Invincible strangers
A biography of 20th Century Sāmoa
Michael J Field
‘Do not let us weep. We have no cause for shame. We do not yield to Tamasese, but to the invincible strangers.’ – Lauaki Namulau’ulu Mamoe
Preface
Photographer ‘Old Tat’ gathered survivors around the body of a paramount leader, killed by New Zealand. Why did authorities kept secret the identity of a policeman who murdered him on Āpia’s Beach Road? Behind it all, Wellington’s appalling regime; many in Sāmoa preferred more civilised German rule.
1. Prelude: War on Sāmoa
Imperial Germany bombards unarmed villages as other imperial forces demand Sāmoa crown a king, even if their culture knows no such role. Powerful chief rises to defeat Germans in combat, as nature in the form of a cyclone smashes gunboats in Āpia harbour. White settlers demand land, labour and sex.
2. Bombarding Āpia
US and Britain, backing Maliatoa as king, make war on “savage Sāmoans”. Matafa’a leads a force to defend his nation. Imperial gunboats steam along the coast, randomly and without warning, bombarding villages, Vailima and Āpia, killing many civilians. New Zealand reporter hails it as a glorious white man’s burden.
3. Battle of Vailele
American and British forces under attack along plantation road. Mata’afa’s men overwhelm again at Vailele. The dead palagi are buried at Mulinu’ū; monuments erected to them which still stand. Medals for white survivors. Sāmoan casualties not spoken of or honoured. The US threatens to blow every Sāmoan to pieces.
4. Raising flags
The ‘natives behaved on the whole very well’ as Germany raised its flag over part of Sāmoa, pledging where ‘the German Eagle has bitten his fangs into a land this land is German.’ To the east celebrated lady’s man Benjamin ‘BF’ Tilley declared American Sāmoa under US sovereignty and protection.
5. Goldfish and cocktails
Sāmoa’s influential books: The Bible and a two volume compendium of all things. Augustin Krämer’s Die Sāmoa-Inseln is an extensive, if inaccurate account of secret knowledge. Some of Krämer’s work, especially on women, was absurd. Another German medical man left another legacy; goldfish in a lake and a calming cocktail.
6. Chinese labour
German dreams of a settler economy hit labour problems as Sāmoans show little interest in working on plantations. Under pressure, Solf agrees to allow Chinese men on contracts to work instead. Brutal working conditions result in high death rates. Racial classification rules imposed as German men find Sāmoan women attractive.
7. On exhibition in Germany
Sāmoans displayed in German zoos. Tama'āiga Tupua Tamasese Lealofi-o-A’ana accompanies one group, not as an exhibit but in order to meet the Kaiser. While waiting for an audience he becomes the first Sāmoan to fly. While displaying people in a zoo caused some outrage, some Sāmoan participants found it all wonderful.
8. Cowboy movies and trousers
German governor’s child born at Vailima and blessed with Sāmoan name as he, and successor, reveal affection for the new colony. Yet there is still crime and punishment, and a strange rebellion among a young group of policemen, leading to multiple deaths in a shootout, inspired by Western movie, at Malie.
9. Rupert Brooke in Sāmoa
English poet Rupert Brooke in Sāmoa offers a dreamy, but ultimately tragic, account: ‘...I’d left behind those lovely places and lovely people, perhaps forever. I reflected that there was surely nothing else like them in the world, and very probably nothing in the next…’
10. ‘your colonies are finished’
The Great War opens, with Deutsch-Sāmoa and its new Telefunken unprotected, the German Pacific fleet far away. Britain asks New Zealand to seize the radio station. New Zealand had a 1300 strong force ready to go in days. Twenty days after war was declared, Union Jack flies over Sāmoa.
11. New Zealand occupation of Sāmoa
Seizure was bloodless; Germany had no army to resist New Zealand invaders. But days after occupation was declared, German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sailed into Āpia harbour. Neither side opened fire on the other; Germans complained they saw soldiers but ‘natives with women were everywhere…’
12. Logan’s reign
World press welcomes Sāmoa’s seizure as easy and bloodless but Logan shows signs of early madness, arresting Chinese workers and traders. Soldiers riot on Christmas Eve, stoning Vailima and demanding Logan be sent home to look after sheep. Other soldiers spend productive time exploring ancient, forgotten ruins in the jungle.
13. Faama’i oti – the death sickness
Influenza virus A/H1N1 arrived in Sāmoa on 7 November 1914 aboard Talune from Auckland, which among its passengers were 13 soldiers already ill. A Sāmoan aboard called to his family waiting ‘there is sickness in this boat!’ Passengers were allowed ashore and within a month nearly a third of Sāmoa’s population was dead.
14. Hard liquor
Full prohibition imposed, creating home brewing operations in villages. A German ship picks up 170 deported Germans. A fifth of pre-war German numbers remain. Deportation police unit disbanded but one remains, Arthur Braisby. New Zealand passes its Sāmoa Act on administration, and outlawing marriages between Chinese and Sāmoans.
15. ‘Grievous wrongs’
US Navy rule of American Sāmoa criticised in a letter signed by 971 who complained at how the navy ran Sāmoan affairs. A petition calling for change followed. A suicide and unrest forced Washington to act. A new governor published the Declaration of Independence prompting New Zealand’s ruler to complain it gave their Sāmoans ideas.
16. Uncrowned king
Sword-wearing General Richardson administers Sāmoa, right down to individual villages, reordering them. He strips matai titles and when high chief Tupua Tamasese was ordered to remove a hedge and when he did not, Richardson had him banished. On Savai’i, Richardson stops doctors from attending a woman in childbirth - it would be remembered.
17. Plotting
Ta’isi Nelson becomes concerned over Richardson’s oppressive behaviour. A public meeting was called, attended by 250 people, to discuss growing grievances over New Zealand rule. Richardson forces closure of another meeting. ‘The Sāmoa League’ formed, later known as the Mau. Richardson becomes alarmed and considers military force.
18. New Zealand gunboats
Richardson finally gets to act, exiling Ta’isi. The Mau ‘police’ appear, complete in uniform singlets, lavalava and colour tape. Their first job is enforcing a sā or boycott on white stores, particularly those selling New Zealand goods. Richardson persuades Wellington to send gunboats, and when they arrive, with Royal Marines, they begin arresting hundreds.
19. Murders
Chinese workers suffered heavily under New Zealand, especially those in custody were treated brutally. Wong See and Lei Mau were scandalous. Chained into their cells, one was found dead. Suicide was said to be the cause, but Chinese officials were unconvinced that a chained up man could hang himself with a blanket.
20. Silent Steve
Finding a silent man, a new administrator was installed, soldier Stephen Allen, who arrived with a newly created military police. Their first show of force was to support police arresting Mau members. Allen moved against Tupua Tamasese, having him arrested and jailed. All could see, the Mau was growing.
21. High moral race
Sāmoa’s Reparation Estates found to be badly run and unprofitable, as corruption begins to show. American filmmakers in Sāfune produce a documentary, Moana. An American brigantine, Carnegie, explodes in Āpia harbour. The Mau komiti meets to plan a march, with Tuimaleali’ifano saying ‘obey the message’. Next day would become known as Aso Pogisa.
22. Aso Pogisa
Tupua Tamasese calling out ‘Filemu Sāmoa, peace Sāmoa’. Three policemen could see him across the sights of their weapons. One of them pulled a trigger. That single shot hit Tupua Tamasese’s thigh; ‘Tamasese fell in such a way that as he lay on his back he could see my mother on the balcony.’ He lifted his hand slightly and waved. ‘I remember tears were streaming down her face.’
23. Found to have been unnecessary...
Allen files first reports to New Zealand, calling Aso Pogisa a riot, rather than a police killing. Police are hailed for restraint, with Allen saying they could have justifiably killed many more. Quickly a coroner’s court hearing is called even as police hose down the road and fail to collect any evidence of what happened.
24. Navy returns
New Zealand sends in the navy and marines, again, to deal with the Mau. This time Wellington adds a new weapon; a Lewis gun equipped float plane. New Zealand’s new air force’s first even mission is to harass Sāmoans who have escaped into the jungle. Police track them too, and on occasion, kill young Mau members.
25. Women’s Mau & talks
As Mau men head into the jungle, their women form a civil disobedience organisation - the Women’s Mau - which further outrages the New Zealand authorities who try to close them down. Finally Wellington realised both sides needed to talk and a cabinet minister arrived to negotiate as the Mau left the jungle.
26. Child’s intellect
As the world slid into a Great Depression, the power of the Mau faded somewhat in Sāmoa. The first anniversary of Aso Pogisā saw the administration get the Lewis guns ready. Allen ended his three year term with a savage memo to Wellington saying ‘The Sāmoan is a man of very limited intelligence.’
27. Another general, commission and anthropologist
Young American anthropologist Margaret Mead studied the sexuality of adolescent girls, coming up with her best seller Coming of Age in Sāmoa. She ignored the growing Mau movement in American Sāmoa and publicly endorsed US Navy rule of the territory. Ta’isi allowed to return from exile but new administrator complained he was being treated as a king.
28. Ta’isi’s sedition
New Zealand, caught severely in the depths of a global depression, elects its first Labour Government led by Michael Joseph Savage. Mostly it is indifferent to Sāmoa, especially after the death of leader Harry Holland, but it ends Ta’isi’s exile, allow him to return home.
29. Sāmoa’s Nazis
While remote from their homeland, Sāmoa’s small German settler community was caught up in the global rise of fascism, but with something of a problem. Most of them were married to Polynesian women who the Nazis did not recognise as Aryan. Wellington feared Berlin was plotting to get is colony back.
30. US Marines return
Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour bought the United States into World War Two, and in time produced profound social change in Sāmoa as large detachments of US Marines were based in both territories ahead of deployment into the Pacific. Early in the piece, a Japanese submarine attacked Pago Pago.
31. Chapter
Germany’s first governor of Sāmoa died, warning of a ‘sinister dark shadow’; the Nazis. His widow Johanna knew well of the dangers, and quietly helped German Jews escape the country. Her Vailima born daughter So'oa'emalelagi lived in Shanghai for a time but as world war neared, she returned to Berlin, to assist her mother.
32. Chapter
Sāmoa petitions the United Nations for self-government. New Zealand tells the UN Sāmoans are proud and intelligent. A UN mission to Sāmoa reports ‘the whites behave as masters.’ Voelcker, last administrator, reports to Wellington that Sāmoans were 'definitely a backward people with an over-weaning conceit and sense of their own importance'.
33.Part of the world
Chapter 33
Independent Sāmoa was changing; Tupuola Efi became its youngest prime minister. He was Mau, though, his father Tupua Tamasese Mea’ole, his mother Irene Nelson, a daughter of Ta’isi Nelson. He opened ties with China and became the first Sāmoan prime minister to address the UN General Assembly. A police operation called ‘Pot Black’ in New Zealand caused tensions in Sāmoa with many of its citizens dragged in by ‘dawn raids’.
34. Assassination: ‘a big fire came out…’
Deepening corruption in the ruling Human Rights Protection Party led to two cabinet ministers hiring an assassin to murder the new Minister of Works, Luagalau Levaula Kamu. The killing was carried at a party celebration ball. One of the conspiring ministers was the son of a policeman who had killed Mau members at Aso Pogisa.
35. Epidemic again
Between the lethal influenza epidemic of 1918 and the recent Covid-19 pandemic, Sāmoa, was hit with a child-killing measles epidemic. The incompetence of the health system and the arrogance of the prime minister left a heavy toll.
Sources
The right of Michael Field to be identified as the author of this work in terms of Section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.
ALSO BY MICHAEL FIELD
Mau: Sāmoa’s Struggle Against New Zealand Oppression
Speight of Violence: Inside Fiji’s 2000 coup
Swimming with Sharks: Tales from the South Pacific Frontline
The Catch: How fishing companies reinvented slavery and plunge the ocean