and absence of striking features render the islands a more perfect theatre for effects of light and cloud, while the splendours of the sea are further enhanced by the contrast of the rollers breaking on the reef and the still lagoon sleeping within the barrier of the dark depths. Of ocean outside, and the brilliant shoal water varying infinitely in hue with the inequalities of the shallows within.
Stevenson, writer of Treasure Island, had with wife Fanny toured the Gilberts aboard the schooner Equator in 1889. He was taken with the place, writing of a “superb ocean climate, days of blinding sun and bracing wind, nights of heavenly brightness”. He noticed too “the sameness and smallness of the land, the hugely superior size and interest of sea and sky.” Nothing was “so high as an ordinary cottage. Our path had been still on the flat sea, our dwellings upon unerected coral, our diet from the pickle-tub or out of tins; I had learned to welcome shark flesh for a variety; and a mountain, an onion, an Irish potato or a beef-steak, had been long lost to sense and dear to aspiration.”
Stevenson stayed a while on Abemama and met its King Tembinok, who was according to Balfour, the strongest of the characters they met in Pacific travels. He was, Europeans decided, something of a despot mainly for the way he conquered other islands. While the Gilberts acquired a reputation, inspired by Stevenson, for despots it was a democratic place with each village having its maneaba or speaking house. A feature, though, of living in such small places was intolerance toward difference and a passion for order. Even in Stevenson’s time he noted atolls had an excessive number of police types.
Food is basic, simple and bland in the Gilberts – mainly fish. Islanders were not casual about the many sharks and on Tarawa tiger sharks gather at a single spot every month. Should a shark take a bite out of a fish on a hook, the men let it have the rest. Stories tell of men who did not and died. The main staple is babai, the local version of taro. It was unknown to the New Zealanders and somewhat intimidating. Growing it was an art form involving big pit and the nurturing of compost over many decades. Heavy seas and king tides could spell disaster as seawater will ruin a babai pit and famine was occasionally the lot of an atoll. Severe drought was a regular problem. On some of the Phoenix Islands it had not rained for seven years prior to the start of the war. Pandanus was a useful plant providing a fruit head that was somewhat awkward to prepare and eat. It could be made into flour.
‘Pandanus flour is the best reserve of the atolls,’ a 1943 US Marine Corp survival booklet said. ‘Gilbert Islanders can do a day’s work on a little of this in water at sunrise and sunset. It is easy to digest.’
Vegetables were limited; mostly babai leaves mixed with coconut milk. In season papaya was plentiful and while unknown to the New Zealanders, they quickly acquired a taste for it. Toddy widely produced in the Gilberts was made in the coconut tree by shaving off the surfaces of a coconut flower shoot. The liquid flows from a bleeding shoot into a bamboo cup and when fresh it contains up to 16 percent sugar and is rich in B vitamins. Left up to 15 hours it turns into a highly alcoholic drink.
Wildlife was limited to mangy, weary looking dogs, mostly malnourished. There were cats and chickens scratched around. Each atoll had unusual pigs now recognised as a distinctive breed that were treated as great treasures and seldom killed for food. Everybody had to deal with ants and cockroaches that were large and countless, forcing people to put their food cupboards and tables in tins of water to which a few drops of kerosene had been added. In the Gilberts there were mosquitoes, especially near babai pits. They did not carry malaria or dengue but the countless hordes of mosquitoes plus flies, rats and land crabs could drive a man crazy. Mosquitoes, in particular, enjoyed the new arrivals and nets failed to do much of a job.
After leaving Jones on Butaritari, Viti sailed south and then, from Tarawa, took Gilbertese out east to the awesomely lonely Phoenix Islands. Population pressures were beginning to tell on the Gilberts and the British were planning to resettle people on the eastern islands in the colony. The civilian leader of the expedition had been WPHC assistant secretary Gerard Gallagher, ‘a Rupert Brooke like Irishman’ said Stan Brown. When Viti had been at Banaba he had come down with severe abdominal pains but he declined efforts to get him to New Zealand for treatment. His latest medical crisis occurred while he was ashore on Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro) where Gilbertese were being relocated. He was to be the district officer with them and had built himself a house. When he collapsed it was planned to take him onto Viti that had a good operating theatre, lighting and plenty of hot water. He was too sick to move.
‘By the time an area was cleared and made as sterile as was possible under the circumstances, darkness had fallen and the only light available was an electric torch held by Lieutenant Laurie Whysall,’ Brown wrote. ‘Once the abdomen was opened up even by the inadequate light available, the doctor was able to diagnose a severe bowel blockage and complications.’
He died that night and at 10am Sunday 28 September 1941 he was buried next to the flagstaff under the words ‘another Son of Empire far from home’. While Brown was ashore he found two sets of human bones and on orders packed him up into a wooden sexton box. Later in Suva a British physician, Dr David Hoodless, examined the bones and concluded one set belonged to a white man. He made no conclusions about the other but other experts who saw his notes concluded they were the bones of a woman. Four years before Viti sailed from Suva, American aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan had flown a Lockheed Electra over the Gilbert Islands in a bid to circle the world. They had left Lae in New Guinea and headed for Howland Island, a US atoll east of the Gilberts on 2 July 1937 and never seen again. In 1999 American researchers in Fiji tried to find the box that they believed had ended up in Government House, Suva. President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara declined to give them permission to explore the attic.
Viti made it back to Suva on 11 October 1941, a voyage of 103 days, having set up 15 coast watching stations. She was converted to other duties in New Zealand and ran cargo for the rest of the war from New Zealand to Fiji and on to New Caledonia. She ended life in Bangkok sailing to the Mekong River. Corner transferred to the Fiji Infantry Regiment and quickly rose to become a lieutenant colonel. On Bougainville Corner was wounded and won the Military Cross. The official history of the Fiji Military Forces records Corner was ‘an officer of exceptional ability and was always an example of cool efficiency to those around them.’
©Michael J Field