Sāmoans as ‘cultural Aryans’

Invincible Strangers 64 Chapter 29.2

The Mukden Incident of 18 September 1931 involved Japanese army officers setting off a small bomb on a Japanese owned railway line in China’s South Manchuria. Little damage was done but it was the pretext for Japanese troops to enter Manchuria to create the puppet state of Manchukuo. New Zealand politicians believed it had implications for Sāmoa. The Auckland Star said that the best that could be said for Japan was that having expelled the Russians from Southern Manchuria, it simply took the place: ‘But as Russia had no moral or legal claim on Manchuria as against China, the Japanese there are merely foreign invaders who have gained a foothold by aggression and hold it by force’. In a letter to the paper, Ta’isi Nelson commented this was exactly the position of New Zealand in Sāmoa: ‘Germany never claimed more than a protectorate over Western Sāmoa, and not one German soldier was ever engaged there as such.’ New Zealand claimed an irrevocable mandate and ignored the wishes of Sāmoans: ‘New Zealand has therefore been more aggressive in Sāmoa than the Japanese in Manchuria, and now exercises much more authority in Sāmoa than was ever claimed by the Germans.’