December 18, 1943
Dear Mr. Harris:
Admiral Sherman is playing golf this afternoon on the Santo links, and if it is not too much to ask could we have a couple of your boys as caddies? We will pick them up at 3:10.
A. F. HOWARD
Now launched in a new career as impresario, Harris has built up a solid aesthetic philosophy. “The best plot is a man, a horse, a villain and a lost mine. My people don’t go for this talk-talk society stuff. One of the worst flops I ever had was Hedy Lamarr and June Allyson in Her Highness and the Bellboy. But give us a good Western! My word, they tear the place down. A good chase, with some revolver play, is about the best, although hanging from a cliff is good, too. I guess the finest picture I ever saw was Winners of the West, a thirteen-part serial. The Europeans ridiculed it at first, but by the fourth episode everybody on the island was trying to get in. They stood outside and looked through the doors. When a scene ended with the hero about to be killed, the noise was so great it deafened me. Europeans yelled louder than the natives!”
Harris says the only other really good picture is one with airplanes, although he will go for a gangster picture if it has enough gunplay and murder. “But,” he insists, “what we need is Westerns!”
It is interesting to speculate that considering all the people in the world, perhaps the only universal dramatic form ever conceived is the formalized Western. In China, in Italy, in Fiji and in the States, the people who really love movies prefer two men on horseback, galloping over the desert, firing at each other.
Harris has also evolved a new theory on intermissions. “My plan is to have them as long as the customers will buy anything. This eight-minute stuff is ridiculous! I give my people twenty-five minutes, maybe thirty. If they seem to be spending well I allow them up to three-quarters of an hour. In this way they go back to the feature in a good frame of mind. They’re not hungry.”
The American projectionist came to Harris by chance. Ray Jenkins is a quiet, balding fellow from Hollywood. He’s 30 years old and of all the troops who were stationed on Santo—perhaps half a million at one time or other—he’s the only one who came back. “I like the climate and the people,” he says. During the war he spent two years at Ship Repair, about a quarter of a mile from where he now works. He says, “Santo is like Southern California, except it’s damper. If you take enough quinine you don’t have any trouble.” Since all newcomers neither French nor British must opt which of Santo’s two legal systems he will live under, Ray has chosen to be a Britisher. “They’re more like us,” he says.
The business of having two governments—called the Condominium and universally burlesqued as the Pandemonium—is one of the most fantastic phenomena in the Pacific.
Imagine the New Hebrides with a population of less than 45,000 having two complete governments in which every office in the one is duplicated in the other! There are two systems of money, French and Australian, two types of postage stamps, a French system of law in favor of the planter, a British code which protects the native. The comic-opera confusions are so hilarious they practically justify the exorbitant expense.
Says a British planter, “Suppose the British try to make me do something. I run right away to the French with tears in my eyes like a martyr and ask, ‘Have you surrendered the islands to the British? They’re making a monkey out of you.’ So the French get mad and protect me. French planters do the same thing with the British.”
Another reports, “At a murder trial I was an assessor, a cross between a civilian judge and a juryman. There was a French judge who didn’t speak English, and an English judge who didn’t speak French. The interpreter would ask the native a pidgin question, then translate it into French for the French assessors and into English for the rest. The French judge wished to question the native’s reply, so he asked a question, which was interpreted to the English judge and then put into pidgin for the accused. And the interpreter never really understood the native, who didn’t know what all the fuss was about. We hung him anyway. He was undoubtedly guilty.”
Yet ridiculous as this farce is, it was once justified. France and Britain faced each other on many moot points about the world. A disturbance might cause a complete rupture. Therefore a compromise was reached over the New Hebrides, and this may have saved the peace of Europe. Certainly it helped preserve the alliance of these two powers against Germany in 1914.
Today the Condominium is indefensible. “In fact,” says Tom Harris, “there’s only one good thing about the system. Neither government can ever levy an income tax!” Like most islanders, he thinks the New Hebrides should be turned over to the French.
Two problems may force booming Luganville back to the decay which Americans predicted. The first, strangely enough, concerns jeeps. The cliché symbol of the South Pacific used to be a palm tree by a lagoon. Now it’s an overage jeep bounding along bumpy roads. What will happen when they wear out? On every island Chinese make new cover tops, but no spare mechanized parts can be bought from the United States because of dollar trouble. Many predict that after a splurge of fun, the islanders will have to travel as they did before: by launch.
The second headache is money. Where is it going to come from? Copra plantations are rotting because there is no labor, and a substitute economy has not been discovered. For the present everyone is taking in his neighbor’s wash, spending the American dollars scrounged during the War. When this ends, what? In the meantime the people of Santo are having a whale of a time.
It’s good to see the New Hebrides happy, for in the past they were perhaps the most infamous blot on white civilization and certainly equal to the African slave coast, since the crimes of the Hebrides were committed after a public conscience had stopped the African trade.
Originally these islands contained a million natives, some say more. Each valley supported its villages where cannibals ate only grown men killed in battle. Now the population is about 40,000. One island dropped from 12,000 people to 256 in a few decades. By and large, the great numbers of dead were killed by white men.
Three brutally vicious practices caused the great decline. First and most horrible was the planned introduction into difficult islands of new diseases. A freebooter would catch a native, wait till he caught either measles or whooping cough, and then plop him on some island. Sometimes in less than a month 50% of the population would die, mainly because they lay in sea water to subdue their dreadful fevers, a practice which worked with malaria but not with the new plagues. And when the ships got back to Australia, the captains would narrate in public their cleverness in getting even with natives who were not willing to become slaves.
Second was the slave trade, called blackbirding. Ships prowled the islands kidnapping natives into virtual slavery on the sugar fields of Northern Australia, where the practice was protected and encouraged by colonial laws. A neat trick was to bolt a huge water tank to the bottom of the hold. Large bunches of natives were asked to shift it and were ridiculed when they couldn’t do so. More boys were called to show the white man. Then the hatches were lowered and the ship would be off to sell the cargo in Australia. This happened as late as 1901.
On one such ship the shanghaied blacks created a disturbance, so the crew opened the hatches and spent the night firing rifles into the mass of slaves. One man held a light so the others could aim. They killed sixty and severely wounded sixteen, all of whom were tossed overboard on the grounds that “they would have died anyway.” And a civilized court in 1872 dismissed charges because a black man could not testify against a white!
The third cause of depopulation was the sandalwood trade. Southern islands in the group had the great misfortune to contain this aromatic tree which commanded such a high price in China. A completely craven group of outlaws stormed ashore to get it. They murdered, burned and forced the natives into jungle slavery. The sandalwood islands never recovered.
Naturally the natives retaliated. Today there is an island known as Erromango of the Martyrs. Here
six missionaries, one after the other, were clubbed to death, yet other missionaries ultimately stopped the terrible violence of these islands. In many parts of the Pacific missionaries have been a bane, but all their excesses are outweighed by the fact that in the New Hebrides they alone tried to redress the crimes sanctioned by the public.
Native memories are long, and there is still resentment against the white man. Today it is reflected in the Jon Frum movement. This remarkable society was founded as the result of religious confusion. A new religion entered the islands and made great promises in order to lure natives from the old. They went, but soon found that each church was defrauding them so they reasoned, “All the time we go to John the Baptist. Now we go from him.” Hence the name. The movement is militant, obstructionist and confused, another of the native ferments that are spreading across the Pacific, some directed by Communism, others, like Jon Frum, not.
If Americans guessed wrong about the effect of war on the people of the New Hebrides, they were equally wrong about the jungle. It has not reabsorbed the island. Every road is still passable, even the narrow one that led to the remote swamp where men were trained in jungle fighting. Many quonsets are standing in their old positions and look pretty much as they did five years ago. The air fields, except Bomber 2 which has been torn up, are still used, and NAB (Naval Advanced Base) is a thriving Tonkinese village, incredibly dirty. Where buildings have been torn down the jungle has rushed in and covered the sites, but for the most part the tropical obliteration Americans predicted has not eventuated.
The word jungle, say the purists, should never be used. It has an emotional coloring and no precise meaning. The scientific term is “the tropical rain forest.” This term accurately describes most of the so-called jungles of the South Pacific, for they are not the frightful places that many would have us believe. Most often the rain forests are composed of very tall trees which form canopies over land that is rather fun to travel. The rain forest is much more like a warm Canadian woods than it is like a jungle.
I know rain forests that are like beautiful parks with no undergrowth, others that seem to be cathedrals with sunlight slanting through the rose windows. Brilliant birds fly through the solemn spaces, and I am always struck by the silent majesty of such sanctuaries and agree that to call them jungle is misleading.
But there is another kind of rain forest that is neither inspiring nor majestic, and the vast forests of Espiritu Santo are in that category. Here each tree is burdened with parasites. The sky is never seen, the ground never free of crawling growth. Malignant vines clutch at the intruder. Extensive swamps suck down his feet, and the atmosphere is rank.
Let me explain just what the Santo forest is like. At the end of a road there is a cascade which was much enjoyed by American troops. From this road a trail leads to a spot some four hundred yards above the waterfall. Once I used that trail and came to where I could hear the cascade tumbling down. I was inclined to cut across the short intervening distance and come back by the road, but an Army officer with me felt we had not the time for such a trip, so we retraced our steps to the highway.
The next day three men followed that same trail, came to the same spot, heard the noisy waters. They took the short cut, and when they had gone fifty feet from the trail realized that the going would be tough. Great vines impeded their way; dense growth of all kinds hemmed them in; so they decided to return to the trail, but in that short distance they had become lost.
For two days they tried to gain the cascade. They could hear it sometimes, but from which direction the sound came they could not tell. If they climbed a tree to survey the ground, they could never get above the tangled canopy.
The nights were fearful. Insects of all kind attacked them. Mosquitoes flocked about their faces. There was an armadillo-like millipede six inches long that exuded an alkali which ate away the skin wherever it touched. Thin feelers of the lawyer cane, sometimes forty feet long, tore at them with inverted fish hooks. There were prickly vines, itch plants, poisonous leaves. If they stepped upon a fallen log, it crumbled into dust. If in stumbling they scratched themselves on the rotten wood, the sore festered in six hours and might not heal for six months. They could not drink the water. They could not see the stars. And if they infected one of their thousand bites they ran the risk of blood poisoning.
At the end of the two days one of these boys was dead. Another was out of his mind, and the third had stumbled into a coastal village. Through all their experience they were within three miles of 100,000 men.
Perhaps the purists are right. Perhaps such malignant forests, so poisonous to men, are technically no different from the more clement forests where one may stroll with pleasure. But it seems to me there is a word in our language for the forests of Santo, and I shall use it: JUNGLE. Five times I helped organize searching parties for G.I.’s lost in the Santo jungles. Three times we found the men.
Toward the end of my second visit to Santo, I was beginning to think that I knew at least the outlines of tropical life. I had lived on dozens of rough islands, gone into the jungle as I wished, and shared many experiences with people who live in the hot lands. But I was about to encounter an aspect of equatorial life that taught me how little I really understood.
It started one evening at six. I was walking along the beach when a great pain shot through my eyeballs as if someone had beaten me on the head with a club. I staggered for a moment and the pain subsided.
For more than an hour nothing happened, and then at dinner I felt the connecting tissue in my joints collapse. My limbs seemed to be hung onto my body with flapping wire. I had never before experienced anything like this and sat very still, waiting until I could regain control of my muscles.
All that night I shivered in uncontrollable spasms and sweated furiously. My throat became raw and I heard ringing sounds in my head. In the morning I was taken to the hospital, where I turned in a fancy temperature that pleased the nurse and scared me. I had malaria. On my mission up the Watavihan River I had acquired the often-fatal Guadalcanal fever.
The pretty white mission hospital in Santo is run on the principle that the human bottom is a pincushion. As one famous beachcomber said of it, “They shot me from every angle.”
Still, it was interesting to be sick in pidgin. The shirt is to be taken off? “Lipt him up calico.” The tongue looks better now? “Ah, he good fellow too much.” I rediscovered the adage that the only perfect climate for a human being is bed, and I settled back to some of the most patient care I had ever known.
But as I lay in bed I thought: I shall get over this quickly with modern medicine, but not five miles from here are natives who have never been free of malaria. The Melanesian savage is inoculated at birth and never discovers what a malaria-free life might be.
The shaking comes, the pain behind the eyes, the great fever. The naked man huddles in his hut and does not complain, for all men have fever.
At forty the savage is an old, old man. At forty-five he is usually dead. His most prized possession was the tattered blanket he once found in a dump. It had been his only medicine.
There is a more dreadful aspect of malaria. If the dead corpuscles coagulate in the brain, death is instantaneous. But even then the worst has not been said. Usually the dead corpuscles do not attack the brain. They crowd into the kidneys. Then the patient, who thinks he has merely another case of fever, urinates and reels back in horror. The urine is smoky black! He has blackwater fever. In racking pain he dies, his kidneys dissolved, his head a receptacle of molten lead.
There are now medicines which cure more than fifty per cent of blackwater cases, but the disease, once described as “the only way the islands had of striking back at the white men who had debauched them,” is still fatal if treatment is not prompt. And in the jungle, where there is no medicine, the native always dies.
Americans did much for Santo, and all the inhabitants admit it, but we left one harrowing scar that will never be forgotten: Million Dollar Point.
At the east end of the island there was a huge coral pit, later converted into a dump. When the war ended all new rolling stock was moved into this dump. There were tractors, uncrated new jeeps, earth-moving machinery, ambulances—anything you could think of on wheels. The Frenchmen eyed this collection enviously. Overtures were made to buy it, but always at the last minute the deal fell through. The French say the Americans were afraid to follow orders.
The Americans knew the French were stalling, sure they would get the lot for nothing. A deadline was set and the French allowed it to pass, even though the terms were about 8¢ on the dollar.
So a ramp was built into the sea and bewildered mechanics climbed aboard the great earth-moving monsters, the road graders, the heavy trucks. Ignitions went on. The engines coughed, and the giant procession crawled along the ramp. At the last moment the mechanics jumped free and the lumbering dinosaurs of modern industry plunged into the sea. There was a hiss as engine blocks cracked, and a rising column of water standing for a moment like a monument in a weird graveyard. The wealth was gone.
A British subject says, “It continued for days. Those warehouses of canned food, the cloth, the tools, and most of all the jeeps! There were men who watched with tears in their eyes. Million Dollar Point, we call it. Not even the Americans could explain what they were doing. One day they oiled the engines carefully. The next they threw them into the sea. How could governments permit such a thing to happen?”
Of all the islands in the Pacific, Santo has made the most profound impression on me. There are lovelier islands, true, but the main reason why I like Santo is its zany life. On the day I left I was entertained at lunch by the commissioner for native affairs, the resident liaison officer of the British Government, the collector of taxes, the chief of immigration, the administrator of housing, the commandant of the army garrison, the secretary of the council, and the protector of French interests. It was a small luncheon, because all of the above officials were one man, a delightful French philosopher I had once known in Tahiti. As the plane came he sighed mournfully and said, “You must be very sorry to leave so happy an island. Where everybody dances and gets drunk and the chief of police never makes a fuss.” He was also the chief of police, and he was right. I was sorry to leave.