Day of Reckoning

Day of Reckoning LACHLAN STRAHAN

Pandanus Online Publications, found at the Pandanus Books web site, presents additional material relating to this book. www.pandanusbooks.com.au

Day of Reckoning

Day of Reckoning LACHLAN STRAHAN

PANDANUS BOOKS Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Cover: American transport motor dump on Manus Island, September 1949. Australian War Memorial Negative Number 041526. © Lachlan Strahan 2005 This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. Include: Every effort has been made to locate copyright holders of all images. Further information is welcomed by the author. Typeset in Goudy 11pt on 15pt and printed by Pirion National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Strahan, Lachlan, 1965– . Day of Reckoning. ISBN 1 74076 167 7. 1. Manus Island (Papua New Guinea). 2. China — Foreign relations — Papua New Guinea. 3. Papua New Guinea — Foreign relations — China. I. Title. 327.953051 Published by Pandanus Books, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Pandanus Books are distributed by UNIREPS, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052 Telephone 02 9664 0999 Fax 02 9664 5420 Production: Ian Templeman, Justine Molony and Emily Brissenden

For my godfather, Ian ‘Robbi’ Robertson

Acknowledgements

Many people helped me write this book. I would not have gotten very far without the invaluable assistance of dedicated and highly capable librarians and archivists. Carolyn Connor at the National Archives of Australia (NAA) was enormously helpful over many years, tracking down an array of files and sending copies of documents to me while I was living and working in Germany and later South Korea. Other NAA staff assisted me in various ways, especially Linda Macfarlane, Holly Schulte, David Wagland, Fiona Burn and Nancy Taylor. My father, Frank Strahan, and Suzanne Fairbanks dug up material about the New Guinea Goldfields Company in the University of Melbourne Archives. Margaret Heyward at the Registry of the High Court of Australia located the full transcript of one key trial, while Julie Lee and Chris Marshall at the Australian War Memorial helped in the search for photographs to illustrate the text. Rebecca Collier, Wilbert Mahoney, Timothy Nenninger, William Walsh and especially Rich Boylan guided me through the vast resources of the National Archives of the United States. Armed with his prodigious knowledge of US military records, Rich took me into the labyrinth of stacks inside the Archives to find several particularly useful files. Mary Dennis, Deputy Clerk of Court at the United States Army Judiciary in Falls Creek, Virginia, unearthed a copy of the transcript of the court martial of one of the main characters in my book. Kevin M O’Melia, Assistant Vice President and Corporate Secretary at Vinnell Corporation, shed some light on the operations of his company in the Pacific after World War II. Mike Houlahan, Public Relations Officer at the Philippine Scouts Heritage Society,

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taught me much about the Filipino Scouts in the US Army, correcting several errors in an earlier version of my manuscript. Aniceto Bagley, a former Scout who served in the western Pacific in the late 1940s, provided an all-important personal perspective. Professor Ton Otto helped me to understand the culture and history of Manus, while Bridget Griffen-Foley and Alison Pilger, Biographical Registrar at the Australian Dictionary of Biography, filled in crucial details in the lives of some of my Australian characters. Ewan Maidment, Executive Officer of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau at The Australian National University, and Peter Cahill, co-ordinator of the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia collection in the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland, followed up several leads for me. A number of people kindly shared with me their memories of living and working in PNG in the 1940s. They allowed me to gain a much keener sense of the challenges which faced the Australian Administration. Brian Jinks, Maxwell Hayes, Stuart Inder, Adrian Leyden, James Sinclair, Harry West and Terry White answered questions big and small. Peter Grimshaw, John McCubbery and Geoff Melrose supplied biographical information about their fathers who worked for the Administration. Philippa McGuinness helped to hone my publication proposal and steered me towards Pandanus Books. My manuscript would probably still be lying in the bottom draw of my desk without Philippa’s assistance. Hank Nelson was particularly generous, providing wise and detailed comments on the text and helping me to navigate my way through PNG’s past. Paul Davies, David Dutton, my mother, Lynne Strahan, and Geoff Tooth read the entire manuscript and made many insightful suggestions. Ian Britain, Janet Gardiner, Patrick Gibbons, Kate Logan, Frank Strahan, Greg Terrill and Garry Woodard read segments of the manuscript, improving the text in different ways. I am grateful that Ian Templeman and the editorial board at Pandanus Books decided to take up my manuscript. It was a great

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pleasure to work with the team at Pandanus: Justine Molony was always a good-humoured, skilful and supportive editor; Jan Borrie edited the manuscript with a sharp eye; Emily Brissenden did a fine design job creating a striking cover; Valerie Wayte handled publicity with sure hands; and Jo Bushby looked after the financial and legal aspects of the project with sure hands. My wife, Lily Petkovska, helped me in so many ways throughout this project, through all of its ups and downs over the last eight years. She read different drafts of the manuscript, challenged my ideas and encouraged me to improve the prose and narrative. Our children, Joschka and Katya, always reminded me, so powerfully and joyously, that the present is the place to be. I am of course responsible for any remaining errors and misjudgments in the text. The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author alone and in no way represent the views of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Lachlan Strahan

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

viii

List of Illustrations

xii

Prologue Sunday Afternoon

1

Chapter One On the Edge of the Great Deep Blue

5

Chapter Two An Armed Rebellion in Paradise?

44

Chapter Three In the Midnight Dark

87

Chapter Four Post-Mortem

126

Chapter Five A Great and Powerful Friend

153

Chapter Six Dark Deeds

175

Chapter Seven On the Brink

208

Chapter Eight Judgment Day

232

Chapter Nine A Death in the Spice Islands

261

Chapter Ten Aftermaths

302

Epilogue

338

Endnotes

358

Maps

362

Abbreviations

380

Index

381

xii

List of illustrations

Cover American transport motor dump on Manus Island, September 1949. Australian War Memorial Negative Number 041526. Prologue Derelict US Army Quonset huts on Manus Island after the war. Australian War Memorial Negative Number 304175. Chapter one Eddie Ward, Minister for External Territories (1943–9) [2nd R] meets Sergeant Iwagu, Royal Papuan Constabulary, Finschhafen, April 1944. Australian War Memorial Negative Number 072635. Chapter two District Officer Robert Melrose, Minister for External Territories, Allan McDonald and District Officer G. L ‘Kassa’ Townsend (L to R) on the verandah in Salamaua in 1941 some months before the Japanese invasion. Courtesy of Geoff Melrose. Chapter three Australian troops reclaim Lae in September 1943, examining shattered buildings. Australian War Memorial Negative Number 015780. Chapter four John Scott worked for New Guinea Goldfields before joining the Australian Army in January 1942.

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From the Collection of the National Archives of Australia — B883 NGX376.

Chapter five The US Army used the Philippine Scouts in different roles around the Pacific after the war. Aniceto Bagley (L) and Marcelo Arceo (R), members of an ordnance ammunition company, Saipan c. 1948. Credit: Courtesy of Aniceto Bagley. Chapter six Lae police station and gaol in 1946. From the Collection of the National Archives of Australia — A1200 L5957. Chapter seven Chou Hung-shao (L) and Hsueh Pao-keng (R), members of the Chinese Nationalist contingent on Manus in 1947–48. From the Collection of the National Archives of Australia — A1838 308/1/2/2 part 1; A1838 308/1/2/2 part 1. Chapter eight R. E. Godson, master of the Administration trawler Sirius (L) and Subinspector Charles ‘Kedger’ Carr (4th L) standing in front of a Qantas Empire Airways DC3 at Los Negros airstrip, Manus, August 1948. Credit: Courtesy of Maxwell Hayes. Chapter nine The village of Doroeba on Morotai in 1948. Credit: Australian War Memorial Negative Number 090617. Alexander Newman re-enlisted in the RAAF in 1946, serving on Morotai in 1947–48. From the Collection of the National Archives of Australia — A9301 166006.

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Chapter ten John Grimshaw, Commissioner of the Royal Papuan Constabulary and New Guinea Police Force, April 1950. Courtesy of Maxwell Hayes. Epilogue Flora ‘Ma’ Stewart used old Australian Women’s Army Service huts to re-open her Hotel Cecil in Lae in 1946. The recreation hall is on the left. Credit: Australian War Memorial Negative Number 092412.

Prologue

Sunday Afternoon

THE MONSOONAL RAIN, drenching and enveloping, was falling on 25 January 1948 at Lugos, an old mission settlement on the northern coast of Manus Island. It was Sunday afternoon and the fading light heightened the sense of stillness. The brief tropical twilight was not far off, and then the heavy curtain of sundown would descend with particular abruptness, as it did this close to the equator. As ever, the heat was sweltering. Nourished by the abundant rain, the coastal vegetation was thick and lush. Aside from the insistent rain, all was quiet, the local people sheltering in their village until the clouds had rolled away to the south-east, across the Bismarck Sea to the mainland of Papua New Guinea.1 Not even the local dogs bothered to stir at this time; they, too, waited for the rain to subside before venturing forth to scavenge. The heavy raindrops drummed on the curved corrugated roof of a Quonset hut, creating a sound that was almost soothing in its loud, rhythmical beat. The monsoonal afternoon shower was

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Day of Reckoning

a time to rest and prepare food, to chat about the events of the day, the size of the catch or the next market. But this scene of serenity was deceptive. Inside the Quonset hut, Pondranei, a 15- or 16-year-old islander from a nearby village, was awash with pain. Four men, members of a Chinese Nationalist labour contingent, had pulled his arms roughly behind his back and high above his head, tying his hands with brass wire and telephone cable to an iron strut supporting the ceiling. Relics of World War II, slowly but inexorably rusting in the tropical damp, the Quonset huts were long, low buildings erected by the Americans to house their troops. With his toes barely touching the floor, his head hanging forward and his chin rubbing against his chest, Pondranei felt like his shoulders were being wrenched out of their sockets. His assailants were standing around him in a semicircle, several holding makeshift weapons — a plank, a fibrous piece of sugar cane and a long reed of pitpit. They were gesticulating in an animated fashion, yelling at him in Chinese, a language he could not understand. Although a few Chinese lived on Manus before and after the war, it seems likely that the young islander knew little about their ways. Dangling from the ceiling, defenceless, surrounded by four shouting men, he kept his eyes closed. His attackers hit him across the face, repeatedly and vigorously, with open hands and closed fists, and then set about beating him on the back, buttocks and legs with the plank and the sugar cane. Far from any likely source of help, Pondranei had good reason to fear for his life. His cries of pain did not deter his attackers, and the bashing continued until he fainted, slipping gratefully into unconsciousness. The four Chinese broke off their attack at last, cut the wire and cable that fastened their young victim to the ceiling of the hut and left him unconscious in a heap on the floor. The Chinese felt vindicated, having delivered what they saw as just punishment for a transgression. Some time later, Pondranei regained consciousness, worked his hands free of the now loose bindings around his wrists and fled from the hut, back through the twilight to his village.

Sunday Afternoon

3

From the beginning, this act of brutality was clouded in intrigue. Why did the Chinese bash a young islander? Why were they on an island thousands of kilometres from their homeland, which was racked by a fierce civil war? This incident was surely a small matter, something that could have ended quickly, without a fuss and without any real conflict. It probably should have ended swiftly, for no greater issues appeared to be at stake. Why bother? If the Australian District Officer had simply decided to do nothing or to resolve the matter in a quiet, ad hoc fashion, this violent encounter would have slipped by without notice, then and now, as one of those countless passing happenings that remain unrecorded by history, accorded no special meaning. But much more would follow from this crime. Sometimes small matters grow unexpectedly and assume much greater dimensions as events acquire a momentum of their own, drawing people along in their wake. No one could have anticipated how this bashing in a disused US Army hut on a remote island would come to cause so much trouble. Not even the most far-seeing observer could have predicted how this crime would come to be a matter of contention between several national capitals. Even less could they have foreseen how it would come to be entangled with other, much darker crimes in other, equally exotic locations. On 25 January 1948, a young islander called Pondranei became one of the unwitting protagonists in a protracted legal, political and cultural drama in which the stakes would rise and then rise again. Before we are finished, we will encounter a web of violent crimes, all committed in seven months from late 1947 to early 1948. These crimes will shed some light on the nature of crime, on the vagaries of justice and the difficulty of casting judgment, on the misunderstandings, rival claims and violence that can flow from cross-cultural encounters. They will open a window into Australia’s place in the world in the tumultuous aftermath of World War II, revealing along the way the personal stories of a generation of Australians who ventured north into PNG and Asia,

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fired on many occasions by a spirit of adventure or a determination to govern benevolently, on others by a more prosaic need for a job or the desire to turn a profit, and at times by more poignant or darker motives.

Chapter One

On the Edge of the Great Deep Blue

MANUS ISLAND WAS an unlikely place for such an entangled and unexpected cultural, legal and political confrontation to begin. Fringed by coral reefs, it shimmers on the horizon, 320 kilometres beyond the north coast of mainland New Guinea on the outer edge of the Bismarck Sea. On the other side of the island lies the great deep blue of the Pacific Ocean, stretching for thousands of kilometres further north. Although it is the principal island of the Admiralties, a collection of more than 150 islets sprinkled across a considerable expanse of water in the Bismarck Sea, Manus is not large, measuring only 80 kilometres west to east and no more than 32 kilometres north to south. A chain of irregular and broken mountains, thrown up long ago by volcanic eruptions, runs down the spine of the island from west to east, with the highest point, Mt Dremsel,

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Day of Reckoning

reaching 718 metres. Rivers and streams cut down from this range to the coast, which alternates between steep slopes and swampy bays. Dense rainforest envelops the interior, resisting human penetration, while coconut palms, sago and mangroves cover the flatter stretches of land along the coast. The islet of Los Negros, a small crescent, lies at the western tip of the island across the narrow Loniu Passage. The north-west monsoon sweeps across Manus from November until March, with the south-east trade wind arriving in May and departing in October. The climate is hot and humid. It would be a mistake to assume that Manus and its surrounding islets were cut off in some kind of hermetically sealed container. By the mid-20th century, people had been living on the Admiralties for at least 10,000 years and, over time, a series of overlapping trading networks connected this small island chain to the outside world.1 Tools fashioned from the obsidian mined on Manus had been bought and sold for centuries as far away as Fiji to the east and Indonesia to the west. But Manus was left untouched by the tides of European colonialism until well into the 19th century. Although the Spanish and the Portuguese probably visited the island chain in the early 16th century, it was two Dutchmen, William Schouten and Jacob le Maire, who ‘discovered’ the Admiralties in 1616. They found little reason to pause for long. Far from Europe, the Admiralties were largely ignored for decades, though European whalers and traders could have used the archipelago as an occasional temporary base. It also seems likely that the infamous ‘blackbirders’ kidnapped islanders to supply Queensland’s sugar and cotton plantations with cheap labour, instilling considerable fear among the inhabitants. Manus had little contact with this strange European world, and navigational studies of the area did not begin until 1875.2 This seclusion could not last forever. The European scramble for colonies spread out from Africa in the late 19th century, encompassing finally the distant islands of the Pacific. In the next six decades, four different groups of foreigners first pricked and then cracked open Manus’s cocoon of isolation,

On the Edge of the Great Deep Blue

7

bringing its inhabitants into more substantial contact with the world beyond PNG for the first time. Impelled by a belated bid for an imperial place in the sun, Germany annexed New Guinea and the Admiralties in 1884. Manus became a part of the German empire, but the colonial presence on the ground was limited, with settlers and traders repelled by the island’s remoteness, dense forests and its people, who fiercely resisted European encroachments. The German authorities met this resistance with brutal punitive campaigns, bombarding villages and killing many islanders. It was not until 1911 that Germany finally founded a government station at Lorengau on the northern coast overlooking Seeadler Harbour. The Admiralties were gradually pacified and one planter built up a notable holding, with five plantations and trading posts scattered across the archipelago. Manus was drawn somewhat into the modern economy as plantations from other areas recruited locals, and boat-building and pearling started up on the island. Lorengau remained the only town, though it is uncertain that this small settlement deserved even that name. Despite several decades of colonial rule, Germany left little lasting mark on New Guinea. Although it became a settlement of some standing, with its characteristic Germanic architecture, Rabaul was overshadowed by the great colonial towns in French Indochina and British Malaya, where colonialism penetrated deeply into the surrounding society. Never particularly numerous or well-founded, the Christian missions found few converts until the 1920s. In 1948, the year of our story, two German missionaries were still on Manus, a last echo of the old colonial order. Germany’s sway over Manus was short-lived. With the declaration of war in 1914, Australian troops swiftly occupied Germany’s colonies in the south-west Pacific, bringing Papua and New Guinea together under Canberra’s control. For the next seven years, an Australian military regime ran PNG, and, step by step, Australians took on the responsibilities, complexities and dilemmas of colonial rule. At the end of World War I, the victorious great powers

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Day of Reckoning

granted Australia control of German possessions in the Pacific south of the equator, fatefully allowing Japan to acquire the Kaiser’s colonies in the northern Pacific, principally the Mariana and Caroline Islands. Guam remained an American territory. Australia assumed trusteeship of PNG under a League of Nations mandate in 1920, while the western portion of the island remained a Dutch colony. With few natural resources, Manus went largely unnoticed during the 1920s and 1930s; the Australian presence on the island was minuscule, Lorengau was still an inconsequential settlement, and indigenous society was left largely to its own devices. Remoteness continued to insulate the island. The capital of the colonial administration, Port Moresby, lay 640 kilometres to the south; the nearest Australian city, Townsville, was more than 1,100 kilometres away; the main Australian cities even more distant. American anthropologist Margaret Mead painted a cheerful, relaxed, idealised picture of life on Manus in her 1930 study, Growing Up in New Guinea. She saw Manus as one of the few parts of the globe where ‘it is still possible to find untouched societies which have chosen solutions to life’s problems different from our own’. The island’s population was divided into three ethnic groups: the Usiai, an agricultural people who dwelled in the inland; the Matankor, who lived on the coast, mixing fishing with agriculture; and the seafaring Manus or Mouks, who inhabited the islands of the lagoon. Mead studied the Manus: ‘It is essentially a primitive society without written records, without economic dependence on white culture, preserving its own canons, its own way of life.’3 Although it is hard to be sure, Pondranei, the youth at the centre of our story, most likely belonged to the Matankor. Australians in the 1930s knew little about this faraway island, which did not impinge on their daily lives. If they became aware of it at all, Manus was a shimmering tropical paradise, faintly mysterious and romantic, inhabited by strange savages. Mead did little to dislodge this simplified image and she underestimated the extent

On the Edge of the Great Deep Blue

9

to which Manus had already altered despite its remoteness. The islanders had experienced profound social change, moving from stone to steel implements, and Christian missionaries had altered or undermined many traditional beliefs. Tribal fighting had been suppressed and many islanders had travelled, bringing them into more substantial contact with other parts of the country. Although the Admiralties remained lightly populated on the eve of World War II, with no more than 13,000 people spread across the chain, about 1,000 Manus Islanders were serving as indentured labourers in other parts of PNG in 1940. More than 200 were working on New Britain alone.4 Others had joined the police force. Such forays into the outside world were little preparation for what was to come; Japan’s invasion of South-East Asia in 1942 shattered Manus Island’s relative tranquillity and isolation, wreaking enormous and often destructive change. With some of its best forces in the Middle East and North Africa, Australia was able to deploy only a token force in the Admiralties. Scattered through the islands, the First Independent Company manned an advanced observation line and was no match for the formidable Japanese invasion force heading towards PNG. The small contingent on Manus wisely destroyed its munitions, laid booby traps and escaped on a schooner, leaving the Japanese to capture Lorengau on 8 April. The Australians had fled without a fight, surrendering not only the island, but their claim to natural superiority, their insistence that only they were capable of ruling. Such retreats all across the Territory in those terrible early months of 1942 permanently damaged ‘white prestige’. The Japanese transformed Manus into a military garrison, clearing away coconut groves to build a vast airfield at Momote and turning Seeadler Harbour, a crescent running along the northern coast, into a naval base. More than 4,600 Japanese personnel were based in the Admiralties by early 1944, the majority on Manus.5 Although they established one short-lived school for a few selected islanders, the Japanese did not leave

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Day of Reckoning

a lasting cultural mark on the island aside from various physical constructions, some of which survive to this day, slowly rotting in the jungle. In February 1944, less than two years after the Japanese invasion, about 1,000 American soldiers, supported by eight destroyers and several cruisers, landed on Manus. Although it was a small step in the grinding Allied offensive, the Manus campaign was hard-fought. Scouts had reported that the island was ‘lousy with Japs’. Australian participation in this operation was limited to 25 members of the Australian New Guinea Administration Unit (ANGAU) and 12 indigenous policemen from the Royal Papuan Constabulary.6 Though facing certain defeat, the Japanese defenders fought bitterly nonetheless, and Lorengau was not retaken until 18 March. Manus had never seen such carnage. More than 3,000 Japanese were buried on the island far from home, and the Americans lost 330 dead and 1,189 wounded. So, 60 years after the arrival of the German colonialists, the Americans became the fourth foreign people to rule Manus. The island was transformed into a launching pad for MacArthur’s reconquest of the Philippines, and, by October 1944, it was one of the world’s greatest naval bases, with hundreds of warships anchored in Seeadler Harbour. The lights of the base could be seen far out to sea at night. On Los Negros, American engineers expanded the Momote airbase and built an even larger airstrip at Mokerang, 20,000 feet in length. Heavy bombers took off to attack Japanese-held lands to the north. One postwar writer captured the sense of almost overwhelming change: [There were] installations and amenities that today seem fabulous … a fantastic concentration achieved at incredible speed on an island speck … It has been estimated that in a brief six months fifty million pounds was spent on Manus — a quarter of a million pounds per day — by the Americans.7

On the Edge of the Great Deep Blue

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Spread out along the north-eastern coast of the island, the vast US base covered a staggering 64 square kilometres and contained housing to accommodate 150,000 troops. In all, more than one million Americans spent some time on the island during the last two and a half years of the war, and many Australians came to see Manus as an important rampart in the defences of their apparently vulnerable country, a strong point guarding the northern approaches. Yet the pace of the war moved quickly and Manus slipped back into relative quiet once the American armada had departed to retake the Philippines. The US base became steadily less important and the number of personnel wound down rapidly. It is hard to underestimate the extent to which PNG, including Manus, was turned upside down by the traumatic events of the war. The presence of such large numbers of foreigners, first Japanese and later mainland Australians and Americans, white and black, was a cultural shock for the indigenous people. Rusting military equipment remained on the island for decades, a reminder of the war’s havoc and bloodshed. Life on the island would never be the same. It was this chain of unprecedented events that would eventually see Pondranei hanging from the beams of an old American Quonset hut. The immediate postwar years were a difficult and confusing period across PNG. After so much upheaval, Australia faced daunting challenges. The Administration was chronically understaffed, money was tight and many goods were hard to come by for many years. With the withdrawal of the military, shipping was scarce. Osmar White, a war correspondent, visited the Territory in 1946, finding that economic recovery was ‘painfully slow’. Every European town, except Port Moresby, had been wiped out by bombing. About 90 per cent of the trees on cocoa plantations in the Bismarck Archipelago were dead, gold mining had stopped in the Bulolo Valley, and military sawmills had been closed down. Once they could get permission to re-enter the country, European residents found their homes and old enterprises in a dispiriting

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Day of Reckoning

condition.8 The sheer diversity and expanse of the country created enormous difficulties: PNG had more than 11,900 villages and more than 500 mutually unintelligible languages. At least onequarter of the Territory was still not under central government control, many areas had been partially depopulated during the war, and local food stocks were low. One of PNG’s most knowledgeable chroniclers, historian Hank Nelson, writes, ‘The old pre-war gradualism that left many people beyond basic government health, education and law and order was no longer tolerable.’9 The Australian Labor Government was determined to implement ‘a New Deal’, amalgamating the two territories into one unified administration, boosting resources, improving the working conditions for indigenous labourers and gradually reforming social and political structures.10 It added another load to this heavy burden by promising to compensate all residents for personal and material losses sustained during the war. Despite the extra funds and the new rhetoric, most politicians in Canberra for the most part continued to ignore PNG — the island was far removed from the concerns of the bulk of Australians. The postwar Minister for External Territories, Edward John ‘Eddie’ Ward, was no exception, displaying little real interest in the region’s affairs. A former boilermaker and tramways worker, Ward was a protégé of the confrontational radical premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, and an uncompromising player of the political game, earning the distinction of being suspended from the House of Representatives for a record number of times. He was miffed when Prime Minister Curtin moved him from the portfolio of Labour and National Service to Transport and External Territories in September 1943. With an acerbic twist, Curtin quipped, ‘The Japs have got the external territories and the army’s got the transport.’11 Ward could not visit his new domain until the Japanese had been ejected and, in April 1944, he made his only trip to PNG in his six years as minister. He revealed something of his earthy radicalism by refusing to be carried ashore atop the shoulders of

On the Edge of the Great Deep Blue

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a group of Melanesians. Instead, he rolled up his trousers and waded ashore, risking infection with hookworms. Feisty and temperamental, the Sydneysider had a natural and deeply rooted sympathy for the working people of Australia. Motivated by this radical egalitarianism, he did tackle some of the more glaring social injustices in PNG, earning praise in certain quarters. Nevertheless, Ward displayed a much greater interest in mainstream domestic issues, such as the Labor Government’s illfated attempt to nationalise the banks. His work as Transport Minister took up most of his time, and repeated attacks by the old guard made him loath to articulate PNG policy in public.12 Despite this hands-off approach, Ward was dragged into the controversy that erupted over the Pondranei bashing. Ward mostly left the governance of PNG to four men, all born in the 1890s. The Administrator, Colonel Jack Murray, the Government Secretary, Bob Melrose, and Justice Monty Phillips were at the helm in Port Moresby, while Reg Halligan, Secretary of External Territories, was the key figure in Canberra. All four played important roles in the drama at the heart of this story. A Victorian born on 8 February 1899, Murray was a former professor of agriculture and Chief Instructor at the Army School of Civil Affairs, Duntroon. He was appointed Administrator of PNG in 1945, beating 52 other candidates to the post. He arrived in Port Moresby without a policy objective or a comprehensive reconstruction plan and had to improvise from the beginning. For Brian Jinks, a former District Officer, Murray was a man of Spartan personal tastes who held liberal political opinions for his time and strove to implement Labor’s New Deal as best he could. He certainly cut a striking, even mildly forbidding, figure. Although his build was slight, the former colonel had an upright bearing and a full moustache. Jinks writes: Murray dealt with problems as they arose, paying special attention to the plight of the people in villages devastated by

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Day of Reckoning

war. He spent many months of each year visiting outlying districts, talking with village leaders and missionaries and encouraging his staff to make the best of what they had.

James Sinclair first met Murray in 1948 as a young cadet Patrol Officer and found him to be decent and invariably polite, if a little stiff and reserved. During his tenure, Murray built on the village to rehabilitate PNG, establishing some schools, cooperatives and local councils and admitting the first Melanesians to the Legislative Council. He battled against powerful vested interests, especially planters who perceived a less firm method of rule as weak. Although inclusive, Murray was not progressive in the modern sense and he shared some of the common views of his day, insisting on a strict separation between indigenes and Europeans and prohibiting local men from wearing clothing above the waist.13 James Reginald ‘Reg’ Halligan was quite unlike Murray. He joined the federal Public Service in 1911 as a telegraph boy at the age of 17, gradually working his way up the hierarchy, in part by doing accountancy classes at night. He occupied several senior positions in the Prime Minister’s Department in the 1930s and served as the acting Administrator of Norfolk Island in 1937. He was appointed the first secretary of the new Department of External Territories in 1944, becoming the ‘paper czar’ of PNG, Christmas Island, Nauru, the Cocos Islands and Norfolk Island.14 By most accounts, Halligan was hardworking but thoroughly traditional, seeing his task as a departmental head in limited terms. He was a staunch Catholic, Roger Thompson writes, and he was inclined to stubbornness. He held definite opinions, though his workaholic habits were appreciated by many of his ministers. ‘For all that, Halligan was an unimaginative bureaucrat who showed no evidence that he read the growing literature on colonial administration.’15 Ian Downs, who joined the Administration in 1936 as a Patrol Officer and worked with Halligan in Canberra as a clerical assistant in 1945–46, presents a rather different portrait. He agrees

On the Edge of the Great Deep Blue

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that Halligan was ‘obstinate beyond belief’, ‘suspicious of strangers’ and ran his small department like a one-man band, allowing files to pile up in his office and failing to delegate work. But he contends that his old boss was also a loyal and skillful bureaucrat who knew how to play the political game in Canberra, often defeating his opponents by simply doing nothing. If he is sympathetic to Halligan, Downs paints Murray in mixed terms. He maintains that Murray was ‘not a competent executive’, gladly shedding responsibility and failing to realise that he had to assert control and use the political process, including proper budgeting procedures, to run the Territory. He readily affirms, however, that the former Professor of Agriculture did more than anyone else to restore the confidence of the indigenous population in the Australian Administration, travelling widely around the Territory, sitting down with villagers to listen courteously and considerately to their views.16 Murray and Halligan had a poor working relationship, each regarding the other with some frustration and suspicion. It did not help that Murray knew that it was Halligan who had removed his name from the short list of candidates to take the Administrator’s job before Ward had installed him as the Government’s first choice. This tension made it harder for the new civilian Administration to get on its feet. According to one of his offsiders, Halligan did not personally dislike Murray, though he thought his counterpart in Port Moresby sent ‘too many bloody letters’. For his part, Murray saw Halligan as ‘atavistic’, believing that he actively blocked many of the Administration’s plans by neglecting to put proposals before Ward.17 This allegation was not altogether fair, for Ward and the rest of the Labor Government often had their eyes on other issues. Certainly, Halligan was a plodding figure compared with the younger and more dynamic head in External Affairs, John Burton, who had taken up his job in mid-1947 with the full backing of his Minister, the irascible Dr H. V. Evatt, and the Prime Minister, Ben Chifley. Halligan’s handling of the Pondranei case was uninspired.

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Day of Reckoning

Robert ‘Bob’ Melrose, born in Hay, NSW, on 5 April 1890, was an experienced and able deputy for Murray, committed to the advancement of PNG. He had worked in the Territory since virtually the beginning of Australian rule, with the military from 1916 and then with the civilian administration from 1921. He rose from the rank of Assistant District Officer to become the Director of District Services and Native Affairs in 1939, having served in various parts of New Guinea, including Manus. Some planters resented what they saw as his soft approach to the indigenous population, one accusing him of handing out ‘the most incredibly stupid penalties for really serious crimes’ when he was a District Officer.18 After the Japanese invasion of PNG, Melrose led a group of 34 in a daring escape from Salamaua in early 1942, by canoe and launch to Buna and then by foot to Kokoda. Back in Australia, he was attached to the Department of External Territories during the war and led an advance party to Port Moresby in mid-1945 to prepare the way for the revival of civilian authority. As Government Secretary, he coordinated the work of the Administration. Downs for one was not impressed with Melrose, waspishly describing him as ‘one of those industrious bureaucrats who get ahead by not making mistakes and then produce fatuous memoranda for suffering officers in distant places’. This description seems unfair, even a little ill-intentioned. Geoff Melrose contends that his father was not popular in some quarters because he was always the precise bureaucrat who played by the rule book. Murray, in contrast, valued him: ‘I was very glad to have Melrose. He was devoted to the New Deal; slow to act, perhaps, for the conditions, but careful, hard working and pleasant.’ Melrose was sturdy during the Pondranei affair.19 Like Melrose, Justice Frederick Beaumont ‘Monty’ Phillips was a veteran of the Administration. He was the oldest of the four men at the helm of PNG’s regime, born in Ballarat, Victoria, on 20 January 1890. After serving in the medical and flying corps during World War I, Phillips had a long and distinguished legal

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career in the South Pacific, first in the Solomons and later in PNG. He was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court of New Guinea in 1928. As such, Phillips was next in the chain of command in the Territory and acted as Administrator if the incumbent was absent or incapacitated. He returned as a senior judge in the amalgamated Supreme Court of PNG after the war. One of his contemporaries, Dr John Gunther, a New Deal appointee who ran public health, once remarked, caustically, that Phillips ‘loved to sit in the chair’ as Administrator. Phillips certainly saw no need after the war to disturb the fundamental colonial division between Europeans and Melanesians. His domestic staff reputedly wore the smartest outfits in Rabaul in the late 1930s, their white lavalava cloth wraps edged by the dark blue of his old school, Melbourne Grammar. Sinclair remembers Phillips as ‘a real character’, who invariably addressed fellow Europeans by their surnames in the old way. ‘He had a stiff leg and would stump around awkwardly. He was rather fine looking and always had a bottle of whisky when travelling on circuit.’20 PNG was so large and sprawling, its communications so uncertain and resources so tight, that Murray and his senior officers had to leave the day-to-day running of the country in the hands of the officials on the ground. Australian authority was spread thinly across an over-stretched network of district and sub-district offices, with patrol stations in the more remote locations, all linked tenuously by boats, aeroplanes and radio. Until 1952, there were only two places — the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain and the northern coast of New Ireland — where patrols regularly moved around by vehicle.21 Large swathes of the country remained inaccessible and uncontrolled; parts of Manus itself had still not been visited by Patrol Officers as late as the mid-1950s. Acting as the primary interface between villages and the outside world, the District Officers or kiaps (a corruption of ‘captain’ in New Guinea pidgin) belonged to the Department of District Services and Native Affairs, combining the functions of administrator, lawenforcement official, judge and jury, and general patrol officer.

18

Day of Reckoning

Under the ‘sacred trust’ of the League of Nations mandate, they were beholden to look after the welfare of the indigenous population and to ensure that the law was enforced strictly. The kiap has entered Australian folklore in two stark guises: rugged, hardworking, benevolent guardian or racist, thuggish enforcer of a fundamentally unjust colonial order. No doubt, men worked for the service who broadly embodied each stereotype, but naturally enough most kiaps rarely fitted into such clear-cut categories. Many took their mandated role seriously, often contrasting what they saw as their own more just and enlightened rule with the brutality of Germany’s old colonial dominion. They went north fired by a spirit of adventure and a streak of idealism. One kiap, Malcolm Mackellar, remarked: ‘It was a dedicated service. You had to be dedicated.’ Other Australians took up jobs in PNG because they felt less constrained there or because they were running away from something. A few did not fit in back home. ‘In apparent contradiction of public service concerns for correct procedures and orderly promotion by seniority,’ observes Hank Nelson, ‘the Territory Administration seemed to tolerate people of strange habits.’22 A certain number had dishonorable motives, seeing PNG simply as a place where they could gain a personal advantage, wield power or indulge dark impulses. The entire structure of white Australian rule was based on a confused amalgam of paternalism and more hard-headed policies. Australia’s own status as a former colony that had won its independence only a few decades earlier added another layer to this complex interplay of emotions and intentions. Nelson captures well the contradictory nature of how most Australians saw themselves in PNG: They were conscious of their race, but at times they wanted to joke and slap black backs. They wanted cheap and obedient workers, but they did not want to claim privileges of wealth and birth … They wanted to rule, but they did not

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want to be seen as the representatives of an imperial power … They also carried with them a record of their experiences with the Aborigines. From the start [they] talked as though they had to make up for their past sins … Most Australians went to PNG with the best of intentions, but poorly equipped intellectually and by experience to establish good race relations. Few could bend their starched white suits.23

Trevor Shearston, a kiap who went on to write several powerful novels about Australia’s colonial dilemma, contends that most Australians in PNG never managed to resolve the tension between the need to be liked, which was an integral part of their national selfimage, and the need to be feared, which was often required to run a restless and struggling country. ‘The Brits knew how to do it, they didn’t give a stuff about whether they were liked. But we weren’t drawing on their tradition. In fact we were often consciously rejecting it. We would be “different” colonialists.’24 Charged with implementing the writ of the Australian authorities, the kiaps had significant, even dictatorial, powers, and isolation meant that they often acted quite independently. Maintaining contact with villages in their area, they settled disputes and provided a transmission belt of directives and information between Port Moresby and the indigenous population. Law enforcement was in many ways the cornerstone of the Administration. Kiaps heard less serious cases during patrols in deliberately informal, low-key settings, though Melanesians were allowed to take criminal or civil complaints to the District Office at any time. Aside from helping to establish educational and health facilities, kiaps also performed valuable anthropological work and explored rugged interior regions. This daunting and multifaceted job was made even more difficult by not being able to speak the local languages. Most kiaps were born far away to the south in Australia and had only a secondary education.25 Nonetheless, political scientist Allan Patience writes, a few of the kiaps were

20

Day of Reckoning

‘a fascinating mixture of bluff Australian masculinity and sympathetic openness to bewilderingly diverse and different human beings’.26 Village elders were brought into the colonial administration, occupying the rung of authority below the kiap, acting as local judges and village constables. Replicating a common colonial pattern, Melanesians were also recruited into the lower ranks of the police force in large numbers. The Administration had been hit hard by the war with Japan, and many of the older and experienced kiaps were either dead or scattered far and wide. Although some of the old hands slowly drifted back and new officers were trained and sent out into the field, Australian authority was shaky for some years to come. In 1947, the Administration had only 975 officials on its books, leaving more than 600 positions unfilled. Recruitment was slow. Kiaps divided in the postwar years into two bands: the old hands and the newcomers. Steeped in the established way of doing things, many old hands, impatient with the postwar reforms, were more adept at using the machinery of governance. Nelson argues that most prewar officials were ‘uneasy’ about taking on the role of civilisers, a reticence that continued after the war. In contrast, many new kiaps had been given more professional training in Australia in a bid to improve the Administration. Jinks notes that the force of tradition and convenience sometimes vitiated this attempt to create a more modern and progressive administration. ‘It was clear that some of the new officers arriving to take up duty usually saw more force in the arguments of the old hands than in the lectures at the School of Civil Affairs.’ Confident in their hands-on experience, the old guard often dismissed the criticism of newcomers or mainland Australians as ignorant and naive.27 Downs identifies yet another problem: some of the prewar officials who returned to the Territory were simply incapable of doing the job, having lost whatever power of command they had once possessed. ‘It would have been better if they had been paid off and stayed at home … It was embarrassing to witness their bewildered

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incompetence as they fussed about with deputations and complaints of discomfort while doing nothing practical to correct their situation.’ Downs contends that it took time for progressive and capable people to rise into positions of authority.28 These deeply rooted internal temperamental and ideological differences sapped the Administration’s energy and effectiveness. There had been a longstanding difference between the old ‘development types’ who had run New Guinea and the ‘protect the villager’ types who had governed Papua. Labor’s New Deal added yet another dividing line in an already splintered Administration. Officials lined up for and against the New Deal, though most of the supporters were postwar appointees. Murray spent much of his time balancing these ‘warring factions’. Another informed observer who worked in postwar PNG contends that some of the Australians still believed that ‘bashing the coons’ was the best way of running the country. Steeped in such an explicitly racist mind-set, these tough nuts regarded the more paternalistic approach that had prevailed in Papua before the war as ‘namby-pambyism’. But one thing was clear: old hand and newcomer alike faced the daunting task of administering PNG in the midst of confusion and a chronic lack of resources.29 These taxing circumstances were made even more difficult on Manus by the unclear status of the island. Shortly after the war ended, the United Nations granted Australia trusteeship over PNG, replacing the old League of Nations mandate, but the Americans declared their intention to retain Manus as a base for some years to come. Manus would become a link in the chain of American strong points spanning the western Pacific, running from Okinawa through Guam to the Admiralties. The Australian Defence Department strongly supported this idea. The Labor Cabinet initially decided that it would be in Australia’s best interests if the Americans stayed on Manus, though it was adamant that the islanders would continue to come under Australian authority, even if they worked on a US base.30 However, difficulties in the

22

Day of Reckoning

negotiations about a continuing American presence aroused ambivalence, even animosity, in some quarters in Canberra, with the Minister for Defence, John Dedman, charging that the American proposal had the savour of ‘the kind of “suggestion” that one might expect the USSR to make to one of its satellites’. Much like the British, the Americans had often taken the Australians for granted during the war. In Washington, the Australian Ambassador, Sir Frederic Eggleston, had been given little access and even less hard information.31 Matters did not improve after the war. After some wrangling Evatt rejected the American request concerning Manus and insisted on a resumption of full Australian sovereignty. Historian Geoffrey Bolton maintains that Labor ‘did not relish a strong American presence too close to home’. In any case, Japan’s defeat had shifted the centre of gravity of postwar events further north and the Americans no longer rated Manus a vital strategic asset. Though somewhat peeved by Evatt’s antipodean stubbornness, the Americans offered the island’s vast military stores to the Australian Government, which at first declined. As we shall see, this fateful decision had a direct bearing on the events of our own story. Once America’s interest in Manus had petered out, Canberra decided to press ahead with its own military plans. An Australian naval reconnaissance party visited Manus in mid-1947 and concluded that the island should be developed as a base. Mindful of the encroachments of the jungle, the naval team recommended that Australia should quickly purchase desirable assets from the Americans.32 It did not help matters, however, that Australian troops and civilians had jumped the gun and helped themselves to surplus US stores in other parts of PNG, often selling the booty for considerable gain and provoking anger in America. Downs maintains that Australian civilian administration resumed on Manus ‘without incident’.33 This was certainly not the case. The American departure from the island was not clear-cut and US forces continued to control their vast base and its

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surrounds for several years. This lingering presence meant that the restoration of Australian civilian control was slow and uneven. Reflecting the broader tensions at the national level, contact between the remaining American forces and the small contingent of Australians on the island was patchy, at times warm and cooperative, at others irritable and competitive, even hostile. At one end of the island, the Australian Navy had established a base, HMAS Tarangau, at Lombrum on Los Negros.34 However, the site of the prewar District Office, Lorengau, was still incorporated into the US base, and the Administration was forced to set up its headquarters in a temporary location at Inrim, a former plantation along the coast to the west. The makeshift buildings were originally built by ANGAU during the war from ‘native’ materials. Sharpening the sense of Australian grievance, the location also lacked an anchorage. After visiting Manus in August 1947, Justice Phillips was scathing. ‘Inrim is pretty grim and not an ideal place for a District Station. Practically all the people I have seen are very much below par in health, and look dispirited.’35 Murray wrote brusquely to Canberra, emphasising that the Manus situation was uncertain and unsatisfactory. ‘Inrim is a place with no “background” and to say it suffers by comparison with the American base area is an understatement of some simplicity.’ Six weeks later, he visited Manus himself and found the US naval commander, Lieutenant Glen Uhl, a difficult man to deal with. ‘His attitude was that of a person overtly hostile to our proposals, and given to the stressing of “the conquest” of the Admiralty Islands by United States Forces, and that, by right of conquest the USA would continue to occupy the area for as long as it desired.’ Murray stressed that the site of the old District Office in Lorengau, on the western side of the Lorengau River and atop a hill commanding a view of the surrounding terrain, was an important symbol of the Administration. Continued American occupation of the site ‘has resulted in a loss of prestige of the Commonwealth and of this Administration in the eyes of the native people’.

24

Day of Reckoning

Establishing an office to the east of the river would further dent the standing of the Administration because this land was known before the war as ‘a place belong to Kanaka’. Murray insisted that Australia intercede with the United States. Only too ready to go into battle, Eddie Ward wrote in late November to the Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, asking that Evatt press the Americans while he was in New York to allow the District Office to return to its proper site. Chifley duly cabled Evatt in the United States, instructing him to approach the American Government.36 In a neat coincidence, a cable from the Australian Embassy in Washington outlining its representations arrived in Canberra on the very day that the Chinese labourers abducted and bashed Pondranei. In another strange twist of fate, the scene of the bashing, Lugos, was located roughly between Inrim and Lorengau. The embassy stated that the last American forces on Manus, a small naval contingent and the US Army’s 53th Survey Battalion, numbering about 200 men, would leave by April. Further, it reported that the US Pacific Fleet had proposed that ‘some local arrangement be worked out for joint occupation of the area west of the river until the Americans can remove their personnel’.37 On the surface, this cable seemed encouraging, but no one in Canberra or Port Moresby was to know that these vague commitments would not be realised for many months. So, with much frustration and recrimination in the air and matters of high policy being debated between Canberra and Washington, Pondranei walked into the run-down District Office at Inrim early on Monday 26 January to lodge a complaint against his Chinese assailants. In January 1948, the Administration on Manus was limited to four overworked officials. Reflecting the broader pattern across the Territory, this small complement was a mixture of the old and the new. Born in Birmingham on 29 June 1906, District Officer Alfred Austen ‘Bill’ Bloxham was one of the old hands. He completed an honours degree in history at Birmingham University in 1926, playing rugby with the First Fifteen, joined the shooting team and

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served for three years as a military cadet. He arrived in Australia in 1928 and worked for two years as the senior history master and junior sports master at Barker College in Hornsby, NSW. About this time, he applied to join the Administration in New Guinea as a cadet Patrol Officer. ‘During the years 1925–27, I spent many months in Egypt,’ he wrote in his application letter, ‘gaining some experience of natives.’38 Bloxham was probably offering up the only relevant experience in his background, but it is hard not to conclude that he was also succumbing to the fallacy that all nonEuropeans were an undifferentiated mass who could be treated in the same way. Armed with this schooling in the ways of colonialism, Bloxham began duty as a cadet with the Administration in late 1929. He served with ANGAU during the war, attaining the rank of major, and rejoined the civilian Administration in June 1947. Bloxham’s wife, Theresa, tried to join him on Manus in late 1947 with their 20-month-old son, but was forced to abandon her plans because the living conditions at Inrim were so tough. Isolation and loneliness made life on the island hard. Another kiap, James Sinclair, recalls that Bloxham was ‘a matter-of-fact bloke with not much small talk’ but a good and well-respected officer.39 Bloxham’s deputy, Assistant District Officer Joseph Richard ‘Dick’ White, was by coincidence a fellow Englishman and teacher, though he was junior in age by nearly a decade. A native of Salisbury, White migrated with his family to Australia and grew up in Pimpinio, a small farming town in western Victoria. He worked as a teacher from 1936 until 1939, when he joined the New Guinea Administration as a cadet Patrol Officer. His career in the Territory was interrupted before it had really taken flight by the outbreak of war. After serving as a pilot for the RAAF and later as a captain with ANGAU, White rejoined the civilian Administration once he was discharged from the armed forces in mid-1946. Often called ‘Gunner’ due to his wartime service, he was seen by some as a rather unconventional individual.40 When Pondranei appeared at the District Office in Inrim, White had just

26

Day of Reckoning

celebrated his 32nd birthday. A regular police station had not yet been re-established on Manus, but Bloxham and White did have 10 Melanesian police constables at their disposal. Sergeant Major Kipau led this small police contingent. Aside from maintaining law and order, Bloxham and White had much work to do; Manus still did not have any government schools in 1948. The other two officials were medical staff, a chief medical officer, Dr William Smythe, and an assistant medical officer, Cyril Lambert. Smythe was one of the first batch of doctors rushed back to PNG to resuscitate the medical service in the early months of 1946. He worked for many months on Manus without taking regular leave. An army nurse during World War I, Lambert gave up his own medical massage business in Sydney to join the Administration as a medical assistant in March 1924 at the age of 29. Aside from a brief intermission in 1927–28, he worked as a medical assistant right up until the Japanese invasion in 1942. Like many of his prewar colleagues, he served with ANGAU, rejoining the Administration in his old job in February 1946. Medical assistants played a crucial role in bringing decent health care to many Melanesians, especially in remote areas that were not yet serviced by doctors on a regular basis. During his many years of service, Lambert had learnt to speak Tok Pisin, a skill he would apply to good effect as the Pondranei affair unfolded in the coming months. Bloxham and White regarded the abduction and bashing of Pondranei as a serious matter. Their interest was propelled in part by a natural concern for the physical and mental welfare of a teenage boy. A medical examination revealed that the young islander had several signs indicative of a beating, including bruising, swelling and two abrasions, one on his left buttock and one near his left kidney. White and Bloxham were also spurred to action by a determination to enforce Australian civilian jurisdiction, an imperative rendered more potent by the continuing American claim that their base stood beyond Australian authority. Sidelined in their dilapidated District Office, the two Australian

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officials felt a strong need to reaffirm the legitimacy of Australian authority in the eyes of the indigenous population. Well might they worry about this for many of the islanders regarded the returning Australians with decidedly mixed feelings. Australian governance in PNG had always been marked by neglect. One historian has argued that Australia’s ‘administration was relatively humane but limited in scope; simple possession was the principal end’.41 The Australians were bureaucratic, minimalist colonists, driven more by the need to impose an Australian structure of government and justice than by any consistent desire to exploit the region’s economic resources. This overall outlook flowed through to the provision of paltry resources. Funding was increased after the war, but one informed observer, the poet and conservative thinker James McAuley, believed that Melanesians still had good cause to view their Australian overlords with great ambivalence. Drafted in 1942, McAuley was assigned, like Jack Murray, to the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs. A lieutenant by the time the war finished, McAuley had become deeply engaged by the problems of PNG and he lectured at the Australian School of Pacific Administration in Sydney from 1946 to 1960. In early 1944, he accompanied an Australian patrol on a sweep mopping up small groups of Japanese soldiers on the south coast of Manus, for the first time seeing dead bodies and realising that Melanesians had a very different understanding of birth and death. Conscious of the old Western tradition that painted simplistic pictures of the Pacific Islands, McAuley hoped he had ‘learnt to avoid the pitfalls of sentimentalizing the primitive’. He certainly avoided the pitfalls of sentimentalising the Administration, contending that the Manus Islanders compared Australians unfavourably with the Americans. Melanesians knew that the Australians had been ‘chased out’ of Manus in 1942 by the Japanese and ‘were reinstalled only by the power and favour of the United States’. McAuley believed that the war had profoundly altered how the islanders saw the world around them.

28

Day of Reckoning

Impressed by American power and wealth, some local leaders went to the naval base in August 1946 and declared that ‘they wanted the United States to take them over because their previous rulers — first the Germans, then the Australians — while using them as labourers had done nothing for them and given them no schooling’. McAuley ruefully noted that these goings-on provoked a to-do. The Administration dispatched a senior official to the island in March 1947 to investigate the discontent and defend Australia’s record. He later penned a report, often self-righteous and at times bitter: These villages have benefited most from the lavish and often foolish generosity of the United States … and now the United States is folding up [the islanders] are reaping a rich harvest … it is quite common to see stretcher beds, mattresses, pillows, chairs and other articles of furniture in their houses, some of which are built from sawn timber with plywood walls and iron roofs.

The official said he had ‘lectured’ the islanders in accordance with official policy, underlining the generosity of the Administration, though he admitted that some individuals had become ‘rather excited and aggressive in their attitude but they were never offensive and always quiet and friendly at the end of the meeting’. Local feelings had been aroused in recent months by a rumour that two generals, one American and one Australian, would come to the island soon to ‘ask the native people whether they wanted to be governed by Australia or America’. Given such unsettling news, the official was quick to claim, overanxiously, that ‘expressions of loyalty to the Australian Government were outstanding’ the further he travelled from the US base and in areas where the missions were run by ‘Australians or people of British stock’. By implication, loyalty was less in areas covered by the Lutheran missions, which had an American influence. Pondranei lived in a

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village close to the base and one wonders where he fitted into this sliding geographical scale of loyalty. Many islanders remained unconvinced by Australian promises that things would improve, leaving them to feel a growing frustration which engendered cargo cults. The leader of one cult bluntly explained why Melanesians were dissatisfied: ‘You have no feeling for us. We are your dogs, your pigs … You do not want us to understand.’42 The Paliau Movement represented the most testing challenge to Australian authority. Led by a big, handsome and worldly former sergeant in the New Guinea Police, Paliau of Baluan, it combined the activities of a religious sect with some of the elements of orthodox village administration. At times, Paliau controlled most of the villages in the southern half of the island, winning the support of ‘landless people, young men who could not afford a bride price, and defectors from the Roman Catholic missions’. He stepped up his demands, at one point insisting that all Asians and Europeans should be expelled from the island and boycotting the Administration ‘whose weakness he despised and whose promises he distrusted’.43 Complicating matters, this more structured and conventional political movement overlapped and competed with a much more intensely emotional and radical cult or ‘noise’, which rejected the Administration totally.44 Hank Nelson observes that Australian officials did not know how to respond as ‘the noise’ moved from community to community, oscillating between a desire to punish and suppress and a willingness to divert or cooperate.45 Paliau was arrested in 1947 and held for a time in Port Moresby before being released. When Pondranei was assaulted, the movement was gathering momentum. Although Australia had formerly reassumed de jure authority on Manus, de facto power was still vested with the more numerous Americans. Even at the end of their tenure, the Americans dwarfed the Australian outpost in terms of resources and raw power. At various points during the Pondranei case, the Australians turned to the Americans for advice or perhaps even some kind of tacit

30

Day of Reckoning

permission. This gap between ostensible Australian and real American authority was reinforced by the Melanesian dissatisfaction with Australian rule. Although they never referred to Melanesian disgruntlement in their reports about the Pondranei case, Bloxham and White were only too well aware that the Administration was on the back foot. On this occasion, they could locate the source of Melanesian discontent in a group of strangers, the Chinese, rather than in their own rule. They could see themselves as the protectors of the local people, restoring the integrity of Australian authority. And this role for the Australians was reinforced by the attitude of the remaining Americans. If they had been generous several years earlier, the Americans had lost interest in Manus by 1948. On the way out, packing up the last bits of their once vast base, they were largely indifferent to Pondranei’s complaints and Australian attempts to enforce justice. Bloxham and White had pressing reasons for pursuing Pondranei’s assailants, especially when it became known that the Chinese labourers were employed by an American stevedoring company. What were a group of Chinese Nationalist labourers doing on Manus in the late 1940s? It is here that Manus was swept up into the powerful, sweeping currents of the Cold War, suddenly making a Melanesian boy a protagonist in a small side drama of much larger events on the other side of the globe. As Australia and the United States were haggling over the control of Manus, China was teetering on the edge of a civil war between Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party or Kuomintang. Although he had misgivings about aspects of Chiang’s rule, not least its corruption, US President Truman supported the Nationalist regime with substantial non-lethal aid as a bulwark against what he saw as the rising tide of global communism. Under an agreement signed in Shanghai on 31 August 1946, the US Government sold its surplus property in the western Pacific, except ships, aircraft and combat items, to the Nationalists. The scale of the agreement was staggering; 1.5 million tonnes of

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material, worth about $US800 million, were sold to China for $US175 million, two-thirds of which was a cancellation of certain US obligations to China.46 The remnants of the once vast base on Manus, reputedly valued at $US584 million, were a vital part of the agreement. By this route, a small island became unexpectedly embroiled in China’s fate. Crucially, Canberra had no say in these arrangements. The Shanghai deal was unpopular in Australia, where some claimed that the United States had treated its trusty southern ally shabbily by giving the vast majority of its surplus war stores to China for a nominal sum. Some of the Australian discontent was rather hypocritical. Journalist Osmar White observed that the Australian authorities had allowed much of the war disposals under their control to be misused or squandered. Some items were capable of being adapted to civilian purposes but ‘little of this surplus was retained to help in reconstruction’. The Commonwealth’s disposals authority auctioned off earthmoving equipment, generating plants, vehicles and building supplies, ‘often for absurdly small sums’. Speculators snapped up bargains and either shipped them out of the Territory or sold them at enormous profit. White was blunt in his assessment: ‘Until the early 1950s, the only really profitable post-war business conducted in New Guinea was buying and selling junk.’ These sharp practices engendered ill feeling in the United States. Only three weeks before the massive China contract was signed, the Chicago Tribune claimed that an Australian ‘entrepreneur’ had purchased 300 inoperative vehicles for $2,000 and promptly resold the gasoline, siphoned from the fuel tanks, for $3,000.47 The Chinese merely jumped into the same racket. Under the terms of the Shanghai deal, the Nationalists agreed to arrange and pay for the storage, handling, loading and transportation of the American supplies. From the outset, the exact nature of the operation was complicated and unclear, involving a mixture of military and civilian personnel as well as several American and Chinese organisations. The Office of the

32

Day of Reckoning

Foreign Liquidation Commissioner (OFLC), an arm of the US State Department, oversaw the operation. As we shall see, OFLC officials watched the unfolding conflict that followed the assault on Pondranei from the sidelines. At the Chinese end, the Board of Supplies of the Executive Yuan (BOSEY) was responsible for organising the Manus operation. In a system in which the lines between civilian and military power were blurred, the Executive Yuan was the highest organ of the Nationalist Government, directing central ministries, coordinating economic planning and supervising the military. The Nationalist regime was militarist in ethos and organisation, a structure reinforced by the fact that China was more or less continually at war throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The head of BOSEY, the Director General of Supplies, was General Kiang. A largish man in his mid-fifties, the Germaneducated Kiang spoke English fluently, had a broad engineering and business background, and had at one time run a purchasing commission in the United States. As the BOSEY head, he was charged with the pressing task of ensuring that the Nationalist forces were equipped with a steady stream of supplies for the war against the communists. Kiang’s deputy in the Pacific region was General Ting Wei-hu, a man in his mid-forties and the commander of the Chinese Army’s Marianas Command based on Guam. Like his boss, Ting was German-educated, a good English speaker and an engineer by training. The Americans respected both men as capable and alert.48 BOSEY was not well-placed to manage such a vast logistical operation far from China, and it hired an American stevedoring and construction company, the Vinnell Corporation, to itemise, pack up and ship out the American military equipment scattered across the western Pacific. Established back in the Great Depression by an enterprising businessman in Los Angeles, Vinnell grew quickly, winning important contracts with the US military during the war.49 Securing the BOSEY contract was a coup. After renting an office in Shanghai in a modest four-storey building,

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Vinnell hired 125 American and 1,500 Chinese workers and established a Base of Operations on Guam, an important hub for American activities in the western Pacific. The logistical job at hand was immense. In the dash to get the boys home, the US armed forces had simply dumped masses of material, leaving valuable equipment in a disorderly fashion, exposed to the encroaching jungle and the corrosive climate. Simply locating the equipment was daunting. Vinnell chartered an aircraft to scan islands sprinkled over an enormous area of the western Pacific, from Iwo Jima in the north to Manus in the south. At times, Vinnell workers came ashore to find scenes of near ruin and had to hack jeeps and equipment free of thick undergrowth. Over a two-year period, Vinnell would move more than 100 shiploads of stores, a staggering amount, weighing almost a million tonnes. It soon realised that the Chinese lacked some of the logistical skills required to handle such vast amounts of material. With the Chinese civil war in full swing, Vinnell asked the Australian Government in mid-1947 if it could bring a contingent of Americans and Chinese into PNG to pack up the stores left behind in Finschhafen. Located on the northern coast of PNG, Finschhafen was founded by the Germans in 1885 and became one of the American staging points for the advance northwards against Japan. Canberra and Port Moresby alike were far from happy about allowing a large number of Chinese into Australian territory. Both were committed to the White Australia Policy and perceived PNG’s own Chinese as an unwanted, alien group that would hopefully dwindle away over time. The request to allow the labourers to enter PNG would have been considered even less favourably had it come directly from the Chinese Government. The American connection was vital in opening the way for a temporary waiver, but the Australian authorities were determined to set strict conditions. On 11 June, External Territories declared that the Chinese labourers ‘will be controlled in the same way as the Filipino stevedores, who were brought into the Territory during 1946 … they

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Day of Reckoning

will be confined to the area under the control of the U.S. forces’.50 This was the language of control, confinement and surveillance, terms that were perhaps more appropriate to describe the treatment of prisoners. A week later, Vinnell informed the Australian Ambassador in Nanking, Douglas Copland, that about 26,000 tonnes of material would be removed from Finschhafen over two and a half months. Vinnell would use its own ships. In previous cases, the United States had given the company a ‘blanket authority for entry of Chinese’ in return for assuming responsibility for the maintenance and control of the labourers. Copland stated that Vinnell wanted similar approval for the Finschhafen operation. The American company planned to dispatch an advance party within the next three weeks to prepare a reception camp to house the main contingent.51 Murray allowed the Vinnell contingent to enter PNG on two conditions. First, the company ‘should give guarantee for maintenance and control of Chinese whilst in territory and repatriation on completion of task’. Second, ‘a full list of names of Chinese should be furnished, and advice given of intended dates of arrival so that entry can be checked by the Administration’. The Chinese could not be allowed to slip away and stay in the Territory; it was imperative that they leave. On 7 July, the Australian Consulate General in Shanghai informed Vinnell that the American technicians and Chinese labourers could enter Finschhafen provided the company accepted the Administrator’s conditions.53 Perhaps frustrated by the delay in getting a firm decision from Australia, Vinnell charged ahead and sent its advance party to Finschhafen without consulting the Australian authorities. The Consul General in Shanghai, Osmond Fuhrman, told Canberra on 16 July in an outraged tone that he had received a letter from Vinnell after the advance party had already left China and was due to arrive in Finschhafen on that very day, 16 July. The letter did not contain the guarantees demanded by the Administration. ‘I therefore sent for the Shanghai representative of the Corporation and informed

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him that I was gravely concerned over the non-observance of [our] requirements.’ Vinnell’s preparedness to act independently of the Australian authorities did not augur well for future cooperation. As far as Fuhrman could ascertain, the full contingent — about 20 American supervisors, 250 Chinese workmen and 50 Chinese officials — was due to leave Guam in early August. Fuhrman noted that the Chinese would possess identity cards but would not be fingerprinted. Federal Labor MP Leslie Haylen visited Shanghai in 1948. He was blunt about Fuhrman: ‘He hates the Russians, [Jewish] refugees and Chinese with an indiscriminate fury.’53 On 20 September, Vinnell belatedly provided Fuhrman with a full list of the Chinese and American members of the team. The Chinese would carry a BOSEY identification card, containing a photograph and brief identifying data, while the Americans would have US passports. The contingent would leave for Finschhafen about 15 October on the S.S. Hai Tee, remaining for a month with a John Morgan acting as superintendent. ‘The Vinnell Corporation assumes complete responsibility for this operation and guarantees the maintenance and control of the personnel involved and their repatriation upon completion of the mission.’ Vinnell and BOSEY ‘deeply appreciated’ Australia’s cooperation. ‘It is hoped that the work may be accomplished with little inconvenience to the local government officials.’54 Like everyone else involved, Vinnell had not even the faintest inkling of just how much inconvenience lay ahead. Given the timetable for the Finschhafen project, it seems likely that the Vinnell contingent did not reach Manus until late November or early December. In a fateful omission, the exchange of cables and letters between Vinnell and the Australian authorities did not mention any subsequent activities on Manus. Initiated in ad hoc circumstances, the nature of the Manus operation was made even more unclear by an informal understanding between the Americans and Chinese. Without consulting Canberra, the United States agreed that BOSEY could dispatch some regular

36

Day of Reckoning

Chinese soldiers from an ordinance corps and several military police to accompany the labourers. So, the group of foreigners that arrived on Manus in late 1947 was a mixed crew. The bulk of the contingent were stevedores, mechanics, winchmen, forklift operators, truck drivers, signalmen and a few support staff such as kitchen hands and laundrymen. The military police and soldiers guarded the Chinese camp and supervised the whole operation in conjunction with the Vinnell personnel. Although issued with uniforms, the labourers were not members of the Chinese Army and did not bear arms, though they were subject to some degree of military discipline. Further complicating matters, the two military arms of the Chinese contingent, the ordinance corps officers and the military police, answered to separate commands on Guam, meaning that they were not always pulling in the same direction. This split command generated its own troubles. It is worth noting at this point that Manus was closer to Guam than to Townsville. By late 1947, the vast US base had become something of a ghost town, quietly falling into disrepair in the tropical sun and rain, the jungle steadily reclaiming its own. It contained more than 1,200 buildings of various sizes, the majority having been vacant for several years. The Vinnell/BOSEY contingent had no trouble finding enough space to set up a camp inside the boundaries of the sprawling base; with its own kitchen, mess and laundry, it was largely self-contained. A road connected Lorengau to the smaller US facilities at Momote and Lombrum on Los Negros, 40 kilometres to the east. Once a perfectly maintained highway, the Lorengau-Momote road was rapidly deteriorating by 1947–48, with potholes proliferating by the month, making the relatively short journey between the two bases arduous. The wharves at Lorengau and Lombrum were still in largely good repair, allowing the Chinese to outload the stores with relative ease. Lugos, the old mission settlement, lay less than five kilometres along the coast to the west. Several Melanesian villages and former plantations were scattered around Lorengau.

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At first, the Chinese and Vinnell attempted to establish joint living and mess facilities, no doubt to reaffirm the sense that the two groups were engaged in a joint enterprise. This attempt to live and work together failed utterly, however, and the combined facilities were abandoned, leaving the Americans and Chinese to settle into adjacent, but separate living quarters. Working together proved no easier, leaving the OFLC the uncomfortable and at times fruitless task of mediating. After the operation had wound up at the end of 1948, a senior OFLC official, Captain Marcus DeWolf, US Navy, wrote: ‘There was a considerable amount of friction in the field between Vinnell and BOSEY, largely due to language difficulties and the impatience of Chinese and American foremen with each other’s methods. This continually led to conflicting orders and work stoppages.’ This friction was replicated at higher levels, where the upper echelons of BOSEY and Vinnell often clashed over the running of the entire operation across the western Pacific. DeWolf ascribed much of this disharmony to a fundamental ambiguity in the operation’s contract, which first granted Vinnell independent authority and then undermined that very authority. BOSEY was well aware of the ‘weasel’ in the wording and took full advantage. This ambiguity played out in almost daily disagreements. Although the contract explicitly precluded BOSEY from ‘picking and choosing’, the Chinese rejected numerous items as useless or shabby. Such problems would have been trying enough in an area with all the facilities of modern society, but they were intensified immeasurably by Manus’s isolation. DeWolf readily acknowledged: ‘The day to day difficulties encountered by the Chinese were endless in variety and character. It was no small task to arrange food supplies in locations as remote as Manus.’ Not long after the operation had started, a Vinnell manager told his headquarters that the food situation was bad. The Vinnell camp had no flour, meat, butter, eggs, potatoes or sugar and was forced to fall back on Chinese and ‘native’ food. ‘All of Larai village are fishing and hunting for us.’55 Tempers could be easily tested under such conditions.

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The standing of the Chinese camp was made even more fraught by PNG’s racial politics. Melanesians occupied the lowest social position, of course. One long-time PNG resident said frankly: ‘We expected to be respected, have privileges, feel superior.’ It was only a few ‘cranks’ who challenged this seemingly natural state of affairs, and such people were swiftly ostracised. Whites ‘lived a life of natural apartheid, in which the native inhabitants went their way and we ours, meeting at such points as were mutually advantageous — but where we called the tune’.56 Social segregation was most rigidly enforced in the larger towns, though it was mandatory throughout the country for ‘natives’ to address Europeans respectfully as ‘masta’ or ‘Taubada’. Social intimacy between Melanesians and Europeans was more or less out of the question, and most whites usually encountered ‘natives’ as servants and subordinates. The European community had its own often sharp divisions; officials, planters and missionaries had different interests at stake and often regarded each other with some suspicion, even derision. All three groups, however, shared certain underlying assumptions about the broad racial divide in PNG and few individuals questioned the white race’s allegedly inherent superiority. Asians occupied an uneasy intermediate position above ‘the natives’ but well below the Europeans. Numbering no more than 2,100 in 1940 and concentrated largely in Rabaul, Madang and Morobe District, principally Lae and the goldfields, Chinese were subject to formal and informal discrimination. Regarded as permanent aliens, unable to take out Australian citizenship, they were required to live and work in separate precincts, which invariably became known as Chinatown, and to use separate hospitals, schools and gaols. Asians were paid less than Europeans for the same work in commercial and government jobs. Most Europeans regarded Chinatown with mixed feelings. On the one hand, its laundries and shops performed useful economic functions, and some Europeans came to have relaxed dealings with local Chinese.

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Friendships occasionally bridged the divide. On the other hand, Chinatown was an almost mythic zone in the Australian imagination, a dark and unfathomable place of sin, strange customs and dirty habits. Chinese spent much of their time, it was said by onlooking Europeans with a mixture of intrigue and apprehension, in gambling halls and opium dens. Girls and women were warned to beware of the lecherous desires of the ‘Chinaman’, who would abduct unsuspecting damsels for a ‘white slave trade’. Alleged Chinese sexual depravity provoked particularly strong reactions in PNG, where racial segregation was nowhere more sharply defined than between non-European men and European women. Subjected to various forms of social, economic and institutional discrimination, Chinese naturally tended to be inwardlooking and comparatively self-sufficient. Nonetheless, they became over time a permanent part of PNG society, accepted by Europeans as part of the local scene. Simultaneously insiders and outsiders, they had far more direct social contact with Melanesians than the European population. Pushed to the social margins and confronted by a lopsided sex ratio in their own community, Chinese men were more prepared to form lasting relationships with indigenous women. World War II softened, temporarily and partially, some of the prevailing negative perceptions of Chinese. Australians, Chinese and Melanesians were united by the common struggle against the invading Japanese. Seen for so long as outsiders, Chinese were now clearly on ‘our side’. It is significant that few Japanese settled in PNG, aside from a few boat-builders in Rabaul before World War I. The Japanese naturally replaced the Chinese during the war as the pre-eminent outsiders. Although brought together by the common need to resist the Japanese, Chinese and Australians were not equals. When war broke out, European women and children were evacuated from PNG, but their Chinese counterparts were left behind. While a few escaped to Australia, most Chinese were rounded up by the Japanese, incarcerated and used as forced labour.

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Day of Reckoning

Even the sense of common struggle against Japan was not always enough to remove the old suspicion of Chinese motives and designs. The racial dimension of the Pacific War sharpened attitudes in some quarters — there was no fundamental reassessment of old policies. On the contrary, although Chinese had assisted the war effort, often at great personal cost, the Administration set about reestablishing the prewar racial status quo. The old restrictions were reinstated save for one concession: Chinese who had been temporary residents when the Japanese invaded were permitted to stay on in the Territory. It was not until 1951 that Chinese were granted the right to be called Australian Protected Persons rather than aliens, allowing them for the first time to vote, marry and change jobs and places of residence without notifying the authorities. Other forms of economic and social discrimination continued into the late 1950s. The 300 or so Chinese sent to Manus in late 1947 to pack up the surplus American stores arrived some years before these gradual shifts in policy improved the status of local Chinese. Unlike the New Guinea Chinese, who came overwhelmingly from the southern parts of China, such as Hong Kong, Guangdong and Fujian, the contingent of labourers came out of the middle provinces in the heart of mainland China. They spoke dialects such as Shanghainese while the local Chinese spoke Cantonese or Hakka. As labourers and artisans, men of little education and worldly experience, most had probably never been far from their homes, let alone travelled outside China. Some came from Shanghai, a bustling Chinese metropolis, where they would have dealt with Westerners in the foreign concessions, acquiring some knowledge of foreign ways. But this experience was little preparation for life on a distant, unfamiliar island inhabited by Melanesians. Sequestered in their camp, the Chinese had relatively little contact with the indigenous population or with the Administration officials. They had been shaped by an inwardlooking society. Nicholas Jose, a keen observer of Chinese culture, writes:

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The Chinese world-view creates a chasm between Chinese and others. The concepts of insider and outsider are fundamental at so many levels of life. The language, the script and culture are expressions of this separateness, the manifestations of a culture that is self-enclosed, hermetic and centred on itself. The visitor is always the outsider.57

Twisting this relationship one more turn, the Chinese labourers were the visitors and the outsiders on Manus, cut off from Melanesians and Europeans. One local Chinese worked in the District Office at Inrim, but this solitary individual did not alter the social isolation of the camp. Had the contingent been sent to a town such as Rabaul or Lae, both with sizeable Chinese communities, it would not have been so separate. Without familiar reference points, it was natural for the Chinese to be inwardlooking and to regard the surrounding island with some suspicion, apprehension and even at times with a measure of contempt. The Chinese did not understand the norms and customs that governed day-to-day life on Manus and Australian law was a foreign thing. They were isolated and put on the defensive by their inability to converse with either Melanesians or Europeans. As became only too apparent during the crisis ahead, the majority of the Chinese could not even speak a rudimentary form of English. They communicated with the other two ethnic groups on the island with gestures and the odd pidgin word. It is important to stress at this stage of the story that understanding this multi-sided cultural conflict has been frustrated by a lack of Chinese or Melanesian source material. Australian and US archives yielded a wealth of documents, but I have been unable to examine Chinese collections. An occasional Chinese letter or cable ended up in the Australian or American record, providing small windows into Chinese perspectives. These rare items were formal documents written by elite Chinese, such as diplomats and military commanders. They were almost always directed at

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a foreign audience and did not contain private thoughts or internal deliberations. They inevitably revealed even less about the thoughts and fears of the ordinary workmen and soldiers in the Chinese contingent. Melanesians left virtually no written records in the 1940s. At times, Chinese and Melanesian can be heard in court transcripts, though still through an Australian filter. This information deficit forced me to try to piece together the perceptions of the Chinese and Melanesian participants in the Pondranei case through a necessarily partial record. Unfortunately, other than a few details about the accused and a few references to several army officers, the Australian bureaucratic record contains surprisingly little about the Chinese contingent. Australian officials sometimes quoted Chinese in their reports, but it is impossible to tell if these words were accurately recorded. At no point during this dispute did any Australian try to investigate or understand the dynamics of this small, isolated Chinese community. Perhaps this failure was unsurprising given how hard-pressed the four officials on Manus were; they simply did not have the time or resources to engage in such an exercise. Nonetheless, this failure to even attempt, if only on the surface, to see things from the Chinese viewpoint blunted the effectiveness of the Australian response in the chain of events that would end up in the High Court of Australia. As the pace of events accelerated, the Chinese remained for the Australians a problem, anonymous and poorly understood. Constant references to the ‘Chinese camp’ encapsulated the tendency on both sides of this confrontation to adopt a laager outlook. So, circumstances, Chinese insularity and Australian ignorance ensured that the Chinese remained mysterious outsiders. Conceivably, the embattled Australian officials could have resolved the whole matter more quickly and with less heat had they been armed with more knowledge and patience. Although details about the Chinese camp are sketchy, we do know that the Chinese bartered goods with locals, often at a marketplace at Lugos, the old mission settlement on Seeadler

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Harbour. Marked by the pier, the market or bung was a natural gathering point for islanders and the Chinese to barter goods. Given the difficulty of shipping in food supplies from the outside, the bung served an important function for the Chinese camp. The US Navy and the Chinese also used the wharf to dump rubbish into the sea. Behind Lugos, the narrow coastal strip quickly petered out, with densely wooded hills rising to a mountainous ridge. Locals came in to trade at Lugos from far-flung parts of the island chain, including islets lying at the western end of Manus. Although they frequently went to the ‘bung’, the Chinese did not know the name Lugos, underscoring their lack of familiarity with their surroundings. Only several months after the Chinese had arrived on Manus, it was just such an everyday commercial transaction at Lugos that led, on 25 January 1948, to the Pondranei assault. Pondranei said he had bartered two pineapples to four Chinese in exchange for two cartons of cigarettes; the Chinese accused the islander of stealing the cigarettes and took the law into their own hands.

Chapter Two

An Armed Rebellion in Paradise?

ON MONDAY 26 JANUARY, a day after the bashing in the Quonset hut, Assistant District Officer Dick White and 10 Melanesian police constables, the entire Inrim contingent, travelled on the Administration trawler Sirius to Lorengau. This would be the first of four attempts to arrest the Chinese suspects. Pondranei and several other young Melanesians accompanied White to identify the accused. By deploying all 10 policemen, District Officer Bill Bloxham apparently expected trouble, and hoped that a display of force would convince the Chinese commanders to surrender the suspects. Perhaps a low-key approach would have been better, defusing the situation and allowing the Chinese enough room to comply with the Australian request without losing face. Yet, Bloxham chose to act

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decisively and White was greatly outnumbered even with 10 constables at his back. After landing at Lorengau, White proceeded to the Chinese camp and discussed the alleged assault with Captain Kuo Kecha, one of the Chinese commanders. After some disputation, Kuo agreed reluctantly to an identification parade in the camp’s mess hall later in the day. ‘This matter took some time,’ White said later in his report for Port Moresby, ‘because the Chinese present did not speak good English and were loathe to meet with my request.’ In the meantime, having sent his police back to the trawler, White drove to the scene of the incident, the Quonset hut, with Kuo, Lieutenant Wang, the head of the Chinese military police, and Pondranei. The hut was ‘situated on its own just off the road between Lorengau and Lugos, about one mile from the Vinnell BOSEY camp’. White searched the hut and found the cable wire and pieces of wild sugar cane that had allegedly been used in the assault. White next had a meal with the Vinnell staff, hosted by Mr Dorsey, who was in charge during the absence of the project superintendent, John Morgan, then away on Guam. It is significant that the young kiap lunched with the Americans rather than the Chinese, even though the commanders of the Nationalist contingent spoke English. The Americans were still the overriding authority in Lorengau, but it might have been more sensible for White to sit down and eat with the people at the heart of the problem, building up a connection of some kind with the Chinese commanders. Such small choices reinforced the divide between the Australian Administration and the Chinese camp. While the Chinese labourers gathered in the camp’s mess hall for the identification parade, Dorsey drove White down to the wharf to collect the constables and witnesses. Back at the camp, White and his policemen confronted a scene of considerable commotion. Dorsey warned White that it ‘would be very foolish to go in there amongst such a closely packed crowd, as many fights had taken place in the mess hall previously’. The ‘riotous noise’ convinced White that the Chinese ‘were not under proper control

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and discipline’, and he ordered his police to fix bayonets, issuing each man with two clips of ammunition. Rifles were loaded, though this ‘was not done in the view of the Chinese’. Given the rowdy behaviour of the labourers, it was agreed that the identification line-up could be held outside the cramped confines of the hall. As the Chinese filed out onto the parade ground, White stationed the troopers in front of a nearby Quonset hut under the command of Sergeant Major Kipau, ‘casually standing about so as not to arouse resentment but also in a position to assist me if necessary’. White and Pondranei examined the assembled Chinese with several unarmed Chinese military police present. Sergeant Major Kipau told his superior that the young islanders had identified three of the Chinese earlier in the day, but these men were not in the line-up. The identification parade was a farce, with Pondranei’s four assailants hiding some distance away in a building. White remonstrated with Kuo’s superior, Major Ma, who had just returned from Guam. ‘I am an officer of the police force of the Territory of New Guinea. This is an Australian controlled Territory (I have never received any advice to the contrary). I wish to … arrest four of your labourers and charge them in our Courts. One of our native people has been assaulted and deprived of his liberty, this in his own country and our Government is charged with the protection of these people.’ Major Ma ‘appeared to be most cooperative’ and agreed to deliver the suspects to the Administration. White told Ma the Chinese could have three or four days to find the culprits.1 A potentially ugly confrontation had been averted, for the time being at least. Before returning to Inrim, White drove across to Momote on Los Negros to confer with the US forces on Manus. By January 1948, the once gigantic US military presence on Manus had been stripped back to a skeleton outfit. On 26 January, as White was trying to identify Pondranei’s assailants at the Chinese camp, the US Navy withdrew its last contingent on the island except for Chief Petty Officer B. D. Ferraro. Provided with a jeep and billeted with the last US Army forces, Ferraro was in charge of

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the Lorengau base, acting as a caretaker to protect the Navy’s interests. The US Naval Command on Guam was anxious to close down the Manus operation at an early date.2 Aside from this lone chief petty officer, the US military was represented on the island by the 537th Army Survey Battalion under the command of Major Byers. Numbering about 200 or so, the battalion was a mixture of Americans and Filipinos. White had no way of knowing that the commanders of the remaining US forces on the island were primed to regard him with considerable ambivalence. Only four days earlier, the US Marianas Command on Guam had recommended that the American military forces agree to share the Lorengau site with the Vinnell/ BOSEY contingent and the Australian Administration as a way of easing the tension that had mounted recently on the island.3 However, all the American players on Manus itself immediately rejected this proposition in forceful terms. Vinnell and the 537th Survey Battalion contended that it was not ‘practicable or advisable for Australian joint occupation of Lorengau in any part’ until they had completed their operations about 1 May 1948, a deadline that would slip badly in any case. Vinnell wanted to make sure that it had removed its own valuable equipment before the Australians were allowed in. The navy and army commanders on the island marshalled other arguments to hold the Australians at arm’s length. ‘As all military pers [sic] Manus are males and American Chinese and Filipinos it is not desireable to have Australian families and native women in Lorengau area.’ They rejected the notion of moving their forces east of Lorengau River, arguing that this step would delay the removal operation by two months. Chief Petty Officer Ferraro wanted to present the problem in person to the headquarters of the US Pacific Fleet in Hawai’i, CINCPAC, ‘as many matters pertaining to this subject can not be presented in despatches’. As it turned out, CINCPAC did not need further convincing and readily concurred that the Australians should not be allowed to enter Lorengau for the time being.4

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The 537th Survey Battalion was certainly unreceptive to any apparent Australian meddling. Major Byers gruffly told White on 26 January that he was now in charge of all American personnel and property on Manus and he ‘personally would throw any Chinese into gaol that he found pillaging American property’. Revealing tensions inside the US contingent, Byers seemed quite ready to trump the authority of his naval colleague, Ferraro. It was notable that he said nothing about the attack on Pondranei, not even, it seems, a passing expression of sympathy. This reaction to a difficult situation was not reassuring from the Australian standpoint, suggesting as it did that American property was more important than the physical wellbeing of the local population. White said Byers ‘seemed pleased at my action although he did not take much notice … he seemed to have worries of his own’, above all organising the US withdrawal from Manus and assisting the Chinese removal operations. A day later, Captain Kuo and some Chinese military police brought the four labourers by boat along the coast to Inrim. Suggesting that the Americans were not entirely indifferent, one of Byers’ subordinates, Lieutenant Green, accompanied the Chinese party. Leaving the four labourers on the boat under the watchful eye of the military police, Kuo and Green discussed the stand-off with White in the ramshackle District Office. After an exchange of pleasantries, Captain Kuo insisted that the labourers were under Chinese military control and that any formal proceedings against them would be held in a Chinese court martial. But he proposed a quicker and rougher way of settling the conflict, one that would avoid the need for any messy formal proceedings. He suggested that ‘we fix this matter up between ourselves’, letting ‘our natives thrash the four accused and square matters up’. White was offended by this proposition, and he told Kuo ‘that such an action was impossible, inhumane and contrary to our laws’.5 Rebuffed, Kuo discussed the matter with White’s boss, Bloxham, again indicating that the Chinese Army would not hand over the labourers. He did

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not deny that an offence had been committed, but stated that any men under his command would be tried by the Chinese Army alone. By now, the atmosphere in the small hut was tense. Bloxham was unmoved and told Kuo that he ‘would take all steps necessary to ensure that Territorial law would be enforced’. Despite this declared determination to impose the rule of law, Bloxham was unable to compel the arrest of the labourers, and Kuo’s group left unimpeded. It is unclear what role the American lieutenant played in this drama — he remained largely silent throughout the increasingly sour discussion. Was he watching the conflict from the sidelines, trying not to interfere in a matter of Australian jurisdiction? Or was he backing the Chinese? Why was the Chinese camp so unwilling to cooperate with the Australian request that the suspects be surrendered? Several possible explanations come to mind. First and foremost, it is clear that the Chinese commanders believed that Australians, civilian or military, simply had no right to interfere in an independent Chinese operation. As we have already noted, the Chinese perceived the Manus labour force as a Chinese military outfit subject to Chinese military command and discipline. The Australians naturally saw this issue from an entirely different perspective: the Chinese were a mixed military-civilian contingent and all its personnel, soldiers and labourers alike, were answerable to Australian law. Profound differences in the Australian and Chinese legal systems were also a crucial factor behind the Chinese refusal to back off. Although the Nationalists had tried to create a more modern state structure, the Chinese legal system was still essentially traditional in nature, strongly bearing the mark of a long imperial ancestry. Mirroring the practices of virtually every Chinese dynasty, the Nationalist legal regime was overwhelmingly concerned with the task of defending and strengthening the state. A Western conception of individual rights and due process did not apply. Judges operated within a quite different context and private lawyers were relatively uncommon. Historian Bill Jenner argues

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that China has always lacked a legal system that protects the rights of the individual against the absolutist state. This fixation with the interests of the state meant that Chinese law did not reach down into the lower layers of Chinese society in a formal way. Under dynastic law local communities could be left to settle many matters for themselves. The state allowed and even encouraged families, villages, merchant guilds and other groups to sort out disputes and bring wrongdoers under control. In the past, as now, informal mediation was preferred to court proceedings.

Provided its code ‘was not challenged’, the imperial state adopted a hands-off approach in the realm of the criminal law. The Nationalists’ ineffective, corrupt and loose governance left such local criminal remedies in place; lawyers had only just begun ‘to acquire foreign coloration’ and then only in the big coastal cities.6 Kuo naturally opted then for an informal way of mediating the dispute, eschewing an alternative that was foreign and formal. It is equally telling that physical punishment, the infliction of pain and injury, was still a cornerstone of Chinese criminal justice. Torture, floggings and executions were common. Kuo’s suggestion that the labourers be punished by an extrajudicial method, a quick bashing at the hands of the victim, was entirely consistent with his own country’s approach to law and order. By rejecting Kuo’s attempt to solve the issue extrajudicially, White also turned his back on the retributive notions of justice that prevailed in Melanesian society. Concepts of ‘payback’ (retaliation by a victim or his/her family) and ‘blood money’ (compensation) were part of PNG’s traditional norms. Kiaps were not adverse to settling some disputes outside the courts, but they were also steeped in a legal culture that enshrined the primacy of the rule of law. They were determined to punish crime in the courts, thus counteracting the tendency of Melanesians to mete

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out their own, often violent, extra-legal penalties. The evidential and procedural rules of Australian law had to be applied, and men such as Bloxham and White were certainly unwilling to see them flouted by a foreign labour force. The legal code was based on the written laws of Queensland and did not recognise customary offences, enforcing the concept of individual responsibility for crimes and imposing standard forms of punishment. Having striven to enforce a formal legal system on the indigenous people, the District Officers were not about to allow what they saw as Chinese interlopers to use their own informal punishment, especially when the victim was Melanesian. Australian and Chinese conceptions of justice in the mid20th century were also based on increasingly divergent attitudes towards the use of violence. The Australian colonies had been founded on a regime of often brutal punishment and some Australians fervently supported the use of whipping, particularly for non-European offenders, well into the 20th century. It was not until 1919 that the Australian authorities in PNG abolished the flogging of indigenous labourers for offences, while the whipping of Aborigines continued in the Northern Territory into the 1930s. Executions were still fairly common, especially in the Territory of New Guinea where 90 men were put to death between 1918 and 1942.7 However, the very basis of punishment had changed enormously over time in Australia, moving steadily away from inflicting pain on the body to punishing the mind and reforming behaviour. Although it remained on the books for some decades, corporal punishment was used only in isolated cases or not at all after 1920. By the 1940s, the Australian legal system was founded increasingly on a regime of imprisonment and fines; the death penalty was reserved for the most heinous crimes — treason and particularly vicious murders. Hard labour and solitary confinement were imposed to punish particular crimes. The Chinese legal system in the 1940s could seem arbitrary indeed by Australian standards; many Australian travellers in China often commented on what

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they saw as capricious or brutal forms of punishment.8 By insisting that the Pondranei case should be pursued through the Territory’s courts, White and Bloxham were ensuring that Australian concepts of justice would override rival Chinese and Melanesian norms, buttressing the broader Australian ‘civilising mission’ in PNG and reinforcing Australia’s position on Manus. On 28 January, three days after the bashing, Bloxham informed Port Moresby that four Chinese civilians had ‘bound one native taken him to empty hut beaten him with sticks and left him bound in hut’. He explained that the military commanders of the Chinese labour force were unwilling to accept the jurisdiction of the Australian civil courts, insisting instead that the matter should be handled by a Chinese court martial. Murray saw this attitude as a direct provocation and instructed Bloxham to proceed immediately in the District Court. Nonetheless, unnerved by this sudden eruption of a legal problem with potentially thorny international implications, Murray asked his masters in distant Canberra to confirm that his directive was valid. Given the green light by Attorney-General’s, the Department of External Territories approved Murray’s course of action and informed the Minister, Eddie Ward, that trouble had broken out on Manus. Sensing that this small flame could turn into a bushfire, Ward asked to be kept informed.9 Murray was perturbed by the Manus developments. He told Canberra that the Chinese bid to try their own citizens for offences committed against the local population made the need to clarify the situation of the District Office even more urgent. ‘Australian Governmental authority in Manus cuts a sorry figure.’ It was ‘high time’ that Australian officials moved back to Lorengau ‘so that it shall be clear to all concerned that the Australian Government representatives are not relegated to a backwater’. He stressed that ‘no actual warfare’ had taken place on the island for more than two years. The move would automatically reassert the ‘prestige of the Civil Government … both in natives’ eyes and also I consider in those of our allies’.

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Were the positions reversed, I cannot believe an Australian Naval Lieutenant and 50 or thereabouts Naval personnel together with Chinese ancillaries would be permitted either by Australia or USA to continue occupation of pre-war headquarters of an American civil district being portion of a dependent territory administered by United States.

Making matters worse, the physical infrastructure of the island was deteriorating. Murray insisted that considerable expenditure was imperative to stop the condition of the District Office at Inrim from becoming ‘intolerable’.10 The stand-off continued into February. Muddying the waters further, Bloxham told Port Moresby that Vinnell had stated that the Chinese were not their employees; the American company did not want to be saddled with this problem. While Bloxham and White considered their next move, the Chinese labour contingent sent several representatives to Shanghai and Guam, the headquarters of the Chinese Army’s Marianas Command, to seek instructions on how to proceed.11 Setting the scene for a long and increasingly bitter conflict, the Marianas Command told its officers on Manus to continue to deny Australian jurisdiction. Matters were made even more thorny by Australia’s move to purchase all the American buildings and equipment that would remain on Manus once the Chinese had taken what they wanted. The negotiations between Canberra and Washington to fix a price for this material were protracted and testy, with each side accusing the other at times of acting in bad faith or worse. The US military was becoming more anxious about the assertive Australian attitude. The OFLC believed that the Australian authorities had already illegally sold off US property in Lae, Finschhafen and Milne Bay, often at knock-down prices to Australian companies, breaching ‘any normal standard of ethics and ordinary business practice’.12 This was strong language for a country to use about one of its closest allies. Although not directly linked to the dispute over

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the Pondranei assault, these ructions revealed that the Australians and Americans were regarding each other with growing mistrust. By February, the state of play on Manus had become very complicated, with clashing imperatives straining relations between allies. This tension could not but affect the attempt to reimpose Australian authority by arresting Pondranei’s assailants. While the OFLC was moving to head off any pre-emptive Australian move on US property, the Administration was reviewing its options regarding the conflict with the Chinese contingent. At this time, Bloxham made the long journey south to Port Moresby. On 14 February, he discussed the matter with Murray, and the two men agreed that Australian authority had to be upheld. They were joined in their discussion by the Crown Law Officer, Esme Bignold, who highlighted the problematic situation: ‘We have already experienced trouble with American and Chinese nationals in relation to jurisdiction and I feel that this might continue unless some agreement is reached between Australia and the respective Governments.’ On 16 February, Murray asked Canberra to clarify the legal status of foreign nationals visiting the Territory, a query that AttorneyGeneral’s left unanswered until June.13 Bloxham stayed on in Port Moresby for the first postwar conference of District Officers, which ran from 18 to 28 February. Murray was frank in his opening address: ‘District Officers are autocrats, more or less, and, in the present circumstances, that is the way you get your governing done.’ The Australian insistence on the rule of law had a more authoritarian underside, which recognised that poor communications and the dispersed nature of the Administration placed enormous, and at times unchecked, power in the hands of District Officers. Finding the balance between this unavoidable pragmatic authoritarianism and a strict adherence to due process was not easy. The tense situation on Manus was a prominent topic of conversation for the assembled kiaps. The everwatchful Pacific Islands Monthly tossed a wry comment into the

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debate, noting that Bloxham had ‘spent his early days in the service consolidating administrative control over the Sepik people’ and was ‘now attempting a similar task with the Yanks at Manus’. But the conference was not all hard work. ‘The district officers seemed to enjoy the Moresby social round … And, anyhow, as our informant pointed out, the pub was nice to come home to.’14 Meanwhile, the Pondranei case fell into a lull until Bloxham returned to Manus in early March. Back in Inrim, he ordered White to visit the Chinese camp in another effort to arrest the suspects. Conscious of the possibly explosive situation, he gave his deputy a letter instructing him to proceed firmly but carefully. Once more suggesting that the Australians saw the Americans as intermediaries, Bloxham ordered White to first approach Major Byers to hand over a document outlining the Australian case. If Byers was unwilling to detail an officer to accompany him, White should proceed to the Chinese camp alone and explain that proceedings would be taken against the labourers. He should ask for the names of the offenders and stress that the Administration would follow due process. ‘You will explain that when court proceedings commence their own officers may be present to assist them in their defence and that every opportunity will be given to them to be fully aware of court procedure.’ Bloxham did not want to provoke a confrontation, especially given the limited forces at his disposal. ‘Should the Chinese Commander fail to accede to your request you will take no further action … You will use discretion and tact and avoid any controversy.’15 White’s foray on 14 March was unsuccessful; the Chinese would not relent. He returned to the camp two days later, again without success. As far as can be discerned from the record, no Australian official went to the Chinese camp between White’s first visit on 26 January and his second on 14 March. This interval of more than six weeks probably led the Chinese to believe that the case had been dropped. After such a long period of inactivity, White’s reappearance in mid-March must have been very unwelcome.

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Certainly, the Chinese had not softened in their attitude of noncooperation. Granted, he was away from Inrim for some weeks, but it is hard not to conclude that Bloxham had allowed the matter to drift along unattended. This lack of official action for so many weeks might have hardened the Chinese in their determination to resist. Nearly two months after the assault, the Pondranei case escalated dramatically. On Saturday 20 March the Australian press picked up the affair for the first time. Journalist Ronald Monson happened to be in Port Moresby just at the time that the situation on Manus was coming to a head. In the next three weeks, Monson would play a significant part in the drama unfolding around the Chinese camp. A native of Western Australia, Monson began his long journalistic career in 1925 at the age of 20 and soon acquired a reputation for being something of a daredevil, trekking from one end of Africa to the other and descending to the wreck of the Lusitania in an iron-man suit. In the words of Clement Semmler, he was a ‘good rough and tumble bloke’. Casting himself as ‘a battlefront correspondent by choice and conviction’, Monson covered, first, the Spanish Civil War and later described Japanese atrocities in China in vivid detail. During War World II, he became a notable war correspondent, reporting on the fighting in Europe, the Middle East and Burma for the Sydney Daily Telegraph, the Melbourne Argus and the London Daily Express. By 1948, Monson was an experienced, hands-on journalist, conservative in political opinion and loyal to the British Empire. It is not clear why he was in PNG in March 1948; he had not reported on the fighting there during the war and it seems that he made no return visit. It is possible that he called in on Port Moresby on his way to the Middle East to cover the Arab-Israeli conflict.16 Writing from Port Moresby, Monson provided a colourful account of the Manus situation in the Daily Telegraph on 20 March under the headline, ‘Armed Chinese Defy Aust. Rule; Manus Island Tense’. Carrying grenades and firearms, 300 Chinese had

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formed ‘a defensive perimeter’ of machine-gun posts around their camp to resist Australian authority. ‘The Chinese also have tommy-guns and plenty of ammunition.’ Monson suggested that the Chinese had perhaps purloined firearms from American stores. Next, he made an allegation that clouded the affair in the coming weeks. ‘The trouble began last January when island natives accused the Chinese of interfering with native women. The Chinese beat up one native who accused them and claimed extra-territorial privileges when civil officials tried to arrest them.’ This distortion raised the spectre of depraved Chinese men preying on Melanesian women. Monson warned that the Administration was represented on Manus only by Bloxham, his deputy, two Patrol Officers and two medical assistants. He stressed, forebodingly, that there were only 15 Europeans on the island, including missionaries, with ‘fewer than 20 unarmed RAAF personnel’ at the Momote airstrip. These figures did not square with the number of Americans who were on the island and Monson did not mention the Melanesian police. Readers back in Australia were encouraged to believe that a small group of beleaguered Europeans was confronted by a mutinous force of 300 armed and wild Chinese. This picture fitted into two literary and journalistic genres, one casting PNG as a strange, dangerous land, the other portraying Chinese as a threatening race. Monson said Port Moresby regarded Bloxham ‘as a strong man who will do his best in a bad situation’. He claimed that the Acting Administrator, Justice Monty Phillips, had ordered ‘20 armed native police, in charge of Australian police officers, to leave Moresby for Manus by Catalina at dawn tomorrow’. If Monson’s account can be believed, Phillips believed that it was now necessary to dispatch a sizeable police contingent to suppress the mutinous Chinese. Even when he was away on patrol or holiday, Murray kept an eye on things back in Port Moresby and it is possible that he and Phillips discussed the unfolding crisis before deciding to dispatch police reinforcements. None of the surviving documents suggest, however, that Phillips was able to contact

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Murray and it appears that the judge acted alone. Under the headline, ‘Official radioed for aid against Chinese’, an accompanying article in the Daily Telegraph made a quite erroneous allegation: ‘In January European and native police stood by in Port Moresby ready to fly to Manus island to act against 300 armed Chinese.’ Colonel Murray ‘detailed the police for duty and ordered an R.A.A.F. Catalina to be ready to fly to Manus’. This claim suggested that the island had been on the brink of serious conflict for months. The Daily Telegraph stated that this earlier conflict had been defused when Bloxham had ‘radioed that the situation was quieter and Mr Murray cancelled his orders to the police’. The files held by the National Archives of Australia do not contain any documents referring to this episode. Provided with a scoop by Monson, the Daily Telegraph set the pace, leaving the rest of the press to play catch-up. No other newspaper had a correspondent in Port Moresby to follow the story. Monson’s report set the alarm bells ringing in Canberra on the morning of Saturday 20 March. An External Territories official tried to piece together an accurate picture. He dispatched an urgent cable to Port Moresby stating that the Daily Telegraph had reported that ‘300 Chinese on Manus formed themselves into armed unit with grenades and tommyguns and defying civil administration’. The official noted that the Telegraph had claimed that ‘Administration [was] sending twenty native police under white officers by air from Moresby this morning’. He asked for ‘earliest advice’. He then scrawled a quick note for his superiors, stressing that Canberra had not yet received a report from Murray on the unfolding crisis. He said he had discussed the problem with the Prime Minister’s private secretary, the redoubtable Don Rodgers. Curtin’s press secretary from the mid-1930s through World War II, Rodgers was an experienced political operator and he immediately appreciated the need to manage such a potentially serious problem with a sure hand. He ‘requested any important information received from Administration be phoned to Prime Minister at his bedside

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No.B276 at any hour day or night over the weekend’. Throughout his days as a federal politician, even as Prime Minister, Chifley resided at the Kurrajong Hotel, within easy walking distance of Parliament. The External Territories official also telephoned his own minister, Eddie Ward, at his Sydney office and promised to call back as soon as any information came to hand.17 Flying blind, Ward fronted the press later in the day. Given the paucity of reliable information, he merely stated that he had asked Monty Phillips to clarify the situation, noting that Murray was on holiday somewhere in Queensland. Needless to say, he did not mention that Rodgers was concerned enough to ask that the Prime Minister be informed of any dramatic developments, if need be waking him in the middle of the night. The evening papers covered the press conference temperately, most quoting Ward’s denial that the Chinese were in revolt. The Sydney Sun reported that it had tried to confirm the contents of the Telegraph story but Phillips and Bloxham had ‘refused to speak’. Such apparent official evasiveness seemed to confirm that there was something to hide. The RAAF commanding officer in Port Moresby and a RAN spokesman in Sydney said they had not heard of trouble on the island and had received no request for assistance. Likewise, a contact in Rabaul ‘said that nothing was known there of an uprising on Manus’. Under the heading, ‘Flare-up on Manus?’, the Melbourne Herald reiterated the claim that Chinese had molested native women and stated that ‘no government department in Canberra knows anything of the reported disturbance’. These details added to the picture of official confusion, suggesting that the Government was not in control. Manus Island’s remote position was a boon and a problem for the Government. Isolation made it very difficult for the press to follow the story. Transport links to the Admiralties were limited, infrequent and slow, ensuring that newspapers could not rush correspondents in to cover the story. Without direct access to the island, the press did not have much to play with, except, that is, for

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the reports coming out from Monson in Port Moresby. The Government was no doubt grateful that journalists could not dig around, discovering troublesome details, interviewing the participants, cranking up the pressure. But Manus’s distant location also created difficulties for Canberra; it too was starved of information, increasing the risk that it would be overtaken by events or would inadvertently mislead the press. These information gaps were compounded by weaknesses in the Department of External Territories. On the eve of the Pacific War, a small outfit in the Prime Minister’s Department covered Australia’s scattered overseas territories, and the Government did not create a separate portfolio of external territories until June 1941. As the crisis on Manus unfolded, the Secretary, Reg Halligan, was true to form. To be sure, he had much to contend with and his department’s paltry resources — no more than 100 staff in all in 1948 — would have held back a more capable head. But simply avoiding mistakes and shuffling papers back and forth was not enough in the turbulent circumstances at hand, and Halligan failed to provide any leadership. The files concerning the Manus incident are littered with punctilious, brief memos from Halligan, all carefully dated and properly addressed, for the most part merely informing the Administration or other departments about what was happening in succinct, drab prose. His pedantic attention to bureaucratic details was hardly the framework for seeing the rapidly changing postwar world in complex or subtle ways. As night fell on Saturday 20 March, the state of play on Manus was unclear. The Administration’s apparent failure to report on 20 March had placed Ward and his officials in a difficult position. In fact, Justice Phillips did send a cable, marked secret, on 20 March which was decoded in Canberra at 9am on Sunday 21 March. This message crossed with Canberra’s request for information. Phillips informed Canberra that Bloxham had urgently requested help. He quoted Bloxham’s radio message in full, but did

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not indicate when it was sent: ‘Chinese still evasive reference jurisdiction … Request experienced Police Officer be despatched to Manus by air immediately with sufficient native Police to compel identification parade of 300 Chinese and arrest offenders. Some Chinese known to be armed.’ This message gave cause for concern. Bloxham had conceded that he was unable to control the situation. Given the urgency of Bloxham’s request, Phillips said he intended to send Colonel John Grimshaw, head of the Royal Papuan Constabulary and New Guinea Police Force, to Manus as soon as possible. An Englishman born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, John Spillard Grimshaw was a career police officer with considerable experience. He first saw Australia as a midshipman in the Royal Navy and later migrated, joining the South Australian Police Force as a mounted constable in 1925.18 In the next 15 years, he rose through the ranks to work for the criminal investigations branch and, later, as an instructor at the Police Training College. A former boxing champion and wrestler, he enlisted as a citizen soldier in May 1940 and served with the Seventh Division in North Africa, Greece, Crete and Syria, winning a Military Cross for gallantry in 1941. It was in New Guinea that Grimshaw made his name as an able commander of military police, serving under Lieutenant General V. A. H. Sturdee as Assistant Provost Marshall of the First Australian Army. Attaining the rank of colonel, he was discharged from the Army in October 1946.19 When he applied for the job as superintendent of the PNG Police Force in November 1946, Grimshaw was head of the Police Training College in Adelaide. He had powerful backers — one brigadier general, three lieutenant generals, including Sturdee, and the head of the South Australian Police provided glowing references. But the field for the job boasted 53 candidates. Two contenders had worked for many years for British police forces in Asia before the war. D. J. F. Watson had served with the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) between 1928 and 1940 before becoming

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a major in the British Army’s Provost Corps. In 1947, he was the acting Commissioner of Police in Hong Kong. Another SMP officer, C. White, appeared to have even more impressive credentials. After starting out with the Glasgow police in 1921, White had served with the SMP for 18 years, reaching the rank of Chief Inspector at the time of his internment by the Japanese in 1942. Although impressed with his background, the PNG selection committee ultimately discounted White. ‘We are in some doubt … whether such long experience in Shanghai where he has dealt with Chinese has unfitted him for work such as this Territory requires.’ This reason for excluding White looks most ironic given the events that unfolded on Manus in 1948. In the end, the committee initially ranked Grimshaw third, behind two well-regarded and long-serving Territory police officers, Christopher Normoyle and Sydney Elliott Smith. Nonetheless, Murray overturned the committee’s recommendations and placed Grimshaw at the top of the short list.20 Eddie Ward approved this recommendation in January 1947. Barrel-chested and stocky, Grimshaw was an imposing figure accustomed to leading. He arrived in Port Moresby in June and set about rebuilding the police force. It was telling that Monty Phillips felt it necessary to dispatch the head of the Territory’s police force to bring the situation on Manus under control. Superintendent Grimshaw would take a substantial force with him: two European Sub-Inspectors, Charles ‘Kedger’ Carr and Peter Day, and 50 Melanesian constables. Carr was a seasoned police officer, having served with the South Australian force for nearly four years in the late 1930s, becoming somewhat accomplished in his spare time in jujitsu, boxing and horse riding. He worked with Grimshaw at the Police Training College in Adelaide and later in the Middle East early in the war when the two were serving in the Army, building up a personal connection that later stood him in good stead. He spent four and a half years in a German POW camp and was discharged in August 1945, holding the rank of sergeant in the Seventh Division’s

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Provost Company. When he joined the PNG police in May 1947, Carr was just shy of his 29th birthday, single and, according to his medical report, somewhat overweight. Like so many others in PNG, he was a heavy drinker.21 Peter Day was new to civilian police work. A Londoner by birth, he was a soldier of the British Empire, joining the East Surrey Regiment in 1935 and serving in Sudan (1937–38), China (1938–40) and Singapore. While he was with the British forces in Shanghai, he married a Chinese woman and learnt some Chinese. Like so many others, Day was taken prisoner when Singapore fell and spent several years in harsh Japanese POW camps. After his discharge, Day rejoined his wife in Brisbane and applied to join the PNG police in October 1946. Six of his 10 years with the British Army had been served with the military police. Suggesting that he had other motives for wanting to get to PNG, Day applied about the same time for a permit to enter the Territory as a gold prospector. In his application for the police force, he wrote: ‘I have had considerable experience with Orientals, particularly the natives in Malaya, and I am definitely familiar with their mentality and psychology. Thus I am confident that I should be competent in dealing with the natives in New Guinea.’ Like other arms of the Administration, the PNG Police Force was only beginning to get back on its feet, and Day was one of a crop of 23 Sub-Inspectors personally selected by Grimshaw in late 1947. He had been in PNG for less than a week, having arrived by air from Brisbane on 16 March, three days before his 31st birthday, when Grimshaw assigned him to the large police contingent for the Manus operation. His Chinese-language skills would be a vital asset in the coming weeks.22 While Grimshaw prepared his emergency expedition, Phillips and the Government Secretary, Bob Melrose, tried to keep a lid on the situation. By March 1948, Melrose was nearing the end of his career, worn down by a lack of resources and the debilitating infighting in the Administration.23 The mounting crisis on Manus

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only added to an already trying job. With the Government dealing with the press storm back in Australia, he discussed the state of play on Manus with Monson on Saturday 20 March. The conversation was not easy. Monson claimed that an undisclosed informant had told him that the Chinese were defying the Administration and had armed themselves with machine guns and grenades. Melrose forcefully replied that this story was exaggerated and that Bloxham had provided no such report. Monson did seemingly have a source inside the local bureaucracy, but his version of the events unfolding on Manus appeared garbled. Phillips was perturbed by both facts. He reassured Canberra that he had refused to talk to the media, declining requests to travel from Government House to the Wonga radio station to talk with two Sydney newspapers, the Sun and the Truth.24 While prudent in one sense, refusing to make any public comment reinforced the suspicion that the authorities had something to hide. Although he had discounted Monson’s more serious allegations about machine-gun posts and grenades, Phillips had nevertheless provided Canberra with a worrisome account. Spooked by the prospect of the situation getting out of hand, the authorities were more unnerved than they were prepared to admit publicly. Before Colonel Grimshaw’s party could leave Port Moresby, Monson stirred the pot again. Melrose’s cautionary words had failed to sway the tenacious correspondent. In a front-page article on Sunday 21 March, ‘Chinese still hold on on Manus Is.’, he alleged that the Chinese had ‘dared’ Bloxham to ‘enter the area to arrest the wanted man [sic]’. Chinese army officers had put many of the labourers into uniform and given them guns. Bloxham had urgently requested reinforcements and the Administration had decided to send ‘sufficient police to Manus to back up the law’. Monson stressed that the police reinforcements had not yet left Port Moresby. ‘Possibly to avoid international complications, the Administration may now send the reinforcements by a civilian

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Catalina which is stationed here, instead of an R.A.A.F. Catalina.’ He would not retract his earlier statement that the Chinese were armed with machine guns and grenades, claiming sources within the Administration had tipped him off. ‘I have information that came by a more reliable route than bush wireless,’ he insisted, alleging that Bloxham had provided details to Murray. Although they avoided the Telegraph’s more lurid account of armed rebellion, other journalists repeated the accusation that the affair had been sparked by Chinese ‘molestation of native women’. The Sydney Truth, a notorious scandal-sheet, was never shy of whipping up a story and inflaming public feelings. ‘When an attempt was made to contact the senior police officer there it was stated that he was away and it was not known when he would be back. Nobody else would speak for him.’ Another Sydney newspaper, the Sun, repeated Monson’s allegation that the Chinese had ‘challenged’ Bloxham to arrest them. The Government again moved to cool tempers, Navy Minister Bill Riordan affirming in Brisbane that no department had any knowledge of ‘a rising’ on Manus. By now the story had travelled beyond Australia’s shores. On the same day that Monson’s second story appeared, on 21 March, two of the main English-language newspapers in Shanghai, the North China Daily News and the China Press, carried AAP and Reuters reports describing a Chinese ‘rebellion’ on Manus. They noted that there were only 15 Europeans on Manus, a claim perhaps felt keenly by the residents of the Western enclave in Shanghai. In a story entitled ‘Chinese Revolt on Australian Base Reported’, the China Press said 300 Chinese had ‘formed into machine-gun units’ to defy Australian authority. It explained that the Chinese had been sent to Manus to load material purchased from the United States, ‘which built the base during the war and decided to abandon it last year when Australia would not cede absolute control’. The North China Daily News stated that control on the island was ‘vested in a district officer, his assistant, two

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patrol officers and two medical officers’. Both papers repeated the furphy about the molestation of local women. Back in Australia, Eddie Ward avowed on 21 March that the Chinese had not formed a defensive perimeter and that they were not armed with submachine guns. ‘I regard the stories that have been published as grossly exaggerated. There is no evidence of revolt.’ He told the press in Sydney that a police party had been dispatched to the island. He too repeated the charge that ‘some time ago Chinese had committed offences against native women’, but said he was not sure ‘what complaints had led to the present situation’. Ward was firm: ‘We maintain that while they are on Australian territory they are subject to Australian law.’ He said the stand-off would be sorted out when the Chinese-speaking police officer reached Manus.25 The allegation about ‘native women’ had for the time being become a fixed part of the story. At the time that the rebellion story was building in the media, two OFLC officials, the Central Field Commissioner for the Philippines and the South Pacific, James McConnell, and his deputy, John Prior, came to Sydney to discuss the Australian bid to purchase the remaining US stores on Manus. Again, the ruckus following Pondranei’s bashing became entwined with the tense negotiations between Australia and the United States over the Manus base. McConnell and Prior visited Manus between 10 and 13 March and the press interviewed them in Sydney nine days later. The two Americans said they had been on the island less than two weeks earlier and had ‘heard nothing of any trouble between Chinese and the native population’. It is hard to take this statement at face value given that McConnell and Prior had been on Manus immediately before White had tried to arrest Pondranei’s assailants on 14 March. The Melbourne Sun suggested that the two American officials had been evasive, refusing to discuss the ‘reported defiance’ of the Chinese. On 22 March, the press carried McConnell and Prior’s slippery comments and Ward’s statement that a police contingent had

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been sent to Manus to arrest the Chinese offenders. The discrepancy between the two reports was glaring. The Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald published sober, factual articles, stressing Ward’s assessment that the situation was ‘normal’ on the island. Under the headline, ‘More Police Leave for Manus’, the Melbourne Argus noted that the reinforcements had been sent to the island because the local police had ‘failed to arrest some Chinese for offences against natives’. These reports suggested that the Government was acting decisively, though Bloxham would hardly have appreciated the Argus underlining his ‘failure’ to carry out the arrests. For once, the Daily Telegraph adopted a muted tone, merely noting that the police had been dispatched. That there were no journalists on Manus itself meant that the press could not use any photographs. During the first few days of the brouhaha, newspapers could do no more than reproduce portrait shots of Eddie Ward; even pictures of the Chinese camp would have given their reports greater urgency and immediacy. Unfortunately for Ward, another cable from Phillips was not decoded in Canberra until after he had told the press in Sydney on Sunday night that the police had already been sent to Manus. Clearly annoyed, Phillips said the police reinforcements had not yet left Port Moresby. He stressed that he had said a day earlier that the police were ‘being sent by air earliest’. The Administration was trying to obtain the required aircraft as quickly as possible. Ward would not have been happy to hear this; he had unintentionally misled the press. The Administration monitored an ABC radio report stating that the Chinese ‘had assaulted a native woman and were evasive when questioned’. Phillips was indignant. First, the victim of the assault was a man, he emphasised, and, second, the Chinese had not defied the Administration, but had merely questioned Australian jurisdiction. This second contention was a distortion, for the Chinese had indeed defied the Administration repeatedly. Phillips noted that the RAAF had advised him that a US aircraft had arrived at Manus on Saturday afternoon and found

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everything to be quite normal. ‘Because the above broadcast has diminished effect of intended surprise, modification of original plan may be necessary.’26 This last point undermined his earlier contention that the Chinese were not defying the Administration, for why would the Australian police need to strike in a surprise operation if the Chinese were merely questioning the jurisdiction of the Australian court? The delay in decoding Phillips’ cable of 21 March had embarrassed Ward, making it look like he didn’t know what was going on in his own department. He penned an angry note on a copy of Phillips’ cable: ‘Whole trouble seems to arise out of Telegraph report: get them to print facts and withdraw irresponsible reporter.’ Such a sharp comment indicated that the Government was peeved and worried. The colourful press stories naturally attracted the attention of another player — the Chinese Embassy in Canberra. On 22 March, the Chinese Chargé d’Affaires, Dr Cheng Kang-chi, discussed the crisis with an External Territories official.27 On the same day, the Australian Consul General in Shanghai, Osmond Fuhrman, finally provided welcome news. Vinnell had furnished him with ‘a written undertaking accepting complete responsibility and guaranteeing maintenance and control and repatriation of all personnel (United States and Chinese) engaged in operation on Manus’. But the Shanghai office of the corporation oddly said it had received no word from Manus concerning the trouble surrounding Pondranei.28 Monson doggedly pursued his story. Under the headline, ‘Official Silence on Manus’, he charged on Tuesday 23 March that ‘Administration officials here have retired behind a sound-proof curtain and refuse to give any information whatever about developments on Manus’. He pounced gleefully on Ward’s statement that police had already departed from Port Moresby. ‘Superintendent Grimshaw is still here. This conflicts with the statement by the Minister for External Territories that Grimshaw had left for Manus.’ No politician likes to be caught out and Monson rubbed

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salt into the wound. But he did not stop there. His reports from Port Moresby had been dismissed by the Government as exaggerated, he insisted, because Ward had not received ‘a full report of the original message’ from Bloxham. Monson quoted from Bloxham’s alleged message: ‘Chinese civilians are forming units armed with grenades and tommy guns … Request police reinforcements be despatched.’ He called on Ward to release the full text of this message. ‘It will then be seen who has exaggerated and who is trying to play down the situation.’ Asked by the Telegraph to respond to these allegations, Ward waved aside this demand to see Bloxham’s first report as unnecessary, adding that he was ‘quite satisfied that Mr Justice Phillips is keeping me fully advised’. As for the misunderstanding about Grimshaw’s departure, Ward said he had relied on messages from the Administration. He now confirmed that transport difficulties had held up the police reinforcements. But he carefully avoided mentioning the size of the contingent; a party of 50 constables and three officers would certainly imply that the situation was serious. As Grimshaw’s contingent prepared to leave for the troubled island, what had started out as an apparently straightforward case of assault had assumed more significant dimensions. Pondranei’s allegations had become a matter of national debate and heated press comment. On the same day that Ward was fending off Monson, the Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, spoke to the press in Canberra. He reassured the public that the situation on Manus was ‘nothing particularly serious’. ‘My information does not confirm talk of the Chinese being armed with machine guns.’29 While the politicians tried to contain the controversy, officials scanned their files to try to assemble a clearer picture of what was going on. The last report from Bloxham was dated 8 February, nearly six weeks previously, and nothing further had been received from the Administration until the first Daily Telegraph story on 20 March. This long gap in the records suggested that Bloxham and his superiors had either let the situation slip or they had been

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remiss in keeping Canberra up-to-date. After a lengthy search, officials told Halligan on 24 March that they could locate neither a copy of Bloxham’s first report nor any other cases concerning Chinese in their files. Tellingly, they discovered that the claim that the Chinese had molested local women was a red herring. A cable from earlier in the year explained the source of the confusion. On 22 January, the Crown Law Officer, Esme Bignold, had told Canberra that the American military police had arrested a member of the US Air Force on Manus over an incident involving a native woman.30 Bignold had decided not to intervene because a court martial was already under way. The US military tribunal had subsequently convicted the airman of indecent exposure, sentencing him to 30 days’ imprisonment with hard labour, withholding twothirds of one month’s pay and demoting him in rank from corporal to private (a total loss of $670). So, at least, the Government now knew that the Chinese were not wanted for molesting native women. Meanwhile, Grimshaw told Canberra on 25 March that Bloxham had only radioed Port Moresby, and all these radio reports had been passed back to Australia.31 These frantic attempts to find an earlier report from Bloxham exposed much anxiety; Monson had touched raw nerves. Much of this consternation seems inexplicable and overwrought unless one considers the special place that Manus and PNG occupied in Australia’s strategic outlook. Reaching back into the 19th century, many Australians had long regarded the belt of islands lying to the north as Australian’s defensive outer perimeter, guarding the nation against an attack from Asia or the Pacific Ocean. PNG was Australia’s last line of defence during World War II, the desperate fighting along the Kokoda Trail leaving a lasting legacy. In August 1946, Chifley told Parliament that PNG was vital to the defence of the Australian nation in the future — Australia had to have ‘complete and exclusive power in controlling the administration of New Guinea’.32 A rebellion by a contingent of Chinese soldiers and labourers on Manus seemed to challenge this doctrine.

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The Bulletin reported on the developing crisis in dire terms. ‘Manus … is rapidly reverting to pre-war lawlessness, and at the weekend it appeared that a Chinese labor force was defying the few remaining Australian officials.’ Many Australians saw the end of the war not as the return of order and certainty, but as the beginning of a new era of turmoil as a familiar regional order based on the European empires in Asia subsided before the wave of decolonisation. A string of countries across the region claimed independence: Korea in 1945, India and Pakistan in 1947, and Burma, Ceylon and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) in 1948. Some Australians greeted this process with enthusiasm. After some hesitation, the Chifley Government backed the Indonesian independence movement in 1947, despite continuing British and US support for the Dutch, winning much local goodwill. For other Australians, such sweeping change was unnerving rather than invigorating, and represented the rise of a new and uncertain era. Two leading journalists, Robert Gilmore and Dennis Warner, spoke for many of their compatriots when they declared in 1948: ‘With the end of the war, a new chaos has spread through the Jap-pillaged lands of East Asia; the lust for independence has quickened.’ One newspaper used a more elemental metaphor: ‘We in Australia are living on the southern rim of this cauldron. It could spill over into this continent.’33 The Cold War added an ideological dimension to this apparently unstable regional balance. With the Chinese civil war turning against the Nationalists and Stalin ascendant in the Soviet Union, Australian conservatives believed a communist conspiracy, coordinated in Moscow, endangered international security. The Bulletin perceived Manus through the prism of these wider fears; for this journal, much more was at stake than seeking justice for the assault on a Melanesian youth. ‘With the possibility of war against Russia generally accepted, Chifley’s equanimity notwithstanding, the island as a powerful American base would have been invaluable to Australia’s defence of her northern seaboard.’ The magazine

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stressed that the once formidable military installations were pulling apart. ‘The 45,000 Quonset huts and machine-shops which housed 32,000 men and serviced the American Pacific fleet at the height of the war sprawl rusted and empty.’ Roads were breaking into potholes; aerodromes, once accustomed to ‘handling vast air fleets’, were ‘cracked and overgrown with weeds’. The two remaining piers were in dubious repair. ‘The Royal Australian Navy is making valiant efforts to salvage what it can for its own small purposes.’ Reflecting its acerbic criticisms of the Labor Government, the Bulletin said Canberra was ‘to blame for the loss of what was, and still could be but for its vacillating policy, one of the southern Pacific’s strongest bases’. Australians believed that the overseas Chinese, scattered across South-East Asia and the South Pacific, were a dangerous element in the uncertain postwar order, a fifth column waiting to strike. It was no mistake, then, that the Daily Telegraph immediately placed the Manus problem on 20 March, at the very beginning of the crisis, in a wider and much more alarming context by asserting that overseas Chinese were becoming increasingly restive across the Pacific. It claimed that the Chinese on Manus ‘began to insist on their status as Chinese nationals’ soon after they arrived on the isolated island. But this was not all: ‘Since the war ended, Chinese throughout New Guinea … have strongly demanded that Chinese nationals should have a voice in local affairs.’ Painting a picture of militant Chinese nationalism sweeping across the region, the Daily Telegraph claimed that membership had risen in Kuomintang branches. ‘Administration officials have in their possession directives which the Chinese National Government has [sic] issued to Chinese in New Guinea urging that they insist on their national rights.’ The rise of communism added an even more sinister dimension to this problem, linking the furtive overseas Chinese with the allegedly imperialistic claims of Mao and Stalin. Allegations that Chinese labourers on Manus were in open rebellion, defying Australian authority, touched deeply embedded anxieties.

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First, however, the Administration had to move more than 50 police officers from Port Moresby many hundreds of kilometres north to Manus. Communication and transport links to the outer edge of the territory were rudimentary, and the departure of Grimshaw’s contingent was delayed for several days because the RAAF could supply only one Catalina flying-boat. The Administration was forced to charter a second Catalina from a local company. On 24 March, Grimshaw, Sub-Inspectors Carr and Day, and 50 constables finally left in the two Catalinas. Phillips immediately told Canberra that the contingent had departed. The RAAF aircraft flew straight to Manus, but the chartered Catalina was forced to stop at Madang to refuel, slowing the operation still further.24 Ward told the press in Sydney late on 25 March that ‘Mr Grimshaw’s visit to Manus was a routine inspection, adding that an officer who spoke Chinese had accompanied him to explain the legal position to the officer in charge of the Chinese’.35 This was a blatant distortion. Crucially for the Government, Monson’s steady stream of reports had stopped in the Daily Telegraph. Did Ward’s angry instruction to get the Telegraph to print the ‘facts’ have some effect? One can well imagine that the variously embarrassing and troubling stories in the Telegraph had prompted the Administration to tighten up its act, probably drying up Monson’s source of information in Port Moresby. Far from being a ‘routine inspection’, the Manus operation was one of the biggest operations in the history of the PNG police. Grimshaw’s 53-strong contingent reinforced the 10 constables and two kiaps already on the island, bringing the total deployment to 65. In June 1948, the Constabulary consisted of 94 European officers and 2,514 indigenous non-commissioned officers and constables spread across PNG.36 Grimshaw’s detachment was a significant show of force. Concerned about the inadequate police presence on Manus, the Administration had decided to send substantial reinforcements to the island some time before the Pondranei matter got out of hand. Thirty-five of the

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Melanesian policemen in Grimshaw’s party were earmarked to remain on Manus after the apprehension of Pondranei’s assailants. After the journey by flying-boat, Grimshaw and his police travelled on the Sirius to Inrim, arriving on the evening of 24 March. That night Grimshaw ran over the case at length with Bloxham and White. Early the next day, as the Sirius steamed towards Lorengau, he ‘gave definite instructions to the Police party as to their duties in the event of meeting opposition and resistance’. Firearms would be used only if absolutely necessary. Leaving most of the constables at the wharf in a state of readiness, Grimshaw and White drove to the Chinese camp with three police officers. Grimshaw feared armed conflict. He did not want to crash into the Chinese camp with 50 policemen at his back, provoking the very confrontation he hoped to avoid. A Chinese military policeman, armed with ‘a heavy-type Colt automatic pistol’, barred entry to the Chinese camp, but relented when Grimshaw insisted that he was a police officer from Port Moresby and had come to see the commander of the camp. The guard told Grimshaw that his commander was farewelling a general at Momote airstrip. A Chinese car drove Grimshaw to the aerodrome, indicating that the Chinese officers were now more conscious of the need to be cooperative. At the airstrip, Grimshaw discussed the matter at hand with Captain Kuo and Major Byers, the American officer again acting as a reluctant intermediary. He declared that ‘all civilian persons, irrespective of nationality, were liable to be brought before a District Court for any offence’. He said he was confident that he ‘could expect every assistance’ from the US and Chinese armed forces to complete his investigations. An assurance along these lines was duly given and Byers agreed to ask the Chinese general to delay his departure for Guam. General Ting Wei-hu, the deputy head of BOSEY, was the most senior Chinese yet involved in the Pondranei affair. Careful to observe ‘all the respect and compliments’ due to a general, Grimshaw told Ting that ‘four Chinese nationals were suspected of having assaulted a

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Native’ and that ‘these men were subject to the Laws of the Territory’. The men would have to be arrested he said, assuring Ting that an identification parade would ‘strictly conform to the principles laid down in Police procedure in Australia and the other parts of the British Empire’. Ting expressed his ‘regret’ that the Australians had been inconvenienced and ordered his subordinates to cooperate, saying that any arrangements settled on by Grimshaw, Byers and Kuo would be acceptable to him. Back at the Chinese camp, Grimshaw interrogated the four suspects in the presence of Byers and Kuo. He cautioned the labourers ‘in the manner prescribed by any British Court of Law’. Hsueh Pao-keng ‘admitted having assaulted the native Pondranei’, but the other three denied committing any offence. For the second time, the Australians arranged an identification parade at the Chinese camp. Grimshaw asked that between 50 and 60 Chinese labourers assemble in front of the Orderly Room; the atmosphere on the parade ground was crackling. The four suspects were told that they could place themselves anywhere in the parade. Noticing that some of the labourers were wearing caps, White told Captain Kuo that as a matter of fairness all the men should wear caps or dispense with them. Kuo ordered the labourers to stand without headgear. Pondranei and another Melanesian, Pomaki, identified Hsueh as one assailant, while Pomaki and a third witness, Nowan, identified Chou Hung-shao. The other two Chinese were not identified. Grimshaw arrested Hsueh and Chou. Despite Ting’s assurances, the situation threatened to erupt into confrontation when Kuo asked why the two accused could not be left in the camp. Grimshaw replied that a magistrate could release the two on bail at a later time until a trial was held, according to Australian law. Kuo pressed the issue, apparently threatening a showdown: ‘You know, colonel, I have between two and three hundred men here.’ Though he took this to be a ‘veiled threat’, Grimshaw refused to back off. Kuo’s actions were not necessarily belligerent. Was he impelled at least in part

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by a fear that the camp would mutiny if the two labourers were taken away? Whatever his motivations, Kuo prudently opted to relent, and the Australians were allowed to leave the camp with the suspects in custody.37 Finally, two months after the assault, the Chinese suspects were arrested and brought before a magistrate, aptly District Officer Bloxham. Hsueh and Chou were charged with assault occasioning bodily harm and deprivation of liberty and were placed in the gaol at Inrim. Manus had teetered on the edge of open violence between the Chinese camp and the Australian police. On 27 March, the Chinese Consul General in Sydney told the press that claims of a Chinese rebellion were ‘largely untrue’. He said he had just received a message from the commander of the Chinese camp, Captain Wang Yee, stating that the Chinese contingent had only one weapon, a pistol legally borrowed from the US Navy. ‘This is in Captain Wang’s possession and as far as he knows none of the other Chinese there has any weapons.’38 For obvious reasons, the Consul General talked down the situation. No doubt with relief, Phillips informed Canberra on 30 March that two arrests had been made and that the island was calm.39 On the same day, most newspapers carried brief articles based on wire reports stating that everything was ‘normal’ on Manus. In an odd turn of phrase, the Sydney Sun stated that Grimshaw ‘had visited the island following reports of trouble’, the word visit suggesting an altogether false sense of casualness in the operation. The Melbourne Herald noted that civil police had arrested two Chinese and charged them with assaulting natives. Cheekily leaving out the AAP-Reuter byline, the Daily Telegraph carried the same skimpy report on 31 March, but added a summary of Monson’s claim that 300 Chinese had formed armed units and erected a defensive perimeter. Determined to avoid further misconceptions, Ward said on 1 April that the two Chinese suspects had bound and beaten a young male Melanesian. He again declared that Monson had written exaggerated stories.

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On 2 April, Monson had one last crack at exposing what he charged was an official conspiracy. He again demanded that the authorities release the elusive first report allegedly sent by Bloxham on 19 March. ‘I have previously asked Mr Ward to issue Bloxham’s report for publication. He has not done so, and has said he will not do so.’ Unrepentant to the end, the feisty journalist insisted that Bloxham had reported on 19 March that the Chinese were heavily armed and aggressive. Release the report, he charged, and then ‘let the public judge if I have exaggerated … Has that message been lost or merely suppressed?’ The next day the Daily Telegraph noted that Ward had dismissed Monson’s claim: ‘I cannot publish a report which does not exist.’ This author could not find any copies of such a report in the archives. If it did exist, the report was either never sent to Canberra, misplaced at some time or deliberately removed from the files. Although the latter scenario seems unlikely, it is conceivable that the Administration did not admit that Bloxham had sent an earlier urgent request for help on 19 March. Monson’s first report appeared to catch Phillips off guard. He would have looked negligent if it had been revealed later that he had not warned Canberra on 19 March that trouble was brewing. This explanation remains pure conjecture, however, and no evidence of a cover-up exists.40 How heavily armed were the Chinese? This question was a source of great anxiety throughout the affair. In his report after the arrests, Superintendent Grimshaw stated emphatically that he ‘could find no evidence that the Chinese were at any time in possession of machine guns or hand-grenades’. But he stated that Major Byers had given the Chinese several automatic rifles, allegedly because sailors from an Australian warship had landed some time ago and ‘stolen a large amount of material from the Dumps’. Grimshaw insisted that ‘there was not the slightest truth in such allegations’ — no Australian warships had been in the waters around Manus. In his report written a week later, District Officer Bloxham confirmed that the American forces had issued

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the Chinese with 20 Springfield rifles, another sign of the ambivalent American role.41 Grimshaw and Bloxham fought a brief skirmish about who should have taken the lead in the incident. Grimshaw fired the first shot and insisted that the Manus incident should not have been handled as ‘purely a matter for [the Department of District and] Native Affairs’. He stressed that he had ‘no desire to criticize’ Assistant District Officer White, who had ‘performed his task under very trying and difficult circumstances in a most creditable manner’. But White was not a police officer, nor was he acquainted with police procedure. Grimshaw complained that he had heard nothing of the problem on Manus until 20 March when he was called to Government House, and he insisted testily that all criminal offences should be reported in future immediately to the Constabulary. This criticism incensed Bloxham. ‘In this instance as District Officer I had hoped to be left untrammelled in my function as a magistrate.’ While he readily conceded that criminal investigations were usually police matters, he pointed out that no police officers were stationed on Manus and that he had therefore handed over the investigation of the Pondranei assault to White ‘in his function as a police officer’. One feels strongly the tension here between the professional police force and the all-purpose District Officers. The kiaps saw themselves as an elite. Bloxham did not appreciate Grimshaw’s sniping, and his defensiveness was exacerbated by the thinness of the Australian presence on Manus. He pointed out that he had sensibly requested reinforcements when the Chinese had repeatedly refused to hand over the offenders, ‘as it was considered that police action beyond the resources of the District Officer was necessary’. Bloxham insisted that none of his correspondence had ever suggested that there was any matter at issue but the question of jurisdiction. But this contention did not square with the dispatch of such a large police contingent. ‘Owing to the isolation of Manus the first suggestion of any abnormal conditions in this District was the receipt by the District Officer on

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the afternoon of 23rd March 1948 of a radio message from the AAP correspondent at Rabaul requesting information of reported Chinese riots at Manus.’ If this claim is true, Bloxham and White continued about their normal duties for some days unaware of the brouhaha that had erupted in Australia and Port Moresby about the alleged Chinese rebellion, strong evidence that no such revolt had taken place. Bloxham signed off his report with a clipped sentence: ‘I have nothing further to report.’ Pressure mounted on other fronts as well. On 30 March, the commander of the Chinese contingent on Manus, Captain Wang Yee, told Guam that John Morgan, the Vinnell Superintendent, had come into the BOSEY office drunk. Brandishing a pistol, Morgan had threatened the Chinese present and pushed everything off the table.42 Wang’s cable did not say what had driven the American to such extreme behaviour, but it is telling that this incident occurred shortly after Grimshaw’s police contingent had arrested Hsueh and Chou for assaulting Pondranei. We know that more general tensions were already causing trouble between Vinnell and the Chinese, and it is reasonable to assume that the whole sorry Pondranei saga was a cause for particular irritation. One can well imagine that Morgan, already faced with delays and conflicts with the Chinese about the outloading operation, would have resented the extra trouble caused by the assault. The Manus conflict had inevitable international ramifications. Chinese diplomats in Australia wanted to know what was going on. External Territories considered providing the Chinese Embassy in Canberra with a full account of the chain of events from the alleged assault to the arrests. After discussing the case with Dr Cheng on several occasions, Reg Halligan recommended to Ward on 31 March that an official account of the Manus trouble be conveyed to the Chinese. However, given the continuing uncertainty about whether the Chinese suspects were mere civilians or military personnel, an issue with thorny legal implications, Ward decided on 7 April not to provide the Chinese with a written

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summary of the case until things became clearer. Although they were aware of the danger of antagonising the Chinese by not providing an account of the Manus events, the Australian authorities opted for the time being to leave the embassy in the dark — a risky strategy.43 While officials in Canberra were mulling over the best approach to take with the Chinese, the legal process moved ahead on Manus. On 5 April, the labourers appeared in the District Court in Inrim before Assistant District Officer Richard White acting as a magistrate. White committed the two Chinese for trial on charges of assault. It was not uncommon for Australian officials to act as the arresting police officer in a criminal case and later the presiding magistrate at the trial. The exigencies of a colonial administration with meagre resources blurred the lines separating the investigating and judicial powers. Given that he had been centrally involved in the long-running and frustrating attempts to apprehend the Chinese, one might ask if White was the most disinterested figure to then adjudicate in a committal hearing. Presaging complications that would dog the case in the coming months, the Administration informed Canberra that the committal proceedings were being delayed by two factors: ‘Difficulty of interpretation and ignorance of procedure by Chinese officers.’ Bloxham and White were trying to impose an alien legal code on the Chinese. The going was slow. The labourers were originally scheduled to reappear in the District Court on 7 April to be committed for trial on the second offence, deprivation of liberty, but the hearing was again delayed. Bloxham told Port Moresby that the defendants had not been able to obtain counsel from the Chinese command on Guam, and he asked the Crown to provide the defence in the Supreme Court. Unexpectedly, the Americans re-entered the picture. Acting on instructions from his superior, Chief Petty Officer Ferraro, the US naval representative on Manus, asked Bloxham for a stay in proceedings. His patience wearing thin, Bloxham told the American

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that the case would proceed. One can only assume that the US military had become involved at the behest of the Chinese Army. Finally, after some to-and-fro, the labourers were brought back before the District Court on 16 April and White committed them for trial on charges of deprivation of liberty. But the Chinese were still not represented by counsel. A day later, the Administration informed Bloxham that the Crown was unable to supply the defence. A private counsel could appear in the case but his fee would be 50 guineas for each accused, a hefty sum to say the least for two humble labourers. The Administration recommended that Bloxham sidestep this impasse by encouraging the accused to apply for help under the Poor Persons Legal Assistance Ordinance. Hsueh and Chou would be reliant on the Australian authorities for their defence but this was better than going without a lawyer. The Administration also told Bloxham that he had acted appropriately in rejecting the US request for a stay in proceedings. After the committal proceedings, Manus calmed down as the danger of open conflict between the Australians and Chinese subsided. The Chinese officers had reluctantly acquiesced before the assertion of Australian authority, though this backdown continued to rankle.44 By this point, the Americans knew that an escalation of the conflict between the Administration and the Chinese would disrupt, even derail, the BOSEY operation, the US withdrawal from the island and the conclusion of the already lengthy sales negotiations with Canberra. In early April, the OFLC dispatched two officials from Guam, John West and Captain Hinckley, to act as liaison officers on Manus. Quartered with the Vinnell personnel, the two officials had the unenviable task of trying to smooth over relations between the Australians and the Chinese. About the same time, the US Navy upgraded its own presence on the island, replacing Ferraro with Lieutenant V. U. French and 10 ratings. Taking his orders from ComMarianas, the US command on Guam, French was in a difficult position. Instructed to ‘maintain friendly relations with all activities on Manus’, he patrolled the vast base,

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reporting noteworthy incidents and trying to prevent the cannibalisation of the US installations. But he did not have the authority to make any commitments in the name of ComMarianas, and, pointedly, he was ordered ‘not to engage in any controversies and never to sit as a third party to any disputes’. As we shall see, it was impossible for French to adhere to this last instruction, and, in the coming months, he was compelled to take on the invidious position of go-between or mediator.45 The Americans didn’t stop there. Keen to ensure that the outloading operation was proceeding as normally as possible, the OFLC’s field commissioner for the Marianas and Micronesia area, Captain Marcus DeWolf, US Navy, visited Manus between 18 and 20 April to investigate various matters, including the Pondranei case. He was accompanied by General Ting, the BOSEY commander from Guam. Apparently revealing that he did not want to take on, let alone undermine, the Administration, DeWolf asked General Ting to uphold order by instructing the Chinese camp that ‘all personnel are subject to Australian jurisdiction’. He presented Ting with a letter requesting that he take appropriate steps to ‘prevent untoward incidents in the future’. Such a request was seemingly plain enough, and DeWolf later declared that Ting had stated that he had complied with this request.46 Bloxham saw things differently, however. He informed Port Moresby that DeWolf and Ting had in fact requested a stay in the proceedings against Hsueh and Chou pending representations from the State Department. Ting had objected to Australian authority on two counts: an agreement between the American and Chinese governments had given the Chinese permission to exercise jurisdiction over their people on US bases; and the offences on Manus had been committed within the US base. Bloxham stated that he had ‘courteously but firmly’ stated that Australian law would be applied.47 This was all very odd, for Bloxham and DeWolf provided contradictory accounts of the same events. Bloxham mentioned no letter and said nothing to suggest that the American was trying to restrain the Chinese. Had

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DeWolf dissembled, concealing for some reason his own bid to stop the Australian trial from proceeding? Were the Americans playing it both ways? More probably, Ting had ignored the American officer’s injunction to accept Australian jurisdiction. As far as the Chinese were concerned, the Manus affair was far from settled. Just when the Labor Government might have expected things to quieten down, Josiah Francis, the long-time Liberal member for Moreton in Queensland, stood up in the House of Representatives to propel the whole Manus story back into the public realm. On 16 April, he pressed the Government to provide information ‘concerning the recent reports of unrest and rioting among 300 Chinese on Manus Island’. A veteran of the Great War and assistant defence minister back in the early 1930s, Francis saw himself as something of a guardian of white Australian interests in PNG. The situation on Manus appeared to indicate that Australian security was again under threat. Who was on the island, Francis asked, and what were they doing there? And when were they expected to leave? These questions reflected the widespread unease that Manus was not under proper Australian control. External Territories urgently requested a rundown on the nonMelanesian population from Port Moresby. Several days later, the Administration replied that there were 16 Australians on the island, 12 civil servants (no more expected), two planters (three more expected) and two civilians employed by Vinnell. An unknown number of Australian military personnel were also on the island. The American contingent was about 75 (40 military, 30 Vinnell employees and five civilians buying surplus material from the Chinese). Five missionaries were stationed on the island (two German, two American and one British). Numbering 340, the Chinese dwarfed the other non-Melanesian groupings. The Administration said it was ‘unable [to] state whether Chinese will increase numbers’.48 Underlining the complicated nature of the foreign operations on Manus, one official in Canberra noted ‘references to Filipino civilians’ and stated that the Chinese were

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employees of the ‘Vinnell Board of Supplies Executive Yuan (China)’, running an American company and a Chinese government agency into one. On 22 April, nearly a month after the Chinese had been arrested, Eddie Ward told Parliament that the situation on Manus was ‘normal’. ‘Enquiries showed that the reports of disturbances amongst the Chinese now at Manus in connection with the removal of surplus American stores were unfounded.’ Ward gave a brief summary of the facts of the case to dispel any lingering misconceptions. The press reported his answer in a brief and straight manner.49 Conscious of the need to put heated rumours to rest in China, External Affairs told the Australian Consulate General in Shanghai in early May that press reports of disturbances on Manus were ‘unfounded’. Quashing the claims that women had been molested, the department stated that ‘four Chinese civilians had assaulted a male native’.50 Ward’s parliamentary answer did not reveal how close the situation on Manus had come to getting out of hand. The Labor Government didn’t need such scandals when it was coming under attack from the conservative opposition for following an allegedly weak foreign policy and endangering the security of the nation. Aside from placing an embattled government under even more pressure, the Pondranei affair confirmed that relations between Australia and Nationalist China were sliding from bad to worse. The Chinese Embassy in Canberra remained sceptical that its two citizens, Hsueh and Chou, were being treated properly, and Dr Cheng, the Chargé d’Affaires, asked External Territories on 12 May what had happened to the labourers. An official informed Cheng a week later that the Administration had released the accused men on bail after the committal proceedings, and that the indictments would be heard as soon as a hearing could be arranged.51 This affirmation that the Administration was following correct legal procedure did little to appease Nanking, where many in the Nationalist Government believed Australia was increasingly

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hostile towards China. The debate in the United Nations two years earlier about the Trusteeship Agreement to cover Australian rule in PNG had already exposed tensions between Canberra and Nanking. The Chinese Nationalists had argued forcefully that the agreement should grant the citizens of all UN members equal treatment in regard to immigration and commercial and industrial enterprises. Australia fended off this push and the final draft contained no such provision. When the UN General Assembly adopted the Trusteeship Agreement on 14 December 1946, by a margin of 41 votes to six, China was one of three nations to abstain, and it subsequently criticised Australian rule in PNG, alleging that it was discriminatory.52 Sino-Australian relations were even more strained by 1948. The old rhetoric of the shared struggle against Japanese militarism, with its heroic overtones, had evaporated. Save for the diehards, most Australian commentators, either liberated from the wartime necessity to praise an ally or disabused of their illusions, regarded the Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, with impatience and contempt, the more so as the Communists won the civil war. It is telling that no Australian parliamentarian praised or justified Kuomintang policies in the period 1947–49. The backlash against Nationalist China was even more potent because some observers felt duped or betrayed, their disappointed romanticism leading to angry rebukes. The Australian sense of disillusionment was exacerbated by claims that the Nationalists were rampantly misusing aid provided by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Australians were the third-largest contingent working with UNRRA in China, outnumbered only by the British and the Americans. Canberra provided £7 million in aid to Nanking, including locomotives, trawlers and meat. Leslie Haylen, a Labor parliamentarian, visited Shanghai in 1948 and encountered numerous instances of corruption, ‘squeeze’ and the sale of UNRRA goods, including Australian clothes and wheat, on a thriving black

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market. There is little doubt that the sense of Australian grievance over Manus in 1948 was sharpened by the knowledge that the Nationalists were in part using UNRRA funds to purchase the American equipment and stores on the island. Although he publicly downplayed the extent of Nationalist abuse to protect the UNRRA program as a whole, Chifley was privately scathing to a friend in 1948: ‘I never did have much faith in the possibility of [the Nationalists] surviving. I always had a strong suspicion that they were more interested in establishing the Chiang Kai-shek dynasty than in the welfare of China.’53 Against such a backdrop, it was hardly surprising that the Labor Government did not consider, even in passing, some kind of deal with the Nationalists in the Pondranei case. No one in Canberra felt that Australia owed China any special favours. Perhaps equally importantly, the Administration in PNG had other reasons for pursuing the two labourers so relentlessly, which had nothing to do with Manus or China. And now our story moves back in time to late 1947, south across the Bismarck Sea and the Huon Peninsula to the town of Lae, the scene of another and much more serious crime.

Chapter Three

In the Midnight Dark

ON NEW YEAR’S EVE 1947, the Australian community in Lae gathered at the recreation hall at the Hotel Cecil for a dance. Located deep in the tropics on mainland New Guinea’s north-east coast, Lae lies on a coastal plain near the mouth of the Markham River, overlooking the Huon Gulf. Although it is little more than 150 kilometres in length, the Markham is a formidable river, its turbulent waters beginning in the Finisterre Ranges, fed along the way by numerous tributaries, finally reaching the sea at a more languid pace along a broad flat valley.1 The vegetation around the Huon Gulf is thick jungle, a mass of plants that grow voraciously in the wet heat, covering everything with their insistent tentacles. This jungle gives way to sago palms and mangrove scrub on the coastal plain. The township of Lae was founded in 1927, Melanesians performing most of the hard work, hacking away the vegetation to

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make way for a rough airstrip. With the sea to the south, the Markham to the west, and two small rivers to the east, the Bumbu and the Busu, water borders the township on three sides. Mountains provide an impressive backdrop. Behind the town to the north, the Atzera Range rises; to the west and moving south, the Herzog Mountains dominate the skyline; and to the east stands the Rawlinson Range, completing the chain. During the 1930s, Lae was overshadowed for the most part by Salamaua, the administrative and commercial centre of Morobe District further down the coast to the south. Nonetheless, the Lae airstrip became extremely busy, supplying the nearby goldfields in the Wau and Bulolo Valleys with often staggering quantities of equipment and stores. An airmail link with Australia was established in 1934. As the European population increased, the town’s Spartan living conditions gradually improved; a few shops, a post office, a sports club and eventually a bank branch opened. Some residents put down deeper roots and built pleasant homes with neat gardens and fine lawns, leading at least one traveller to say that Lae resembled a small Australian country town. The European community acquired a strong sense of local identity, though social distinctions between the managers of the big companies such as New Guinea Goldfields and ordinary working men were often sharp. Historian Ian Willis writes, however, that Lae remained a bustling but minor company town in the 1930s and rarely rated a mention in newspapers outside the Territory, aside from the odd story about aircraft accidents. Most memorably, Amelia Earhart flew out of the Lae airstrip in June 1937 on what was to be the longest leg of her famous around-the-world flight and was never seen again. On the eve of the Pacific War, the permanent population of Lae was still small, about 120 Europeans, perhaps 60 Chinese and several hundred Melanesians. In September, the Territory of New Guinea moved its capital to Lae, abandoning Rabaul, which had been badly damaged by a volcanic eruption five years earlier. This new status stimulated a hurried building boom as

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the Administration constructed various buildings to house its offices. Lae’s future looked bright.2 This rising town was engulfed, like the rest of PNG, by World War II. After a bombing attack on 21 January 1942, which damaged virtually every building, Japanese forces captured Lae less than three weeks later. Most of the European population had retreated before the Japanese arrived, destroying fuel dumps and motor cars. The Japanese occupied Lae for 18 months until heavy Allied bombing virtually wiped out the township in 1943, leaving little more than the Ampo Church and the Guinea Airways hangar standing. In contrast with the recapture of Manus, Australian forces played a significant role in retaking Lae. For a while, the town became ‘a military metropolis of temporary buildings’, housing about 20,000 Australian and Americans troops. Another 50,000 Americans were based at Nadzab, the airstrip to the north-west of the township.3 However, just as the vast base on Manus quickly faded away, so this sizeable military establishment vanished once the Japanese were defeated. After Salamaua was devastated during the fighting and subsequently abandoned, the Administration established the headquarters for Morobe District in Lae in late 1945. Even though it was not as far away as Manus, more than 300 kilometres further north-west across the Bismarck Sea, Lae was still a distant outpost of Australian rule in PNG in 1947, connected to the outside world by aeroplane and ship. Finschhafen, the site of a significant US military base during the war, housing at one point as many as 700,000 troops, was 100 kilometres by air to the east at the tip of the Huon Peninsula. Madang was 418 kilometres away by ship, while Port Moresby, the heart of the Administration, lay on the other side of the rough central mountain range. There was no road link to the whole southern side of the island. Geographically isolated and outnumbered by the local Melanesians, the town’s small white population had been looking forward to New Year’s Eve for some months. As ever, the weather

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was stormy on 31 December 1947, for the monsoon had just started. Although its full force is mostly spent when it reaches Morobe, the north-west monsoon still drenches the mountains that rise up behind Lae. The town’s annual rainfall is high, about 4,572 millimetres, while the hinterland is much drier. The rain rots wooden structures with a relentless certainty. On New Year’s Eve 1947, the deluge stopped midway through the evening, but the night air was still hot and clammy. The heat could be unrelenting during the day, wrapping everything in its enervating embrace, making everyday tasks that much harder to do, sapping energy and fraying the nerves, sometimes to breaking point. So, the wet heat was an extra reason to have a drink or two. The aftermath of the war was another. Like the other towns scattered across PNG, Lae was struggling to get back on its feet in 1947. The combined European-Asian population was about 1,020. For several years, the Department of Works and Housing in Melbourne had been considering plans to rebuild Lae as a model tropical town. But the obstacles to achieving such a grand vision were formidable. The town’s military buildings had been hastily constructed to meet ‘brief operational needs’ and had ‘only a casual relationship to the needs of the town to be resurrected’.4 Returning residents were able to attain only one-year leases on land, erecting temporary dwellings from local timber and materials cannibalised from abandoned army huts. Highly inflammable tar paper was used widely. Henry G. Eekhoff, the indefatigable secretary of the local branches of the New Guinea Citizens Association and the Returned Sailors’, Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Imperial League of Australia (RSSAILA), wrote to Eddie Ward in May 1947 lamenting the deplorable condition of the town. ‘The whole atmosphere here is one of uncertainty.’ If the local residents were allowed to continue to build dwellings out of scrap, Lae would become ‘a “shanty town” instead of the model township envisioned by those responsible for town planning’.5 With the promised town plan still on the drawing boards, the tempo of reconstruction picked up in 1947, lifting local spirits. The

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Bank of NSW reopened a branch. ‘Lae is now beginning to resemble a township,’ wrote the Pacific Islands Monthly. Houses were gradually appearing and the Anglican community was ‘well on the way’ towards establishing a church for a priest who would cover the Wau and Bulolo goldfields and outer districts. Burns Philp had built six dwellings for its staff, while the Vacuum Oil Company and Bulolo Gold Dredging were also active.6 A road built during the war made Bulolo more accessible. Despite these steps forward, the future still seemed troubling, and living conditions remained Spartan. Taking possession of some ‘native’ land, New Guinea Goldfields Ltd had to maintain a bakery, a grocery and a freezer to provide for its staff. A chronic shortage of local indigenous labour made the reconstruction task hard and the company was struggling, producing a paltry £13,000 of gold by January 1948.7 Twenty-one Administration employees lived in tents with timber floors in an area known as ‘Canvas Town’. These tents were not weatherproof, lacked proper sanitary facilities and had dangerous wiring that constituted a serious fire hazard.8 Other staff were housed in former army buildings in an area called Rotten Row. Local roads and bridges were dilapidated; work did not start on a bridge across the Markham linking Lae to Wau until 1950. The main wharf, Milford Haven, was a temporary wartime structure on the verge of being condemned. The other wharves were even more rickety. One night in 1947, the end of one wharf and its crane disappeared into the sea after an earth movement. Products from infant formula and eggs to soap and petrol were either scarce or unavailable. By late 1947, shortages were becoming more severe, forcing the bakery to use leftover army flour and leaving the townsfolk to hurriedly buy up local honey stocks to substitute for sugar. An aircraft had recently flown in much needed butter and meat from Townsville, but a food ship had not called at Lae since the Malaita visited on 27 August. The main generator broke down regularly, causing blackouts. Power was often out between midnight and 6am, and the authorities asked residents to

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be economical. Ever ready to speak up for his fellow residents, Eekhoff declared: ‘Will Lae simply become a ghost town, like many other centres which died with their goldfields; or will it, like Charters Towers, Gympie, etc., gain a new lease of life from agricultural industries?’ Linking the local realm with the problems of the postwar era, he believed that a revitalised Lae could produce primary products for the world and act as ‘a bulwark against aggression’. For a time, Lae was under consideration in Canberra as one possible site for the capital of the entire Territory, but the Labor Government eventually chose Port Moresby. The local community’s desire for a secure and prosperous future could assume improbable guises, not least a far-fetched scheme to build an international airport at a cost of £3 million.9 Such grandiose plans were a distant prospect in late 1947, and New Year’s Eve was a welcome opportunity to let off some steam in the midst of the hard work of building up a viable community in a remote locality at a time of sparse resources. The Pacific Islands Monthly noted that ‘virtually the whole town attended’ the ball at the Cecil10 — the term ‘whole town’ referred of course to the white community, for non-Europeans were unwelcome. Several local civic organisations, including the New Guinea Citizens Association and the RSSAILA, arranged the dance, bringing together policemen, District Officers and labour overseers. Engineers and managers from the two main local goldmining companies, New Guinea Goldfields and Bulolo Gold Dredging, rubbed shoulders with the representatives of Qantas Empire Airways and Amalgamated Wireless. In all, about 200–250 people gathered at the Cecil. Most of the men were old PNG hands, steeped in the prejudices of the prewar era, sure, at least on the surface, of their power and accustomed to running the town unchallenged. Some came to the dance with their wives. Like other frontier towns in PNG, Lae’s European community consisted mostly of men with a few married women. Single women were seen as a source of temptation and they rarely ventured north to live and work in such

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a far-off town. A handful, no more than five or so, worked for the Administration, and a few others were nurses at the hospital. Some of them attended the dance. The more established members of the European population were joined at the dance by newcomers, mostly employees of the Department of Works and Housing, who had been in Lae for no more than a few months. The new arrivals were not always welcome. One old-time resident remarked in the Pacific Islands Monthly that some of the newcomers appeared to be the ‘right types’ for PNG. ‘Some, of course, will never do any good wherever they are, but they will soon be weeded out by virtue of the fact that they are not temperamentally suited for tropical life, isolated as it is from the “Dawgs” and the “Horses” and with hard work as the alternative.’ Another long-time resident was more blunt: ‘An unpleasant feature of post-war New Guinea is the influx of persons, locally known as “white trash”, who are causing a breakdown of the community’s ethical standards.’11 Different attitudes towards a range of social issues, including relations with the ‘natives’, often separated the old-timers from the newcomers, overlaying with and at times accentuating the longstanding cleavages in the European community. Seen as ‘the poor and suspect relations in white towns’,12 missionaries did not attend the dance at the Cecil. The kiaps and the business folk did not always see eye to eye, but New Year’s Eve was a time to set aside, at least temporarily, some of their differences and to celebrate together. The war had also helped to forge a stronger sense of common identity and interest in the European community. These powerful internal bonds were symbolically reaffirmed in late 1947 when Eddie Ward agreed to the local request that streets in the town should be named after the pioneering early settlers in the region and soldiers who had died in the war. The waterfront had a European reserve and ‘native labourers’ were confined to certain areas; Melanesians were not permitted to drink alcohol, and Asians were encouraged to do so in their own quarter. The local Chinese population, numbering about

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150, was still confined to Chinatown, a dilapidated area on the town’s north-east edge, which featured 30 trade stores, a Chinese club and a school. Terms such as ‘dance hall’ and ‘ladies’ lounge’ suggest a structure of some solidity, a combination of an Australian country pub and a smaller version of the grand colonial hotels of Asia, but the Hotel Cecil in 1947 was a shadow of its former self. Completed in 1936, less than a decade after the town’s foundation, the prewar Cecil had been an establishment of some standing under the management of the famous Flora ‘Ma’ Stewart. Born in Edinburgh in 1888, Stewart was the daughter of a blacksmith and coachbuilder who migrated to northern Queensland when she was a baby. She went to Papua with her first husband in 1910, launching a long career, which carved out her reputation as one of the Territory’s most redoubtable and colourful characters. Before World War I, she ran a trade store on the Vailala goldfield, shooting crocodiles and curing their skins for sale. She later ran a guesthouse in Port Moresby and then a string of hotels in the 1920s and 1930s, including the Cosmopolitan in Samarai and the Bulolo in Wau. Through all of this, she somehow managed to raise four children. One former kiap, James Sinclair, recalls that Stewart was generous in spirit but ‘no soft touch’, tolerating ‘the idiosyncrasies of her rough-and-ready clientele’ on the goldfields while setting definite limits.13 Named after a hotel outside Sydney, the Cecil was her proudest achievement. The Pacific Islands Monthly described an impressive structure in 1936: It is a well-constructed modern building with a comfortable sitting room on the ground floor and has plenty of bathrooms and running water. The commodious bar and billiards room are up-to-date and the kitchen is remarkable for its size and conveniences. The bedrooms are large and airy. A verandah runs around the top floor, well shaded and made comfortable by lounge chairs and small tables.14

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This commendation evoked the pride of the local white residents and a nervous need to affirm that the town was modern despite its isolation. The hotel hosted Amelia Earhart’s fateful send-off in June 1937. The Cecil, with its colonial comfort, was obliterated in the 1943 bombings. Ever-resourceful, ‘Ma’ Stewart was one of the first white women to return to the Territory after the Japanese surrender, arriving in 1946, even though entry permits for Australian civilians were still hard to acquire. Her son, Moresby, had died during the war fighting for the RAF. Despite the fact that she was approaching the age of 60, she was determined to rebuild her hotel, tramping around the town in the heat to scrounge whatever materials she could find in the chaotic mess left behind by the departing troops. As she literally wore out her shoes, she bought army cots and stocks of bully beef and recovered soiled army blankets, bleaching them so they could be reused.15 At first, she was forced to set up her new establishment in 20 huts that had been left behind by the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) on old ‘native’ land on Butibum Road. War correspondent Osmar White visited the Cecil in 1946 and found a ‘preposterous caravanserai of rotting grass huts’.16 When the white community came together to celebrate the arrival of 1948, the Cecil was still a temporary-looking collection of buildings, really no more than a clump of half-decaying huts, assembled in part from scrap left over from the war. By this time, Ma Stewart had leased some of her huts to local married couples and converted others into rough accommodation units for visitors. Rooms were divided by sheets of three-ply. Running a hotel in such trying circumstances was no easy task. One visitor in the late 1940s, Marjorie Murphy, the wife of a kiap, encountered Stewart ‘dressed in man’s sandals and burned black by the sun’, cooking for the entire hotel on one ‘funny old stove’.17 The Administrator, Colonel Murray, told Canberra that there had been little adverse comment about the meals served at the Cecil, but its sanitary

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conditions were another matter altogether. The Public Health Department was especially uneasy about ‘the general hygiene in connection with the accommodation of guests’.18 Despite its diminished status and its uncertain hygiene, the Cecil was still the centre of the European community’s social activities. On Christmas Eve 1947, Ma Stewart threw a party in the recreation hall for 60 children and their parents, with ‘Rusty’ Phillips dispensing gifts as Father Christmas.19 For the New Year’s Eve celebration, she brought in an orchestra of some description to create a festive atmosphere. Coming off the main road, participants in the dance strolled along a pathway past first the sleeping quarters and then a small hair salon, before reaching the main buildings at the back, the recreation hall on the left and the bar, with its ‘ladies’ lounge’, immediately opposite on the right. The walkway to the buildings was blocked at the car park end by oil drums, preventing access by vehicles. Like the other buildings, the recreation hall was raised off the ground, with a stairway at one end and a verandah with a railing overlooking a lawn. The roof had no guttering, and rainwater poured straight down in great sheets into a large drainage ditch. Lae was a hard-drinking and hard-playing frontier town. Shortly before midnight, as the rain came thundering down again in great torrents, the revellers gathered in a circle in the recreation hall to sing Auld Lang Syne. There was much kissing and merriment. About this time, a commotion erupted at the hall’s entrance. Several Filipino soldiers, members of a recently arrived unit of the US Army, tried to gain entry to the dance. What began innocuously enough as a verbal stoush soon became a scuffle out on the lawn and then a more serious confrontation. Before too long, John Harcourt Scott, the Lae manager of New Guinea Goldfields, reappeared out of the darkness with blood streaming out of a deep gash on his forehead above his left eye. A Sydneysider born on 23 December 1908, Scott was one of the old-timers, having spent more than nine years in the Territory

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by late 1947. An accountant by training, he worked with New Guinea Goldfields in Morobe District before the war. Having served with a militia unit in the late 1920s as a youth, he joined the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles at Edie Creek, the site of a rich goldfield above the Bulolo River, in October 1940. He enlisted in the Australian Army in January 1942 shortly after the start of the Pacific War. By the time he was discharged in April 1946, Scott was a warrant officer (first class) with ANGAU. By all reports, he was a normally reserved man who spoke Tok Pisin well — better than many other Europeans. About 170 centimetres tall, he was a stocky, balding fellow, weighing 90–95 kilograms. After the war, he married Elizabeth ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald, who had served during the war with the AWAS, and he came back to Lae as part of a small team of engineers, mechanics, labour recruiters and accountants to rebuild New Guinea Goldfield’s mining and sawmilling operations. At the New Guinea Goldfields annual general meeting in Sydney on 17 January 1947, the company secretary recognised that this resourceful group had achieved much despite being subjected to ‘privations and discomforts’.20 Such circumstances created strong bonds inside the European community. While her husband was working to get New Guinea Goldfields back on its feet, Fitzy Scott opened a women’s hairdressing business in the town.21 In the early hours of 1 January 1948, Scott was taken to the European hospital and released later in the morning. One Lae resident at the time, Adrian Leyden, a former ANGAU officer and kiap who worked for many years with Bulolo Gold Dredging, believes that Scott received only basic treatment at this point because he appeared to be drunk.22 At first, all appeared to be going well, for the gash, though deep, didn’t look too serious, let alone fatal. Scott’s condition deteriorated, however, and he was readmitted to the hospital on the afternoon of 1 January. At some point on 2 January, the commander of the US Army unit, Second Lieutenant Refugio Ordonez, tried to see Scott, but no visitors were permitted given the patient’s turn for the worse.23 Despite

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further treatment, Scott’s health swiftly declined and he died a day later, on 3 January. The coroner, Assistant District Officer John Rigby, viewed the body at the hospital, and two of Scott’s friends, Bertram ‘Bertie’ Heath, another employee of Bulolo Gold Dredging, and Kelm Gross, the General Manager of New Guinea Goldfields, identified the corpse. News, especially bad news, travels fast in a small community, swiftly rippling out from the impact point by word of mouth, along the way acquiring an ever-more dramatic quality. Lae’s tightly knit European population was already incensed about the events that had taken place on New Year’s Eve, believing that some temporary outsiders had tried to barge into their celebration. The talk around the bar at the Cecil was hot during the first few days of the New Year. As Scott’s condition deteriorated, and he slipped from a high fever into delirium and then into a coma, the anger and the illfeeling towards the Filipinos intensified. His death provoked fury. Two vigilante groups quickly formed, ready to march on the compound housing the Filipino soldiers to punish the supposed killers. They reputedly armed themselves with rifles and dynamite.24 Ma Stewart had a wiser and cooler head than many, and she managed to convince one of the mobs, which had formed in the bar of her hotel, their anger stoked by beery talk, to abandon the idea of ‘cleaning up’ the Filipinos. She pointed out that the Scouts were members of the US Army, armed with rifles and plenty of ammunition. Aware that the town was on the verge of tumbling out of control, the District Officer, Allan Roberts, stopped the second group, which had collected at the local RSSAILA branch, from attacking the camp. Along with Inspector Percy ‘Monty’ Moncur, Roberts carried the heavy burden of maintaining law and order in Morobe District in the confused years after the war. A Melburnian born on 29 July 1904, he worked as a teacher for two years in Footscray before joining the Administration in 1925 with the first batch of trained patrol officers. He did considerable first-contact

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patrolling, surviving an ambush by Kukukuku tribesmen in the rugged country behind Wau, and went to Lae in 1935 to open up a new sub-district office. During the war, he served as a RAAF intelligence officer and later as a coastwatcher on New Britain, receiving the Military Cross for carrying out hazardous reconnaissance work and rescuing four US airmen who had been shot down by the Japanese.25 He left the armed forces in March 1946 as a major. With the Administration severely over-stretched, Roberts was rushed back to PNG two months later. Drawing on his long experience in the Territory, he applied unsuccessfully in late 1946 for the job of Police Superintendent, the position eventually won by John Grimshaw. He returned to Lae as District Officer, where he was joined later by his wife, Dorothy, who left their home in Spotswood, Melbourne. Roberts was liked and respected, seen by his contemporaries as a highly able, hardworking and upright man who generated a good feeling in the town.26 Moncur was another old hand. The son of a school teacher, he was born in Drouin in Gippsland, Victoria, on 14 December 1889. Like so many of his generation, Moncur was a veteran of both world wars. After a stint as a blacksmith and then three years with the Victorian Police Force, he joined the Army in 1914. Wounded twice and awarded the Military Cross, he left the AIF in 1916 as a captain, having served at Gallipoli and in France, and joined the Tropical Force or Coconut Lancers in New Guinea. After serving as an assistant District Officer in the Territory in 1918–19, he returned to Sydney to be with his wife, Catherine, working for some years in private business. After Catherine’s death, Percy joined the New Guinea Police Force as a warrant officer in February 1930. He rose through the hierarchy, serving for a time as the Rabaul gaoler, and took charge of the Wau Police District on the eve of the Japanese invasion. In a feat of impressive endurance, the 52-year-old police officer walked from Wau to Port Moresby.27 During the war, he worked as a peace officer with the AttorneyGeneral’s Department in Australia and later with ANGAU in

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PNG, eventually attaining the rank of major. In September 1945, he wrote to Reg Halligan, Secretary of External Territories, to say that many former members of the PNG civil service felt ‘a certain amount of apprehension, probably quite unreasonable’, about their future career prospects.28 Whatever his doubts, Moncur rejoined the PNG Police Force as a warrant officer in February 1946, and was soon posted to Lae as acting Inspector. His second wife, Evelyn, joined him later in the year. By 3 January, the Filipino soldiers were extremely anxious — the local Europeans were enraged by Scott’s death. How did a unit of Filipino Scouts end up in Lae in 1948? They were in fact part of a larger phenomenon, for World War II scattered different groups of Asian soldiers and labourers across the South Pacific. The Japanese Army used Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean conscripts and forced labourers in different parts of PNG. More than 630 Cantonese died on New Britain. One POW camp in Lae housed a contingent of Taiwanese into 1946, while several hundred Korean labourers and artisans were still stranded in Rabaul in early 1948 awaiting repatriation.29 The massive American military machine brought other groups of Asians to PNG. Just as the backwash of the Pacific War had unexpectedly landed a contingent of Chinese Nationalist soldiers and labourers on Manus to pack up surplus war stores, so the receding conflagration with the Japanese had beached a group of Filipino Scouts with the US Army in Lae. In one of those strange coincidences that shape events and make life more complicated, the Chinese and Filipino units arrived in PNG within weeks of each other, ensuring that the Administration would have to contend simultaneously with two potentially explosive conflicts. Founded in 1901 in the wake of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Scouts were designed originally to be a counterinsurgency force; but, over time, they became a more regular part of the US Army, acquiring infantry, cavalry, artillery and support units. Long waiting lists existed for enlistment in the Scouts, and Filipinos were permitted to enter West Point in 1914, though few

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took up the opportunity and most Scout units remained under the command of American officers.30 During World War II, President Roosevelt famously pledged to grant all Filipino soldiers, including the Scouts, American citizenship in return for their often heroic deeds in fighting the Japanese. However, although several thousand Scouts were naturalised after Japan’s surrender, the US Congress reneged on Roosevelt’s promise when the Philippines gained independence on 4 July 1946 and passed a rider to the Rescission Act stripping all regular Philippine Army soldiers of their rights and privileges as US veterans.31 Following the war, socalled New Scout units were founded, building on around 6,000 old Scouts who had managed to survive combat, imprisonment and the Japanese occupation.32 The New Scouts continued to be a part of the US Army, but they did not receive the same conditions as American soldiers. Even though their wage was increased in June 1946, to 50 Philippine pesos a month, privates in Scout units were still paid only half as much as their American counterparts and they did not receive subsequent raises. The reconstituted Scouts peaked at approximately 36,000 until they too were dissolved in September 1949. Many of the pre and postwar Scouts eventually joined regular units in the US Army, enjoying the same conditions as their American peers and often retiring to the United States. Aniceto Bagley served with the New Scouts for some years, including a stint on Saipan in 1947–48 with the 76th Ordnance Ammunition Company, storing, inspecting and disposing of the large US ammunition stores that had been left over after the war. He believes that being a Scout was a good job, offering steady pay and a chance of social advancement. The New Scouts were a cut above the ordinary Filipino Government troops, occupying a social position that carried some prestige and honour. The US 1946 Rescission Act reinforced this division. In contrast with their pre1945 brothers, most of the New Scouts were literate and spoke English. Bagley recalls that his company interacted at work with the American forces on Saipan for the most part in a businesslike

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way. He contends that there were no racial problems. ‘Whenever we had an opportunity to work with American troops we were treated as equals.’ This account does not ring entirely true. Many American soldiers did regard the Filipino Scouts in a friendly and protective manner, but this sense of comradeship did not disturb the fundamental power structure of the US Army, which kept the Scouts in a subordinate role. Bagley himself admits that social contact between the Scouts and white troops, on Saipan and back in the Philippines, was limited and that occasional beer-hall incidents took place, implying that the two groups were separated by important differences.33 The US Army used the Filipino Scouts for various purposes in the western Pacific in the late 1940s. Some Scout units performed guard duty or carried out reconstruction work. Others were sent to Guam, Okinawa and Saipan to help handle the vast surplus American military stores. These operations brought the Scouts into contact with representatives of the Chinese Nationalists, who had of course purchased the stores under the bulk contract signed in Shanghai in 1946. Members of the 557th Quartermaster Service Company based in Manila, the Scouts who came to Lae in late 1947 were deployed to PNG as a US War Graves Registration Unit, charged with the task of scouring through the local cemeteries to locate the remains of fallen American soldiers. At the end of the war, the US military sent a number of these units, commonly known as search teams, throughout the Pacific War zone to track down as many graves as possible. About 150 Scouts had been working in Finschhafen, the site of a US military cemetery with 11,000 graves, since early 1947.34 Before the events at the Cecil, the contingent in Lae had been in the area for only a month, having arrived on 30 November. The unit was 20 strong, 15 Filipino privates, a Filipino Master Yeoman, three white American sergeants and the commanding officer, Lieutenant Ordonez. Although he was an officer, Ordonez was bound to his soldiers by some powerful bonds besides the normal solidarity of a military

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unit, for he was a Mexican American. Like the Filipino Scouts, he came from a Spanish-speaking, Catholic culture, which was often regarded with disdain by white Americans. Mexicans were subjected to much formal and informal discrimination in the United States, and usually occupied a socially and financially marginal position. Ordonez’s Mexican heritage added another element to an already complicated ethnic mix. As soon as the news of Scott’s death reached him, Ordonez moved quickly to defend his unit’s camp in the Busu area, a few kilometres outside the township to the east, rightly anticipating that the local Europeans would respond with great anger to this awful eventuality. Given the intense feelings in the town, he restricted his men to camp unless they were engaged on essential official business, ruling the Cecil off limits. As night fell, the Scouts dug a trench around the camp and an armed guard of five soldiers, one-quarter of the entire unit, took up positions, rotating every hour. Ordonez nailed special orders on the camp’s bulletin board, revealing just how spooked he was: 1. Guards will walk to their posts on the Detachment Road in an alternating motion, so that they are facing each other at all times. 2. Guards will be alert at all times to see that no trouble arises. 3. There will be no shots fired until it is evident to the guards’ satisfaction that the trespasser is a man or object to undermine this unit. 4. In case of imminent danger, one guard will give the normal challenge — HALT WHO GOES THERE. If there is no answer let him have it! One guard will fire first to allow the object to reveal itself so that the other guard will have a chance to pour it on! If a small length of time elapses after the first shot — He may be wise to your trick. DON’T WAIT. POUR IT ON.

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5. Other two guards will stay back take cover and wait to see if you are needed. Don’t give your position away unless it is necessary; there may be others lurking somewhere else waiting for a wrong move. 6. Keep in clear until trouble arises, then take cover. If you walk near the grass you’re liable to find a stealthy grip depriving you of your protection. 7. The Officer and the Sgt of the Guard will immediately take action to awaken the Detachment and retaliate [against] the aggressors. 8. Every man will sleep with his clothes on and his weapon ready. 9. In case of emergency where all the Detachment must go into action, the positions indicated on the Retaliation Defense Plan below will be taken immediately. Remember at night cover is very important. Once you fire a shot or two from one location in the trench, ease yourself at least 18 inches to the side and fire again. You give your position away with every shot!! But! Don’t move too much or you may give yourself away completely.

These orders left no doubt that Ordonez feared an attack launched from several sides by well-armed opponents. This fear was not misplaced given that many local whites had fought during the war. If it was true that the Europeans had armed themselves with rifles and dynamite, strong precautions were necessary. The Filipinos were greatly outnumbered and in unfamiliar territory. At the foot of his special orders, Ordonez warned his troops that they were ‘not dealing with men who know nothing about military tactics … our methods may be known to them’.35 The Filipinos were adopting a defensive posture, and there is no suggestion that they considered mounting any incursions into the town. But the tone of Ordonez’s orders suggested that he almost relished the chance for a shoot-out. Or was he simply inexperienced and afraid? Some members of the

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European community were certainly anxious about the possibility of an armed conflict getting out of control and hurting innocent civilians. Bulolo Gold Dredging had a large freezer unit in the Busu area, not far from the Scouts’ camp, under the care of an engineer. A vehicle was swiftly sent up to the unit to bring the engineer and his family, a wife and young daughter, back to the company’s main camp in Lae.36 In another special notice issued on 3 January, Lieutenant Ordonez stated that ‘unfavourable circumstances among civil and military organizations in this local [sic]’ made it imperative that the camp should take all security measures without delay. ‘The present local populace is dissatisfied with the idea of having an American unit in the region.’ At the end of this second special notice, Ordonez finally hinted at the reason for the confrontation that appeared to be at hand. ‘On 1 January 1948, the local people deprived this unit of their privileges which the local authorities had guaranteed were available. Although the local authorities were present at the scene of the discord, the local residents and members of this unit nevertheless disagreed and the results were inevitably untasteful [sic].’37 Ordonez did not refer directly to Scott’s death — indeed, his words were designed to avoid any responsibility. Although the two European vigilante groups had been headed off before they could march on the Filipino camp, District Officer Roberts and Inspector Moncur had good reason to believe that Lae was on the brink of serious violence. Their unease about the possibility of bloodshed was sharpened by the memory of events that had taken place almost exactly a year earlier. On 25 January 1947, Richard Burt, a local pilot, had stayed overnight at the Tebb residence, sleeping on the verandah, which overlooked the Lae foreshore. Late at night, Burt awoke to the sound of what he assumed was an intruder. Alerted by his cry, Iris Tebb, who ran the local European primary school, rushed out on to the verandah with a revolver and fired a full magazine, seven shots in all, into the darkness towards the sea. Burt then discharged another seven

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rounds. Two of these 14 bullets hit a Melanesian, Suvia, one passing clean through his right shoulder blade and the other grazing the left side of his neck. Suvia was walking along the beach with three friends as the tide receded looking for a good spot for spearfishing. It seems almost certain that Tebb and Burt fired their fusillades at 12am, suggesting that midnight was a particularly dangerous time in Lae. But the shooting was not the end of the matter, for Suvia and two of his three fishing companions, Borowa and Yosi, were members of the local native police detachment. The morning after the shooting, 30 of Suvia’s comrades, armed and furious, conducted what the Acting Administrator, Justice Phillips, later described as a hostile demonstration outside the Tebb residence. After restoring order and removing the Tebbs and Burt to safety, a European police officer first disarmed and then summarily dismissed all 30 policemen, bringing in replacements from the Lae police depot. The local authorities were determined to prevent Melanesian police from taking matters into their own hands. This was not the only source of disquiet in the town. At the initial trial before the District Court on 19-20 March, James Peterson, the branch manager of Burns Philp, testified that members of the European community commonly discharged firearms, often for no apparent reason. He recalled hearing several volleys of shots at different times on the night of 25 January. Although Suvia spent 16 and a half days in hospital recovering from his shoulder wound, the Supreme Court later meted out a surprisingly light punishment, fining Tebb and Burt £25 each on a conviction of unlawful wounding.38 The widespread carrying and use of firearms by private citizens engendered unease in Canberra and Port Moresby, and it is hardly surprising that the formation of two gangs to avenge Scott’s death provoked further anxiety. If the mobs had advanced on the camp, a firefight between the Filipinos and the local white population would have occurred. Each side was well-armed, and any

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battle would likely result in significant bloodshed. So, the near confrontation on Manus between the Chinese contingent and the Administration police in March 1948 was prefigured by a similar situation in Lae several months earlier. Alarmed by the mounting prospect of violence and acutely conscious that he had little backup — no more than a few policemen — Roberts wired the US military forces based at Finschhafen late on the afternoon of 3 January, reporting that a Filipino Scout had killed an Australian. Early the next morning, Roberts flew by chartered aircraft to Finschhafen to discuss the dangerous situation in Lae with three US army officers — Major Sylvester Merritt, US Provo Marshall, Captain Andrew Morgan and Lieutenant Colonel Caluya. An American doctor from the local Lutheran missionary hospital, Theodore Braun, joined the discussion. Convinced by the District Officer’s sense of urgency, the four Americans flew back to Lae to try to help prevent an armed clash between the two groups. Moncur was at the Lae airstrip to meet Roberts and his companions, the group adjourning to his residence. The two Australians told Major Merritt that ‘a train of events were [sic] set in motion instantaneously on the night of 31 Dec resulting in a general brawl and free for all’. They admitted that Lieutenant Ordonez had made one complaint about discrimination against the Scouts on 26 December, five days before the fateful clash, but they stressed that they had no control over whom the local populace wanted to welcome into their own homes.39 After this meeting, Lieutenant Colonel Caluya, Major Merritt and Moncur’s offsider, Assistant Sub-Inspector Patrick Larkin, travelled across town to the Filipino camp to confer with Ordonez. The Americans moved quickly to quieten things down on their own side — they could not allow tempers to get any more out of control than they already were. There was still a risk that the town’s enraged mood would boil over into violence. An autopsy is a grim task and speed is crucial in a criminal investigation, for the chance of ascertaining the cause of death and

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acquiring sufficient evidence to convict a perpetrator declines rapidly after the first two or three days. Lae Hospital lacked a morgue, and post-mortem examinations had to be conducted in the open without adequate screening. The tropical heat accentuated the foul smells that emanated from a rapidly decomposing corpse. On 4 January, Dr Braun performed an autopsy on Scott’s body, with Dr Carl Gunther assisting. Gunther was an experienced and able doctor, having joined Bulolo Gold Dredging as the company medical officer in 1931, and he saved many lives in the Changi POW camp in Singapore during the war. Given his skills and long experience, he often performed major surgery in Lae.40 Two other doctors, Captain Morgan, US Army, and Roy Scragg, from the Lae Hospital, looked on. After Braun’s autopsy, the coroner, Assistant District Officer John Rigby, issued the order for burial at noon. Later in the day, as the afternoon heat beat down, Fitzy Scott buried her husband far from home in the old Lae cemetery, up on Markham Road near the end of the runway. In an obituary published some weeks later, the Pacific Islands Monthly declared that the mining manager ‘was held in high esteem in the Morobe district’.41 By the evening of 4 January, Major Merritt realised that he had been drawn into a complicated and potentially ugly problem, and he sent an urgent message to his headquarters in Manila, the Philippines-Ryukyus Command (Philrycom), via the Royal Australian Navy’s liaison officer in Port Moresby. He stated that one of the Scouts of a search team had allegedly committed a crime, and asked for instructions. Philrycom replied swiftly, appointing Merritt investigating officer and ordering him to conduct a preliminary inquiry. ‘Due to the belligerent attitude of the population’, Merritt restricted the Scout unit, including Lieutenant Ordonez, to the confines of the camp as a precautionary measure. By exempting the three white American sergeants from the restriction, he underscored the racial divisions within the US Army.42 On 5 January, Philrycom instructed Lieutenant

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Colonel Caluya and Major Merritt to ‘inform Australian authorities that any and all personnel desired by them with reference investigation killing Mr Scott will be provided immediately’. Further, the two American officers were instructed to remove the remainder of the search team from Lae to Dutch New Guinea, safely outside Australian jurisdiction.43 A vessel was due to set sail on 14 January, more than a week away. Caluya departed from Lae two days later for Finschhafen and played no further part in the Scott case. Merritt would not be so lucky. About this time, Roberts contacted his own superiors in Port Moresby, who in turn relayed the news of the Lae incident to Canberra. In each case, the Australian and American officials on the ground were receiving their orders from a distant headquarters, far removed from the emotional cross-currents in a small town on New Guinea’s north coast. Roberts provided the Administration with his account of the chain of events that had led to such a horrible outcome. Six Filipino Scouts of the US Army had entered the dance hall at the Hotel Cecil on New Year’s Eve without paying. When asked to pay, one of the Filipino soldiers had allegedly offered to do so if police at the dance furnished him with a woman. He had then ‘become aggressive’. ‘European spectators and Philippinos engaged in a fracas.’ After some time, the Filipinos had ‘retired’ from the hall but ‘missiles [had been] hurled from their direction in the darkness’. One missile had struck Scott, who sustained serious head injuries and died three days later, leaving his wife to inform his relatives back in Australia. Once more, the bureaucrats and politicians in Canberra were confronted with PNG’s rawness. The Secretary of External Territories, Reg Halligan, ever the efficient public servant, informed his minister, Eddie Ward, without delay that he had sent a copy of Roberts’ message to External Affairs ‘with a suggestion that suitable advice might be sent to the American authorities’.44 Halligan’s spare official prose and his due regard for bureaucratic procedures were perhaps necessary, even inevitable, but they were at odds with Fitzy

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Scott’s overwhelming loss and the anger seething through the small, remote community. At this time, The Canberra Times reported Scott’s death under an unfortunate headline, ‘Mine Manager Dies from Dance Injury’.45 Scott’s death triggered a protracted legal and political imbroglio, which dragged in the members of three ethnic groups — Australians, Filipinos and Americans — and generated considerable tension between Canberra, Manila and Washington. This messy drama was played out before the local Melanesian and Chinese communities. Australians regarded the maintenance of law and order as the cornerstone of their legitimacy in PNG, and saw any serious crime, especially one where the victim was European, as a threat to social stability. Closely parallelling the events on Manus, Scott’s death quickly became a test of the Administration’s ability to impose its jurisdiction over the territory ostensibly under its control. From the very outset, the Scott and Pondranei cases were intertwined; the young islander was assaulted and abducted three weeks after the mining engineer’s death. The two crimes had much common ground: in each instance, the suspected perpetrators were not only Asians but outsiders, transient residents brought to the Territory in the wash-up of the war. The two cases involved the same Australian officials, judges and police, and raised the same issues of sovereignty, justice and, most crucially, power. And in each case, the Australians came to see the Americans as ambiguous allies. Confusion about the events at the heart of the conflict in Lae made the interaction of the Australians, Americans and Filipinos even more abrasive. What had happened on that wet, hot night? Nearly a week after the fight at the Cecil, it was far from clear who had done what. Roberts’ charged cable to Canberra pointed the finger of blame unequivocally at the Filipinos. Lieutenant Ordonez was far from ready to accept any blame — he was incensed by the behaviour of the Australian authorities — and he quickly interviewed the eight privates who had been involved in the fracas and the

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unit’s three white sergeants. The Scouts — Vicente Corbe, Eduardo Bahinting, Augustine de la Cruz, Benedicto Dacillo, Salvador Andico, Marianito Barbonga, Ramon Paton-og, and Pacifico Bantilan — painted a quite different picture of the events at the Cecil. The Scouts recalled that they had travelled on New Year’s Eve first to Chinatown, outside the town limits proper, to attend a party and then on to another gathering in the Malay quarter. They had been welcomed readily in the Asian sector of the town. They had later driven into the town centre to the Cecil. Although several Scouts claimed they had never intended to enter the hall, most of the eight admitted that they had gone to the Cecil with the aim of joining the dance. Barbonga, Paton-og, Corbe, Bahinting, Andico and Dacillo told Ordonez that they had mounted the steps at the end of the hall, reaching the entrance way, where they were blocked by three Australians. They knew one of the men by sight, Inspector Moncur, but could not name the other two. It is telling that the Filipinos were unable to name all but one or two of the Europeans, highlighting the limited level of contact they had had with the surrounding community leading up to the conflict. Indeed, as they were repeatedly interviewed in the coming days, the Scouts contended on several occasions that the Australians tended to look alike, neatly inverting the common white stereotype that it was impossible to tell one Asian from another. Although the Scouts could not name the two other Australians blocking the doorway, they had in fact been John Scott and a local baker, Gregory Kiley. De la Cruz and Bantilan said they had initially mounted the steps but had run back down when the rain had started several minutes later to seek shelter elsewhere. From their own and other statements, Bantilan and de la Cruz were involved only peripherally in the ensuing argy-bargy, looking on from a distance as the disagreement at the top of the stairway escalated. Everything had appeared amicable — well, at least for a few minutes. Dacillo remembered that a ‘big man’, Inspector Moncur,

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had said, ‘Boys, if you want to dance you will have to pay a pound.’ Dacillo claimed that he had replied, ‘We cannot dance because we have no girl and it is useless to pay a pound if we cannot dance.’ As four other Australians had come to the entrance, Moncur had become abusive: ‘OK if you don’t dance get the hell out of here you cocksucker bloody dog.’ Barbonga recalled that the Australians had also insisted that there were no girls at the dance for the Scouts. When Moncur had yelled ‘get out of here’, Andico stated that he had said he would only take shelter and go back to the camp as soon as the rain had stopped. He recalled that at least three Australians had called the Scouts ‘bloody dogs’ and ‘cocksuckers’. The Filipinos who had been standing at the top of the steps all claimed that the Australians had attacked them, pushing them into the drainage ditch at the foot of the staircase. Dacillo said he had been the first to be pushed forcefully by Moncur out into the rain. Falling backwards down the steps, he had cut his hand when he crashed into the drain. Andico contended that one of the other Australians had ‘boxed me on the neck’; his assailant had appeared drunk because he was unable to walk straight, zigzagging back and forth. There had been ‘too many of them’, Corbe stated, ‘all of them were rushing’. Bahinting recalled: ‘One Aussie hit me and knocked me down, and I got up and ran away into the jungle.’ Standing to one side chatting with an Australian and two Malays, de la Cruz recollected that he had heard loud voices coming from the dance hall. He had looked up to see six Australians advancing on his friends: ‘Our men were already in the ditch and the Aussies still kept pushing our men.’ For his part, Paton-og claimed that the Australians had pushed him violently. ‘We were already under the hall. Then they pushed me again. I stumbled down on the ditch. Then one Australian boxed me right away. My cap fell off and I stooped down to pick it up. He boxed me again. Then I ran. Two Australians held me and pushed me to the ground. I got up from the ground and ran to the main road.’ Having escaped from the brawl, Paton-og had waited for his companions at a safe distance.46

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The Scouts told Ordonez that they had fled down the hotel’s pathway until they regrouped at the junction with the main road. Coming out of hiding in the jungle, de la Cruz had rejoined some of his comrades on the road, looking back through the darkness to the parking lot. Moncur had walked down from the hotel and declared, ‘OK boys you can go back to your weapons carrier and you can go home.’ Three of the Scouts, Barbonga, Andico and Dacillo, had returned to the carrier only to find that its rotor or throttle was out of order. While they were repairing the fault, fumbling in the dark, anxious to leave as quickly as possible, three Australians had jumped menacingly onto the carrier, two at the rear and one at the front. One had asked who had started the trouble. Standing astride the hood, another had lunged into the vehicle, pulling Dacillo up over the windscreen and punching him in the face, blackening his left eye. He had then made a grab for Andico, who fled again into the jungle, hiding in thick bushes. A third had asked the two remaining occupants of the carrier, ‘Who wants to fight?’ The Scouts had hastily declined. De la Cruz said one of the men had gripped him by the arm and dragged him back to the carrier. The Australians had then allowed Barbonga to drive the carrier out of the parking lot, with Moncur giving directions, down to the main road, where he had picked up his friends. The Scouts had not stopped on the way home. Back at the camp, they had towelled themselves dry, changed their clothes and gone directly to bed. They all denied using insulting language or drinking alcohol. They were equally adamant that they had not thrown stones or bottles at the Australians.47 Despite some inconsistencies, all the Scouts recounted the same story. To a man, they told Ordonez that it was they who had been set upon and injured, abjuring any aggressive intentions or actions on their own part. Next, Ordonez questioned his three white American sergeants. Sergeant Harold Lemons said he had known nothing about the confrontation until some time later. On New Year’s Eve, he had kept a sick friend company. Mr MacAlister,

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a representative of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, had fallen ill and Lemons had gone to the Cecil late in the afternoon to buy a pot of soup. The next morning he had taken pictures at the local military cemetery, which contained 2,804 Australian and British Commonwealth graves, returning to the camp midmorning, when he heard of the trouble for the first time. Sergeant Waldo Connelly shed some light on at least the tail end of the events. He informed Ordonez that he had stayed in the camp on New Year’s Eve, talking with Sergeant Okon until 11.30pm or so, before going to bed about midnight. But he had been soon disturbed. ‘I was awakened about 0100 or 0130 … by the men when they came in. They were discussing the fight and making a lot of noise. They were intending to go back to the Hotel with bolos [ie., machetes] and I stopped them. I quited [sic] them down. They went to bed. The weapons carrier was parked in its proper place by one of the men.’ Connelly contradicted the account provided by the Scouts on a crucial point — they had not gone meekly to bed, but had armed themselves with the intention of returning to the hotel to continue the fight. Connelly had explained the ‘complications’ that would inevitably arise if they went back to the Cecil, and, after some discussion, the Scouts had relented. Connelly told Ordonez that one of the boys had returned to the camp with a wound on his hand, while Andico and Paton-og’s faces had been bruised and were extremely red. ‘None of the boys were drunk … There were no knives in their possession.’ Ordonez asked if the Scouts had said anything more about the fight. ‘Yes, they said that the Australians were too many for them,’ Connelly replied, ‘and they had to run through the bush to the main road and then to the cross road where Barbonga picked them up.’ The third sergeant, Lawrence Okon, stated that he ‘knew nothing about the Jamboree until it was all over’. After talking with Connelly, he had gone across to the Cecil about midnight, drinking and dancing until 2am, when he had heard about the fight for the first time. ‘It was just general talk, so I only got the

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gist.’ He had not noticed any confusion in the hall between midnight and 2am so he kept dancing. Oblivious of the brawl that had erupted in front of the hotel, Okon had later gone to a party at a house. He had not returned to the camp until 10pm on 2 January. Somewhat oddly, he had remained unaware of the simmering confrontation in the town — the rising anger in the Australian community and his own camp’s emergency countermeasures — for two full days. Back at the camp on 2 January, he had asked the Scouts what the trouble was about and they had claimed that ‘some of the Australians had tried to push them around’. He could tell his commander no more.48 On 5 January, Ordonez sat down to write a report on the incident at the Cecil. Five typed foolscap pages in length, his account of the events before and after the fight was unapologetic, defiant and at times aggressive. He noted at the outset that the unit had intended to start extensive field operations, locating and registering the war graves, on 8 January, but friction with the local white populace had quickly interfered with the activities of his unit. On or about 24 December, some of the Scouts ‘had been forceably [sic] encouraged by the local residents to keep away from the Hotel Cecil’. He had consulted District Officer Roberts and Inspector Moncur two days later, stating that this discrimination was unacceptable. Reading from a book of regulations, Roberts had said ‘only persons of Aboriginal descent or affiliation’ were barred from a hotel. Given that they were members of the US Army, the Scouts would not be restricted in any way provided they behaved properly. Ordonez wrote that he had pledged that the unit would conduct itself according to all the standing regulations, and Moncur had promised that ‘he would be present to prevent further discord to the best of his ability’. Ordonez said he had posted a notice in the camp on 30 December reminding his men that the celebration at the Cecil on New Year’s Eve was a mask ball. He had instructed the Scouts to wear at least ‘a hand-made eye-mask’. On the night itself, Ordonez

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stated that he and the unit’s Master Yeoman, Teo Agbanawag, had first attended a social gathering at the house of a local Chinese, Peter Ahtun, and then moved on to the dance at the Cecil, arriving 30 or so minutes after midnight. Moncur had immediately notified him of the fight. ‘Although the Inspector did not explain then what had caused the discord, he stated at the spur of the moment that the members of the Detachment were the originators of the trouble.’ Thanking the inspector ‘cordially’ for his prompt notification, Ordonez had sat on a lounge chair for five to 10 minutes ‘with the purpose of acquainting himself with the layout of the hotel Recreation Hall and get an idea of the extent, if any, to which the participants had carried their merriment. The overall appearance of the hall and the people therein revealed that it was an intensive social affair where everyone thought he knew everyone else and felt right at home. Bottles of alcoholic spirits were quite prevalent.’ After swinging by the European hospital and finding that Scott had already been discharged with no serious wounds, Ordonez declared that he had immediately driven back to the camp and awoken the Scouts. After ‘a physical examination’, he concluded that the Scouts had been pushed out of the hall, fleeing, according to standing instructions, back to the camp ‘as quickly as circumstances allowed’. He insisted that the Scouts had followed his exact orders and had acted properly at all times. He recalled that he had met Roberts and Moncur on 1 January, stating that he did not want the Cecil closed because it was ‘the one place where the bulk of the residents congregated socially’. Instead, he had ruled the hotel off limits for his unit and enforced ‘a cooling off period’ to allow things to calm down. But this reasonableness had been met with an implacable attitude. Moncur had again blamed the Scouts for the fray. As his report came to a close, Ordonez became more indignant. He had instructed his men on 31 December that they would not find single women at the dance, cautioning them to always ‘obtain the permission for her escort’, to be courteous and ‘keep their noses clean’. Keenly aware of the systematic discrimination

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against his own people in the United States, this Mexican American had always believed that the behaviour of the local Australians was motivated by prejudice. The third-last paragraph of his report was telling: ‘Local residents have admitted that in their opinion a Filipino is a half-caste, is coloured, and is therefore treated and looked upon as such by them.’ Ordonez regretted that the mission had been ‘stalemated by the course of events’, and the setback in the start-up of the field operations was ‘a true loss to the Military Service’. He clearly regretted Scott’s death, but would not resile from his belief that no fault lay with his own men.49 When they were questioned by Major Merritt on 5 January, the Scouts again claimed that the Australians had called them ‘bloody dogs and cocksuckers’ and pushed them out of the hall down into the ditch. In most instances, they provided accounts that were uncanny in their similarity. Even if they had not colluded to fashion a single, consistent story, they had had five days, cooped up in the camp, to discuss the events at the Cecil. Almost to a man, they replied to Merritt’s questions about the fateful events of New Year’s Eve with a simple yes or no. No, they could not recognise any of the Australians, except perhaps Moncur. No, they did not see any blows. No, they did not drink alcohol. No, they did not pick up any weapons or throw bottles, stones or sticks (though Bantilan did contend that he had seen an Australian carrying a stone during the melee). No, they did not flip an Australian’s necktie. No, they did not flick an Australian with a poncho. No, they did not see an Australian with blood covering his face. Yes, they returned directly to the camp and went straight to bed. Most of the Scouts did not sidestep the difficult question about whether they had wanted to dance with local white women at the Cecil. Paton-og admitted that he had told the Australians at the hall’s entrance that he would pay to join the dance if there were ‘any vacant ladies’.50 But there were some cracks in the Scouts’ common front. Most of the Scouts denied discussing the fight in the weapons

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carrier on the way back to the camp, but Bantilan admitted hearing the other Scouts discussing the fight and their injuries, though he did not elaborate. De la Cruz said he could not hear the conversation in the back of the weapons carrier. It is hard not to conclude that the two Scouts were protecting their comrades. One can well imagine what kind of conversation would have taken place. Bloodied and bruised, the Scouts had been forced to flee and they would have felt angry. Tipped off by Sergeant Connelly’s statement to Ordonez, Merritt suspected that the Scouts had indeed been angry on that return journey and he asked if they had picked up machetes back at the camp. Most of the Scouts again replied with a stubborn, bland no, although Bantilan said he did not know, an equivocal answer that hinted that some of his companions had indeed armed themselves. De la Cruz was also somewhat evasive, contending that he had ‘remained in [his] quarters’. But Andico departed from the script, confessing, ‘Yes, we picked up bolos, but Sgt Connelly told us to put them away.’51 Although Ordonez’s report had unequivocally accused the local white residents of racial ill-feeling, most of the Scouts oddly told Major Merritt that they had not been subjected to any racial prejudice. Bahinting ducked the question, merely replying to the Major’s probing about discrimination and racism with an unhelpful ‘I don’t know’. De la Cruz simply said ‘no’. Corbe, Paton-og, Andico and Dacillo all stated that the Australians had always treated them in a friendly fashion, denying that they had ever been mistreated. These replies were pure obfuscation. Two of the Scouts, Barbonga and Bantilan, broke ranks and admitted that racial illfeeling had been a definite factor. ‘I have never been mistreated or insulted myself,’ Bantilan declared, ‘but some of my companions have been.’ Barbonga was more specific: ‘Yes once, on the 24 December an Australian told us not to come into the bar of the Cecil Hotel. That is the only ill feeling.’ Barbonga said he had reported the incident to Ordonez. It was clear that most of the Scouts had decided that the best way of coping with the investiga-

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tion was to downplay any problems and avoid making counter-allegations. By offering as little information as possible, the Scouts hoped to minimise the chance that the investigation would spread, implicating them in the commission of offences and identifying whoever was responsible for killing Scott. This determination to keep quiet extended to concealing their anger, in some cases burning resentment, about the way they had been treated in Lae. By doing this, they were denying that they had a motive for provoking a fracas.52 The white American sergeants were ambiguous figures in the delicate social situation that had developed in Lae during the last weeks of 1947. They were accepted by the local whites, invited to Christmas parties and the New Year’s Eve dance, but they also identified with their Filipino troops, standing ready to defend them if need be with their fists in the hotel bar. If the Scouts themselves were mostly unwilling to admit to Merritt that they had been discriminated against, their white American sergeants were not coy. Sergeant Okon affirmed: ‘There is a definite colour line drawn. I couldn’t say the exact reason for this.’ Lemons gave a somewhat equivocal answer, at first saying that ‘no general feeling as such’ existed. ‘There were a few who stayed around the bars, riff-raff, who do draw a definite colour line, and anyone with colour in him is, to them, on the other side of the line.’ However, in the next breath, he conceded that the colour line was entrenched and widely accepted by the white community. Why was it drawn, asked Merritt? ‘It is due to the fact that if a colour line is not established the natives would be out of control.’ This was perhaps the most telling comment yet made to the US Army’s investigating officer, laying bare the fundamental social and ethnic dynamic of PNG at the time. Many local Europeans were haunted by visions of the ‘natives’ rising up to challenge and perhaps overturn Australian authority. In early 1947, the Lae correspondent for the Pacific Islands Monthly charged that the war had produced a generation of ‘war adoles-

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cents’ who were ready to evict the Europeans from New Guinea. ‘The presence of thousands of rounds of ammunition, rifles and equipment hidden in the villages does not make the situation easier.’53 In his fine history of Lae, Ian Willis argues that the war had indeed liberated the New Guineans from their prewar subservience. ‘Obviously the New Guineans were no longer prepared to accept inferior status, nor did they believe it was obligatory for them to supply their services to the Europeans.’54 Willis overstates his case, for the old patterns of authority, inferiority and superiority had not been swept away entirely, and many embedded attitudes persisted. It is incontrovertible that the war had wrought enormous change, and it was an awareness that the old order was slipping away that sharpened European unease. The third sergeant, Connelly, reinforced the point made by his colleagues, informing Merritt that the Filipinos had been forced to ‘sit in the coloured section of the theatre’. As non-Europeans, the Filipinos were asked to use the ‘native’ cinema, despite their US Army uniforms, to watch films approved by the local authorities. The structure of the new Lae theatre, built over seven months in 1947, perpetuated the town’s fundamental relationship of inequality in an architectural form. Amid the temporary-looking army huts, it was an impressive building, a sign that the town was returning to some kind of normalcy. It opened in early 1948, only weeks after the incident at the Cecil. Qantas flew in films. The Pacific Islands Monthly described the theatre in enthusiastic terms. ‘On entering the foyer one is greeted with a real tropical atmosphere. It is entirely lined with Sago palm fronds split and varnished, a blue silk parachute forming the ceiling, from the centre of which hangs the light fixture. The ticket box in the centre is novel in design and grass mats, huge bowls of crotons, lounge chairs, with draped and curtained entrances on either side leading into the auditorium, give a pleasant effect.’ The theatre boasted a large drink and candy bar, an open ventilation system, which took advantage of the cool evening sea breeze and canvas

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easy chairs with head covers. But the foyer, with all its exotic elements, was not the most distinctive feature of the theatre. Rather it was the construction of two separate cinemas, one for Europeans at the front, the other for ‘the natives’ at the back. This novel arrangement worked by mounting a swinging projector between the two cinemas. Films were screened on Wednesdays and Saturdays for Europeans and on Fridays for ‘natives’, ‘the latter having been previously censored by the District Officer’.55 The old social apartheid with its paternalism was still in place. The unit’s highest-ranking Filipino member, Master Yeoman Teo Agbanawag, revealed that the local Asian residents knew the score well and observed Lae’s written and unwritten social rules. He told Major Merritt that he and Lieutenant Ordonez had planned to invite a local Chinese family to the dance at the Cecil ‘but they would not go’.56 The local Chinese knew the hotel was out of bounds for them and they did not try to push the limits. They occupied an uncertain middle position in the town’s racial hierarchy, below the Europeans but above the Melanesians. Suggesting that some Chinese harboured more adventurous political aspirations, a branch of the Kuomintang was established in Lae after the war. In February 1948, the branch president, Wan Jin Wah, wrote to the Minister for External Affairs, Dr Evatt, to protest about the unequal and inadequate wages paid to the Administration’s Chinese employees. ‘Why is it that an untrained European employee will always get more pay than a trained Chinese employee for the same job?’57 Although Chinese wages were increased somewhat at the end of the year, Asian employees remained in less well-paid and subordinate roles. The war had led some Australians to reconsider old assumptions. The town planners of the Department of Works and Housing back in Melbourne stated in March 1948 that it would not be ‘desirable to form a permanent separate Asiatic settlement’ when Lae was reconstructed. Rather, they decided that it would be best to bring Asian stores and cafes into the centre of the new town,

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forming the nucleus of a shopping and recreation precinct.58 Despite such cautious and partial shifts in opinion, the White Australia Policy was still in full swing and most of the Lae Europeans cleaved to the established ways. While the deliberations over the new town plan dragged on for some years, the Lae Chinese returned to their old quarter outside the town limits. Although the war had affected their attitudes too, most local Asians were not yet willing to challenge the lines of inferiority and superiority. Rebuilding their own section of the town was demanding enough without incurring the wrath of the European residents. More importantly, the local Chinese had to live with the European population permanently — they could not simply move on if the situation became fractious. The Filipino Scouts walked into this divided social world. Most accepted the restrictions; a few clearly didn’t. On 6 January, a day after Merritt had interviewed the Scouts, Ordonez questioned his men again, honing in on the earlier incident at the Cecil referred to by Barbonga. Six Scouts — Barbonga, de la Cruz, Paton-og, Bahinting, Dacillo and Cabello — had gone to the Cecil about 7.30pm on 24 December to buy some drinks and had nearly become entangled in a scuffle. Of the six, only Moises Cabello had not been involved in the much more serious conflict at the hotel a week later. Ordonez’s second set of interviews confirmed that Bahinting, Dacillo, de la Cruz and Paton-og had lied to Merritt when they stated that they had never been subjected to racial ill-feeling.59 On Christmas Eve, the six Scouts had stopped off at the Cecil to buy liquor on their way to a party in Chinatown. With Dacillo waiting outside in the weapons carrier, the other five Scouts had entered the bar. Barbonga recalled that he and his friends had been standing at the counter when an Australian had put his drink down and tried to drive them out, waving his hands about and yelling, ‘I don’t want coloured people.’ Barbonga said he had not responded ‘because he might get mad if we will not go out’ — the

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man looked drunk, he ‘could not stand straight and his body seemed groggy’. Next, the Australian had blocked Bahinting’s way to the bar. By this point, the situation had turned nasty, and de la Cruz and Cabello had decided to go outside, leaving Bahinting, Bantilan and Paton-og in the hotel. De la Cruz recalled that Paton-og had not wanted to leave because he had been arguing heatedly with the Australian. Paton-og of course had told Merritt only the day before that relations with the local Australians had always been OK.60 Before this altercation could erupt into a full fist fight, Ma Stewart had intervened, pushing the drunken, obstreperous Australian into a small side room, warning him that he was behaving badly. Sergeant Lemons and Sergeant Okon told Ordonez that they had been at the Cecil that evening. Okon recalled that he had been sitting in the lounge drinking with Lemons, a supervisor from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and five or six other Australians whom he did not know. Ordonez asked the sergeant if he had been drinking socially or with ‘intended merriment’, a quaint phrase. ‘With intended merriment,’ Okon replied, ‘but I was not that way yet.’ Barbonga had approached the group in the lounge, a place that was off limits for non-whites, and complained, ‘We are having trouble with the Australians at the bar.’ By this time the argument was more or less over. Ordonez asked if the Australian women in the hotel at the time had tried ‘in one way or another to quell the argument’. Okon said he did not know. He had told Barbonga ‘it would save a lot of trouble if he left’.61 Lemons said he too had come out of the lounge to intervene. Ma Stewart had told him that one of the Australians ‘had started picking on our boys, the Filipinos’. It was certainly not unusual for a sergeant to regard his subordinates as ‘boys’, but the racial dimension in the US Army was important at this point, and one senses here that the American perceived ‘his boys’ in a paternalistic, even proprietorial, manner. Lemons said he had asked Ma Stewart if ‘our

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boys’ had started the trouble. No, she replied, the Scouts had been ‘absolutely in the right’. Although he had ordered the Scouts to leave the bar to avoid a more serious conflict, it was clear that Lemons had also backed up his men. Ordonez asked him the crucial question: what was the attitude of the Australians toward the Filipinos? Lemons was unconstrained by a need to downplay the situation, by a fear that suspicion might be cast on him, and he answered unambiguously: About the only thing was that they felt that as long as the Filipinos stayed on their side of the fence they would not bother them. But if the Filipinos tried to go in where they shouldn’t they probably would be asked to leave. I was told by a man … that they were only allowed to buy liquor bottles but not to drink at the bar.

Ordonez asked Lemons how he felt about this. ‘Being a foreign country, I just padded it off and to keep from getting in a brawl.’ This was in part a disingenuous answer for such social apartheid was far from uncommon in the United States in the 1940s; indeed, it was an indelible component of the social order, especially in the South. Lemons declared that he had ordered the Filipinos back to the weapons carrier: ‘I wanted to get them out of there while they were still alright.’ Asked to assess how the Filipinos felt towards the Australians, he sidestepped the question, stating that he didn’t want to go into that because he considered ‘it hard to go into a man’s feelings one way or the other’. But even this evasive answer could not hide the Filipinos’ anger.62 And the incident had not ended there. Ordered from the bar by their white American sergeants, the Filipino Scouts had dispersed, some going to see a film at the theatre, others attending the party in Chinatown. Just before 11pm, Barbonga had returned to the Cecil alone. Ordonez asked him why he had done so. Barbonga said one of his comrades had told him that Lemons

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wanted to be picked up from the hotel. ‘When I approached Lemons, the same Australian tried to jump me.’ But Lemons had stopped the belligerent Australian, saying, ‘If you are going to jump on my boys I’m going to jump on you too.’ Okon had intervened to defend the Scout, and other Australians in the bar had physically restrained the aggressor. Barbonga said he had left the hotel after Lemons told him that he did not want a lift. He told Ordonez that he was sure he could recognise the Australian, a tall man, with a slender body and a long face.63 By 6 January, the US Army’s investigation had had mixed results, with the Scouts being prepared to talk about some aspects of the conflict at the Cecil, while meeting other questions with a studied blankness. There is little doubt that the events on New Year’s Eve had been confusing, with the rain and poor visibility making a melee even more chaotic, but the Scouts were holding back a great deal. Although they were more open with their own commanding officer, the Scouts were noticeably guarded with Major Merritt, an outsider, a white American and a Provo Marshal, an altogether more daunting, even dangerous, figure. Nothing useful had yet come to light about Scott’s death. None of the Scouts had even admitted to committing any aggressive acts, let alone confessed to assaulting the mining engineer. Drawing on his own and Ordonez’s interrogations, Merritt had enough evidence at hand, however, to be sure that relations between the Filipinos and the white community had been tense in the lead-up to the fight on New Year’s Eve. One does not have to read far between the lines of the Scouts’ often tight-lipped statements to conclude that they had felt insulted and belittled. The Scouts had been involved in two run-ins with Australians at the hotel. By trying to enter the dance on New Year’s Eve, they knew they were ignoring Lae’s social rules, its lines of separation, and it is hard not to conclude that they had wanted to confront the Australians and their sense of superiority.

Chapter Four

Post-Mortem

THE AUSTRALIAN AUTHORITIES were not idle while Major Merritt conducted his investigation, and they soon moved to assert their control of what came to be called the Scott case. The Administrator, Colonel Murray, brought into play the two arms of the Territory’s forces of law and order, the police and the Crown Law Office. These two organisations, so crucial to the maintenance of control and stability, were struggling, like the rest of the Administration, to do their jobs in 1947–48, with too few people and insufficient resources. In early 1948, the Crown Law Office was expected to ensure that justice was enforced in PNG with a total staff of five. The Crown Law Officer, the 47-year-old Esme Baron Bignold, was the most experienced member of the team, having served as a legal officer in PNG since 1928 under three different administrators. During the war, he had worked for the

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Crown Solicitor in Sydney and later for the RAAF’s legal branch, reaching the rank of flight-lieutenant. After Japan’s surrender, he had been rushed back into the Administration’s service to organise the Crown Law Office, arriving in Port Moresby in November 1945. He left his wife and two daughters in Australia. In his masterly study of the last great patrol into uncontrolled areas in 1938–39, Bill Gammage counts Bignold as a member of the old guard, noting that he walked out of a reception at Government House when Murray invited Papuan guests.1 Bignold was backed up by a Deputy Crown Law Officer, Walter ‘Wally’ Watkins, and three Legal Officers, Cyril McCubbery, Adrian Jones and Hilda Maddocks. Watkins and McCubbery were appointed at the end of 1946, while Jones and Maddocks did not arrive in the Territory until early 1948. Bignold was often absent from Port Moresby, meaning that Watkins was called on to act in his position, in turn leaving McCubbery to perform the duties of Deputy Crown Law Officer. As we shall see, Watkins, McCubbery and Jones all came to play significant parts in the Pondranei and Scott cases. Less than two months before the events at the Hotel Cecil, the Administration warned Canberra that the Crown Law Office was under strain, with the need to perform the duties of the Registrar of the Supreme Court and to accompany judges on their circuits through the Territory only adding to the office’s already heavy workload. The office was stretched even more thinly when Bignold went on long-overdue recreation leave in December 1947, leaving Watkins in charge.2 So, when the news of Scott’s death reached Port Moresby, the Crown Law Office had been reduced to Watkins and McCubbery. Confronted with a tricky situation, Murray swiftly dispatched two senior officials to Lae — Police Superintendent John Grimshaw and acting Deputy Crown Law Officer McCubbery. The two officials had a difficult, double-barrelled task: to investigate the particular matter at hand and to ensure that Lae’s general peace was not breached. As we know, shortly after handling the delicate

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situation in Lae, Grimshaw would command the major police operation on Manus in March to arrest two of Pondranei’s assailants, Hsueh and Chou. McCubbery would play an important role in the eventual prosecution of the two Chinese labourers. Like most of his contemporaries, McCubbery was a mainland Australian who had been drawn to PNG through the Pacific War. A Victorian by birth, he took out a law degree at Melbourne University and was admitted to the Bar in 1934. He enlisted shortly after the declaration of war in 1939, serving in the Middle East and later as an intelligence officer in New Guinea. Mentioned twice in dispatches, he finished the war as a captain and was discharged in Rabaul in 1946. A divorcee with two children, he opted to continue working in PNG. After a short stint back in Australia, he was appointed as a Legal Officer of the Administration in early November 1946 at the age of 36, arriving in Port Moresby before the end of the year.3 When he was dispatched to Lae in January 1948, McCubbery had been working for the Crown Law Office for a little more than a year. He was a middle-level official in the Administration, committed to his job, knowledgeable to some extent about the affairs of PNG, a member of the new generation of officials, determined to enforce Australian law. Some of his colleagues found him somewhat dry.4 Assistant District Officer John Reginald Rigby was given the job of conducting the inquest into John Scott’s death. Born in South Melbourne on 7 August 1893, Rigby was a teetotaller and a World War I veteran who had served at Gallipoli and later in Belgium and France. He gave up his job as a commercial traveller in 1926 to join the Administration as a patrol officer, noting in his application that he had been ‘in charge of about 200 Egyptian Natives for a period of fifteen months’ during the war.5 He served in different parts of New Guinea in the 1920s and 1930s, rising to become an Assistant District Officer by the eve of the Japanese invasion. After working for the Allied Works Council during the war, he immediately rejoined the Administration in October 1945 with his prewar rank. A year later, the 53-year-old was working in

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Lae, having left his wife, Winifred, in Melbourne. He resisted allowing Winifred to join him, arguing that the town’s accommodation was inadequate, but there was suitable housing for other families, including those with young children, and it was soon apparent that there were difficulties in the Rigby marriage. Working for the Administration was not just a familiar and satisfying job, it was a bolthole. A big, good-looking fellow with a smooth manner, Rigby developed a reputation for avoiding unpleasant decisions, having earned the ironic nickname ‘Reckless Reg’. Another kiap, the ever-acerbic Ian Downs, recalls that Rigby ‘made it clear that his immediate interest in life was comfort and peace’.6 He was a better magistrate than an administrator7 and the Scott inquest promised to be a heavy task for Rigby, so McCubbery was appointed to assist throughout the hearing. On 5 January, the day that Merritt interviewed the Scouts, Rigby briefly convened the coronial inquiry to identify the corpse. Kelm Gross, the General Manager of New Guinea Goldfields, confirmed that the deceased was his friend John Scott.8 The next day, with the coroner’s inquest adjourned for several days, the police held an identification parade at the search team’s camp. Assistant Sub-Inspector Patrick ‘Paddy’ Larkin, an Irishman by birth who had served with the military police during the war,9 asked 12 Filipino Scouts to stand in the parade. Four of the men in the line had been involved in the fracas at the Cecil — Bahinting, Bantilan, de la Cruz and Dacillo; the other eight had stayed in the camp throughout New Year’s Eve. Larkin left the other four Scouts who had been at the Cecil — Barbonga, Paton-og, Corbe and Andico — out of the parade, apparently clearing them of any guilt concerning Scott’s death. Although none of the surviving documents contain their deliberations on the matter, Larkin and his superior, Moncur, clearly suspected that Scott’s assailant could be found among Bahinting, Bantilan, de la Cruz and Dacillo. Three US Army officers — Major Merritt, Captain Morgan and Lieutenant Ordonez — watched the identification parade from the sidelines.

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At 9.40am, under the relentless morning sun, the 12 Scouts stood in a line on the parade ground, all dressed in the uniform worn on the night of the fight, with three wearing a field jacket. Given the heightened state of tension in the town — the widespread desire in the European community for justice, if not simple, cold revenge — the atmosphere on the parade ground was strained. For the first time since the fight at the Cecil, two of Lae’s Europeans confronted the Filipino Scouts, face to face, no more than a few feet apart. Larkin asked the first witness, Ronald Russell, a surveyor and draftsman at the Department of Works and Housing, to walk along the line, carefully examining each Scout. He was then taken from the parade ground, and the Scouts were rearranged, all now standing without field jackets. Russell was brought back on to the parade ground and the Scouts were asked to walk past him slowly in single file. Without hesitation, he pointed straight at Bahinting and declared, ‘I identify this man as the one with a bottle in his hand and [I] saw him strike a European with it.’ Russell was escorted away by Sergeant Lemons to an enclosed office, ensuring that he could not communicate with the second witness, Victor Waghorn, another Works and Housing employee. After walking down the line, Waghorn identified three Scouts who had participated in the brawl at the Cecil, Dacillo, Bantilan and de la Cruz. But he could not ‘commit myself’ to say if any of the three had hit a European with a bottle. The identification parade now complete, the Scouts were dismissed. Russell and Waghorn had correctly identified the four Scouts who had been at the Cecil in the line-up.10 On 7 January, Grimshaw arrived in Lae with three additional police officers. All four would remain in the town for the next two weeks, returning to Port Moresby only on 20 January. Major Merritt privately concluded that Grimshaw was accompanied by police reinforcements as ‘a matter of security for the Filipino Scouts and so that further incidents would not occur until public opinion would subside, due to the fact, a definite colour line exists

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with Europeans in the Territory’.11 Though the American officer was in part right, there is little doubt that Grimshaw and his police officers were also in Lae to ensure that Australian authority would not be challenged by the visitors. The coronial inquest reconvened on 7 January in the District Court, meeting for the next three days to hear evidence from members of the European community and the search team. Although their native tongue was Tagalog, most of the Scouts spoke at least some English. It would seem that interpretation would have been necessary in the proceedings, though the inquest transcript does not mention a designated interpreter. Striving to uncover how and why someone came to a violent or accidental death, coronial inquests have all the drama and tension of fullblown trials. There is no accused, but the haunting presence of the deceased hovers above the proceedings, prickling the memories and jabbing at the consciences of the living. Eric Nicholl, a Qantas employee and Lae resident, was the first witness. He recalled that he had been dancing about midnight when a commotion had erupted at the entrance to the Cecil’s recreation hall. ‘I saw the Filipinos crack Gregory [Kiley] on the head with a bottle, another one hit another chap on the head with what I think was a pipe, might have been a stick.’ Kiley had been hit at the foot of the hall’s stairs, the other man out on the lawn. The man who had been hit with a stick or a pipe was not John Scott — ‘he was engaged in another battle’. After the first blows, there had been ‘a bit of a scatter’, and Scott had chased a Filipino towards the parking lot. ‘I think that is when he got it.’ Scott had later reappeared mopping blood from his head. Nicholl contended that he could not remember how much time had elapsed between seeing Scott running off towards the car park and coming back with blood running down his face. ‘It was a short time, may be about five minutes, before he came back.’ Nicholl told the inquest that he had not seen anyone hit Scott. The physical conditions had not helped: ‘There was only a little light shining from the dance hall.’12

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Nicholl painted a scene of confusion and general violence, but he left little doubt that he saw the Filipinos as heavily armed aggressors. Inspector Percy Moncur was the next person to take the stand. He was a key figure in the events surrounding Scott’s death, and the Scouts regarded him with mixed feelings, believing that he was not a neutral upholder of law and order but a defender of the European community. He testified that he had turned around in the dance hall close to midnight to see six Filipinos in American uniforms inside the dance hall. He had approached them and said that they had no right to be in the hall. ‘I explained to them that the dance was run by local bodies in Lae and everyone who attended had to pay one pound to come in and it was now midnight and I advised them that they had better come outside. We moved towards the entrance, kept on talking in a similar strain.’ One of the Filipinos had then put his hand in his pocket and said he would pay one pound if he could be given a girl. Moncur said he had told the Scout that ‘I couldn’t do that, they are all local people and that is not done here’. This exchange about women was striking, honing in on one of the most deep-seated causes of the confrontation. White women played a crucial symbolic role in PNG society, standing for the superior virtues of white civilisation, in contrast with the perceived barbarity of the natives and Asians. Much as in other European colonial settings, any sexual contact between white women and ‘coloured’ men was regarded with particular consternation because it threatened to breach the racial dividing line and to ‘lower white prestige’. It will be recalled that two European residents of Lae, Iris Tebb and Richard Burt, were convicted in mid-1947 of unlawfully wounding a local Melanesian, Suvia. Tebb and Burt had feared that Suvia was an intruder trying to break into the Tebb residence. At the initial trial in March, a white warrant officer in the police touched on an important issue that perhaps helps explain the light sentences (£25 fines) meted out to Tebb and Burt. Under cross-

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examination, he stressed that it was ‘more serious for a native to be in a white woman’s room than just in a house’.13 The very possibility of sexual contact between European women and Melanesian men, voluntary or forced, tapped deep fears in the European community. It invoked the terrible threat of miscegenation, the degradation of white stock through a coupling with an inferior, uncivilised people. This fear was an intrinsic part of the mental furniture of officials, labour overseers, mining engineers and police officers alike. Again, the small European population was alarmed by the prospect of being swamped, this time by what they saw as the fecundity and unrestrained sexual urges of the natives. Melanesian men could be prosecuted for merely being in a house alone with a European woman. Filipinos were not placed on the same lowly rung of the ladder of civilisation as the Melanesians, but they were certainly perceived as an inferior Asian race, behind the Chinese and Japanese. While they were not seen as threatening and cunning like the Chinese and Japanese, Filipinos were seen as a primitive, simple people. In his evidence before the coronial inquiry, Moncur articulated a widespread conviction that Asian men bought and sold women, something that was ‘not done’ in a civilised society. The Scout’s offer to pay the one-pound entrance fee in return for some white female company was taken as a suggestion that the white women at the dance could be purchased, perhaps even that they were prostitutes. One of the Lae residents at the time, Adrian Leyden, an employee of Bulolo Gold Dredging, recalls that Moncur told the Scouts that the Australian women were at the dance with their husbands and were ‘not “taxi dancers” as they knew in their country’.14 The sexual dynamics of PNG were not so clear-cut, however. Europeans and Chinese had introduced prostitution to the Lae area before the war, though the local prostitutes were invariably young Melanesian women from local villages. European men unquestionably visited these prostitutes. Several local pilots collectively ‘owned’ one such woman in the late 1930s, while ‘it was not

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unknown for the police to arrest the girls and keep them overnight for interrogation’.15 It was another thing altogether, however, for white men to marry Asian or Melanesian women. Such unions were rare and were almost always greeted with scorn and isolation. One kiap was placed on indefinite leave after the war because he took a Chinese girl to the pictures; a Burns Philp manager was treated even more harshly, being sacked after he married a Chinese woman.16 The mores of the time were strict, maintaining a boundary between the public and private, and it was most unlikely that the Australian men would have permitted prostitutes to attend such a celebration; Melanesian women, prostitutes or not, were certainly out of the question. In this context, the virtue and fidelity of European women was accorded even greater status, and the Australian men at the dance would have been incensed by any suggestion that the women present could be purchased or rented. The Scouts would have known that they were challenging one of the Territory’s fundamental social conventions when they asked for a white dancing partner, for the same sexual segregation prevailed back in the Philippines. Walter Luszki, a lawyer who served with the US Army in New Guinea during the war and in the Philippines after the Japanese surrender, writes that the rules of sexual interaction were clear. Many white women came to work in Manila immediately after the end of the war for the Red Cross, the US Army and as nurses. They dated only white men, usually officers; Filipinos and black men in the US Army were unacceptable as sexual partners. In contrast, enlisted white men freely formed sexual relationships with Filipino women, though prostitution was not legal. ‘The Philippine men seemed to accept the situation,’ Luszki claims. ‘There were no hostile incidents in the Manila area during this time to my knowledge.’17 This contention seems improbable and the behaviour of the Scouts at the Hotel Cecil suggests that they resented the sexual double standards of the time. Continuing his testimony, Moncur recalled that he and the Scouts had reached the top of the stairway at the front of the dance

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hall. A couple of men at the dance had then joined him, Scott on his right and Kiley on his left. One of the Scouts, walking back and forth, had flipped his tie into his face. Moncur told the inquest that he had ignored this insult, but when the Scout had again flicked his tie, Kiley had become incensed, yelling, ‘You can’t let him do a thing like that.’ Moncur said he had remained calm, replying, ‘Well all I want to do is to get them out to save any trouble.’ He had then noticed that Scott and one of the Filipinos were locked in an ‘earnest’ conversation, though he could not hear what they were saying. At this point, even more Europeans had walked over to the entrance, joining the altercation. Someone had declared, ‘Go on, put them out, we’re all with you.’ Moncur said one of the Scouts had ‘flipped’ him with a rain cape. ‘I made a grab for him and there was a scatter.’ Moncur’s testimony indicated that the conflict at the entrance had quickly escalated, with the Scouts behaving provocatively. The weather had abruptly changed, Moncur continued, just as the fight had started, with the rain coming down in torrents. ‘There was some scuffling, there was something occurring, but I looked through this water to where there was a bright light shining and I saw a number of people struggling over there.’ Four or five Europeans had marched one Filipino up towards the hotel, while another had been ‘brought down in charge of a native member of the police force’. Moncur stated that he had walked down towards the road. He had reassured several Scouts standing on the other side of the road that they could come and get their ‘crash wagon’ and leave the hotel. ‘Don’t be worried I’m a police inspector and no further trouble will take place,’ he had declared. Three of the Scouts had got to work trying to start the weapons carrier. Moncur said some Europeans had ‘assisted’ the Scouts to start the carrier, contradicting the Scouts’ contention that the Europeans had mounted the carrier to continue the fight. Moncur said he had not seen Scott until the next morning when he called at his house to see how he was. He recalled that

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Scott had complained that he had a headache and that his memory of the fight was vague. He stated that he had been hit, probably by a stone, but that he had not the ‘least idea’ who had hit him. Underscoring the tight-knit nature of the European community, Moncur concluded his testimony by confirming that he had known Scott for a long time, but particularly well during the past year. So, the Inspector had counted the deceased as a friend.18 Gregory Kiley, an unemployed baker who lived at Gurakor, about 40 miles up the road to Wau, offered the inquest a broadly similar account of the conflict. He recalled that he had walked back from the yard up the stairs into the hall about 10 minutes past midnight, seeing ‘what appeared to be a punch’. He had walked back to the entrance to find Moncur and the Filipinos talking animatedly about paying to go into the dance. ‘All the time [Moncur] was speaking there was one Filipino flapping his tie up around his neck.’ Kiley told the inquest that he had exclaimed, ‘You can’t do that! This man is an Inspector of Police.’ One of the Filipinos had replied, ‘Can’t we, we can do it.’ Another had appeared to push Moncur. ‘I pushed the Filipino who was doing the tie flipping out of the way and he went down the steps. Things quietened down then.’ Kiley contended that he had told Scott that he did not think there would be trouble. But the situation had changed suddenly: I don’t know actually how it started but one Filipino had a rain cape and he flipped my face and flipped John Scott’s face twice. John went to wrest the cape from him and another Filipino was coming in from the side. I moved in to ward him off, and I got a hit on the head then with some object. I don’t know what it was.

Kiley maintained that he had next seen Scott later in the car park, bleeding from the forehead. Kiley was one of the main protagonists in the brawl, and naturally enough portrayed the Filipinos as the

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aggressors. Witness by witness, the Europeans were presenting an account that clashed on most points with the statements that the Scouts had made to Lieutenant Ordonez and Major Merritt.19 Irwin McKillop, an employee of the Bulolo Gold Dredging Company, told the inquest that he had at first watched the fight from the sidelines. He claimed that he had seen Filipinos throwing stones and mud in the direction of the dance hall. I didn’t do anything until I saw a European fall down near the bar. I did not know who the European was and there was so much confusion at the time that I wouldn’t be able to recognise him. I saw a Filipino soldier pick up a piece of wood. This was while the European was lying on the ground. I did not see the Filipino strike him. He was in the act of hitting him.

McKillop said he and six other Europeans had run across to assist the man lying on the ground. ‘By the time I arrived there the Filipino had been seized and the District Officer and Inspector Moncur were trying to prevent the Europeans from manhandling him.’ Moncur had handed the Filipino over to ‘a native police boy’. McKillop testified that this Scout was the one he had seen wielding the piece of wood, but that Scott was not the European lying on the ground. Some minutes later, Scott had appeared out of the darkness with blood on his face. McKillop said he had persuaded the mining engineer to get into a jeep in the car park to go to hospital. A personal servant had been sitting in the back seat of the jeep, and Scott had told him that he had been involved in a fight with a Filipino soldier. McKillop identified the servant as ‘a native boy’ as well, indicating that he automatically called Melanesian men, servants and policemen alike, boys. It is striking that the American sergeants and the Australians referred to the nonCaucasians as boys, laying bare some common racial stereotypes. Although the term ‘boy’ was dropped from the Administration’s

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documents in 1947, it continued to be part of everyday language for years to come.20 McKillop testified that the jeep had been about to drive away when Scott, bleeding, confused and fatigued, had seen some Filipinos walking down the road and had again given chase. Three or four minutes later, he had re-emerged from the darkness, heading towards the hotel entrance. A Filipino soldier had dashed out from the bush end of the road and thrown a bottle, hitting Scott square on the shoulder. The mining manager was apparently uninjured by this blow for he walked straight into the hotel without any discernible trouble.21 Whether this particular blow had caused any physical damage, there is little doubt that Scott did suffer injuries during the fight. Roy Scragg, the doctor who treated the mining manager at the European hospital, was next to take the stand to testify. He recalled that Scott had come to the hospital about 2am on 1 January with a severely bleeding laceration on the left side of his skull. After suturing the wound, he had released Scott, believing that there was little danger to his health. Scragg told the coroner that he had felt confident that this had been the right decision — his patient had a good medical history and had not lost consciousness after the attack. He had asked Scott to return to the hospital later in the morning, after a good rest, for another check-up. But Scott had not returned until much later in the day. With a steadily worsening headache, he had come back to the hospital at about four in the afternoon, when he was readmitted by Sister Mary Veronica ‘Ronny’ Henlen. Scragg conceded that he had not examined the ailing mining engineer until nine in the evening, though he offered the inquest no explanation for the five-hour delay other than to say that he was ‘absent’. At first, after taking a blood test, he had concluded that his patient had come down with a bout of that typical tropical ailment, malaria — nothing extraordinary in Lae and no cause for particular concern. ‘I thought there were some parasites in his blood.’ He had then begun an ordinary

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malaria treatment. Scott had indeed suffered from a bad bout of malaria during the war, being taken off the Army’s active list for more than six months in 1942–43,22 and he could have been suffering a recurrence in 1947. By 8am on 2 January, Scott’s condition was no better and Scragg said he had turned to penicillin to fight what he had still thought was a malarial infection. This too had no effect, and the fever had instead mounted by the hour. ‘[Scott] had become slightly drowsy and I immediately realised that there was something more wrong than I had suspected previously.’ With his patient’s condition steadily worsening, Dr Scragg said he had asked one of Scott’s friends, Bertie Heath, an employee of Bulolo Gold Dredging, to summon his company’s doctor, Carl Gunther, to help fight his patient’s raging fever. With Gunther on his way to Lae, Scragg said he had conducted ‘several investigations in an endeavour to make a diagnosis’, including getting one of his nurses to X-ray Scott’s skull. The X-ray revealed ‘a small depressed fracture [of the skull] in the approximate region of the laceration’. Before Dr Gunther arrived, Scragg had performed a lumbar puncture, draining cerebrospinal fluid from the spinal canal. The fluid contained pus cells. At 7pm on 2 January, Dr Gunther had performed an emergency operation under local anaesthetic to reduce the pressure on the fracture. He made a circular incision from one end of the wound to the other, exposing the fracture below. He had then drilled several trephine into the skull, gently elevating the bits of bone that were pressing into the brain with metal instruments. This operation had provided temporary relief, but Scott had become comatose by this point. He never regained consciousness, dying at 2.30pm on 3 January. Scragg stated that he had not assisted during the post-mortem. On this count, Dr Theodore Braun told the inquest that the laceration of the dure and frontal lobe of the cerebrum was the predisposing cause of Scott’s death, though the actual cause was purulent or septic meningitis and cerebral oedema. Dr Gunther, who had rushed from Bulolo to help Scragg, maintained that this condition

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was far from easy to detect. ‘He could easily walk around and show no symptoms whatsoever after receiving such a laceration.’23 A New Zealander by birth, Roy Scragg grew up in Tasmania and took out degrees in medicine and surgery from the University of Adelaide in May 1946. After graduating, he worked as a resident medical officer at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for 16 months until the end of August 1947. Then, fired perhaps by a spirit of adventure or an impulse to help the people of PNG, the 23-year-old Seventh-Day Adventist applied for a job in PNG. Did he know what he was walking into? In late 1947, the PNG medical service was in a parlous condition, even more over-stretched than the Crown Law Office, with only 10 medical officers on the books, about one-third of the number deemed necessary to provide adequate services for the whole Territory. Large districts such as New Ireland and the Central Highlands did not have a single medical officer. The Administration believed that it was essential that Lae have two doctors. Two weeks before Scragg departed from Adelaide to take up his new assignment in August 1947, the Director of Public Health, Dr John Gunther, wrote an uncompromising assessment of the Territory’s medical services. ‘Until these postings [in New Ireland and the Central Highlands] are made, and then the second medical officer [is] posted to Lae, any medical officer there on his own will be grossly overworked and likely to resign as has happened in three instances to date.’24 Scragg’s training at the University of Adelaide, no matter how good, and his short stint at an urban Australian hospital, would have been little preparation for the demanding challenges of single-handedly running a hospital in a remote tropical township far from home. It is hard to imagine that he was ready for the daily task of dealing with limited resources, of often being forced to improvise and make do with less. His working life in Lae during the four months before Scott’s death would have been tough — simply settling into such a new environment and beginning to come to terms with the surrounding culture would have been a major task

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alone. The same challenges and disorienting circumstances faced nurses such as Ronny Henlen. Having qualified as a nurse in 1944, Henlen left her job at the Mater Misericordiae Private Hospital in Crows Nest, Sydney, and departed for PNG in August 1947, five weeks shy of her 26th birthday. She arrived in Lae at the same time as Scragg. When Scott walked into the Lae Hospital on 1 January 1948, she had been working in the Territory for four months. Like other medical establishments in the Territory, Lae Hospital was in a poor state. Set up in an old US Army hospital on Namanula Hill, its makeshift buildings were cobbled together from war scrap and local materials and lined with sisal. The operating theatre was substandard, while the kitchens, bathrooms and dressing rooms were primitive. The tap-water was unusable because of a peculiar odour and patients had to bathe in rainwater collected in 44-gallon drums.25 Scragg and his nurses were still making do with this inadequate structure in early 1948, many months after it should have been replaced with a permanent building. They kept the hospital neat and clean, but they were coping with a significant patient load, including the birth of a number of European children, in trying circumstances. The Administration was demanding a great deal from young Australians such as Scragg and Henlen. Dr John Gunther told the Administrator in late 1947 that Scragg was living in a room at the end of the European hospital block; the house built by his predecessor had collapsed some time ago. Gunther knew that his small contingent of medical officers, 13 in all by late 1947, was under extreme pressure. They were expected to attend patients in any weather, using ‘usually faulty vehicles, mostly jeeps’. Power shortages only added to the already difficult circumstances. Gunther was amazed that any Australian doctor would decide to work under such conditions. ‘Unless a medical officer is completely imbued with the pioneering spirit, “the opportunity to work” hardly exists.’26 All of this must have been daunting for a 23-year-old doctor. Standing up to give evidence at an inquest less than five months after he had arrived must have been

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just as daunting. Scragg moved to a bigger hospital in Rabaul in mid1948, where he worked under a more senior doctor. The inquest continued. Dudley Livingstone, an employee of the Department of Housing and Works, testified that he had become embroiled in the fracas, at first watching Inspector Moncur push away the Filipino ‘who was making the most commotion’. When he had next looked back some minutes later, he had seen one of the Scouts hit a man over the head from behind with a bottle, shattering the glass. ‘I was with a friend and he remarked … “We can’t stand by and see that” so he went for one Filipino and I went for another. I received a bottle across the forehead and was knocked down, after which my recollection is very vague.’ Livingstone said the man who had been hit with a bottle first was probably Kiley, though he could not be sure given the poor light. He said he had not known John Scott. Kenneth Field, an Administration medical assistant, was just as imprecise about the melee. Field was one of the newcomers, having joined the Administration at the age of 21 after working with the merchant navy and as an army nurse for the last two years of the war. He told the inquest that he had left the Cecil soon after midnight after falling on the dance floor and cutting his hand. Leaving the hall, he had noticed that an argument was taking place at the entrance, but he had taken no part in the altercation until he had seen a Filipino hit Scott over the head with a bottle. Another European went to help Scott and the Filipino who had the broken bottle in his hand went to hit him. I warded the blow off and knocked the Filipino down. I don’t think I could identify him again … I was about 5 feet away from Scott when he was hit. The light was shining on him from inside.

Contending that there had been ‘about fifteen Filipinos’ and ‘quite a few Europeans’ involved in the conflict, Field told the inquest

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that he was certain that Scott had been hit by the bottle.27 Field’s memory of the fight was blurry. He remembered seeing 15 Scouts and could not recall the heavy rain that had poured down during the brawl. Mary Buckley, identified in the transcript as a housewife residing in Lae, was the only woman to testify during the coronial inquest. The appearance of a woman in a drama dominated by men was striking, another reminder that New Guinea was very much a male realm in the postwar years. But it was also apposite, for it was the Filipinos’ allegedly provocative remarks about obtaining women at the dance that had so infuriated the European men. Buckley testified that she had noticed ‘something unusual’ shortly after midnight. ‘I saw some Filipinos in American uniforms trying to gain entry to the hall.’ This remark suggests that Buckley was struck, like so many of her compatriots, by the incongruity and novelty of seeing Asians in the uniforms of a white man’s army. The Scouts did not fit into the usual categories. There was no doubt that Buckley’s loyalties lay with her menfolk: I saw the Filipinos were trying to push in and the men pushed them back. I saw three separate encounters, Filipinos and Europeans, and while they were hanging onto each other, three more Filipinos picked up empty bottles and hit the Europeans. I couldn’t identify any of them … following that I saw a Filipino with a bar. From where I was sitting it would be no further than the wall, it was just outside the entrance.28

By now the afternoon was beginning to lengthen and the coroner called one more witness, District Officer Allan Roberts. As the most senior Administration official in the town, Roberts was a pivotal figure. His testimony was noticeably more detailed and considered than that of many of his fellow townsmen, probably aided by the fact that he had not been as intoxicated as them on New Year’s Eve. Half an hour or so after arriving at the Cecil, he

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had noticed Moncur talking with some Filipino Scouts just inside the hall, near the first post. Observing nothing untoward, he had not paid much attention, walking across to ‘a wire enclosure near the entrance [to get] some fresh water from some natives’. On the way back, he had noted that Moncur, flanked by several European men, was standing at the entrance, talking to the Filipinos, who had retreated onto the stairs. I was satisfied that he had control of whatever had taken place and took no further action. It was a matter of minutes after that my attention was drawn to a fight … I looked outside, it was raining very heavily which made me hesitate and I looked before I moved. Then I thought I’d better join a crowd who appeared to be holding a Filipino in the bar store.

Roberts recalled that he had taken charge of the Filipino, handing him over to a police corporal and several constables. Turning around, he had noticed two things: Moncur and three Filipinos walking towards the unit’s weapons carrier and Scott stumbling out of the darkness, drenched in blood to his waist. Leaving the mining manager in the hands of another European, Roberts had sprinted back into the hall to inform Mrs Scott that he was taking her husband to hospital with a nasty head injury. Back outside, he asked Scott what had happened. ‘I was ambushed by three or four of them,’ he had replied. Roberts told the inquest that the injured man had not been in a good way: He was rather dazed at the time, he needed a bit of spurring to get him along, he wanted to see his wife. I took him to a room to get his wet clothes off, he had lost a lot of blood. A man named Slattery entered the room, he got me a sheet, I tore a strip from it which I wrapped around Scott’s head and dried him down with the remainder of the sheet … I drove Scott to the hospital accompanied by Mrs Scott.

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Roberts testified that he had not seen the fight itself. He could only remember seeing Kiley and John Slattery, a local labour overseer. ‘I might recognise one of the Filipinos whom I held, he was a short, thick-set man.’ The car park had been in semi-gloom, and, looking out of the hall, he had been unable to ‘distinguish very much at all’.29 So the first day of the inquest ended where it had started, with a pervading impression of uncertainty. The European community had had its chance to say its piece about the tragic end to the dance. It is hardly surprising that this tightly knit group of people, bound together by a strong sense of racial superiority, unambiguously saw the Filipinos as the aggressors in the fracas and wanted to punish Scott’s killer. The Administrator, Colonel Murray, shared these sentiments, sending a blunt cable to Canberra on 7 January: District Officer at Lae reports at a dance on New Year’s Eve six Philippinos entered the hall without payment. One offered to pay if police officers got him a woman and became aggressive. European spectators and Philippinos engaged in a fracas. [The Scouts] later retired and missiles were hurled from their direction in the darkness.

Murray accused the Filipinos, not the local Australians, of racial prejudice, holding them responsible for the conflict. ‘Members of [Filipino] Unit appear determined to foster racial ill-feeling. The Officer freely quotes the Greater East Asia Policy.’ The second allegation is not altogether implausible. Many Filipinos did welcome, at least initially, Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as heralding the end of Western imperialism, though the severity, inequality and exploitation of the Japanese occupation disabused most of any such illusions. It is possible that Lieutenant Ordonez had hurled the Co-Prosperity Sphere remark at the Australians to rile and provoke, rather than to affirm a fundamental belief in the righteousness of Japanese rule. Either way, the remark would have

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stung. Upholding Japan’s Greater East Asian Strategy in a town that had been occupied by the Japanese for 18 months and then flattened by Allied bombing would have been provocative indeed. In sharp contrast with the testimonies of the Scouts and their sergeants, Murray claimed that the Filipinos had been accorded their rights as US soldiers, but had nonetheless caused trouble. ‘Several minor incidents have occurred between Europeans and Philippinos in the ladies’ lounge at the Lae Hotel.’ Murray informed Canberra that he had already taken firm action, sending Superintendent Grimshaw and Deputy Crown Law Officer McCubbery to Lae and reinforcing the local police. A copy of Murray’s cable was immediately given to Eddie Ward.30 Murray was certainly adamant that Australian justice would be upheld without delay. On 8 January, he reassured Canberra in a second cable that Major Merritt was ‘giving fullest cooperation’, promising to surrender ‘any and all personnel’ involved in ‘the killing of Scott’ and to remove immediately the rest of the unit from Lae. All this augured well, and the Administrator affirmed that he expected no further incidents.31 On the same day, the inquest reconvened at 9am and the Filipino Scouts were called on once more to give their version of events. As we know, they had already recounted their story to Lieutenant Ordonez and Major Merritt two or three days earlier, though it seems certain that these statements were not given to Rigby. If Ordonez had been a downright sympathetic inquisitor, tenaciously defending his men, and Merritt a persistent but not particularly threatening one, the Australian inquest presented a different proposition. The Filipinos knew they were regarded with hostility by the European population and none had ever been before an Australian court or inquest. The Filipinos essentially repeated the story that they had recounted to Ordonez and Merritt. However, much as they told Merritt less than they had told their own commander, so they now told the Australian court even less than they had been willing to tell a major in their own army. Confronted by a decidedly unsym-

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pathetic interrogator, the Scouts were now even more anxious to strip their story back to the bare bones, dropping most of the colourful detail conveyed to Ordonez and leaving out some of their earlier allegations about the behaviour of the Europeans. For a start, none of the Scouts contended this time that the Europeans had called them cocksuckers and bloody dogs. They toned down too their descriptions of how they had been attacked by the locals, instead simply referring to being pushed and boxed. Likewise, none mentioned the earlier conflict at the Cecil on Christmas Eve or racial prejudice in the township. Again, there were some revealing variations and even a few contradictions in the accounts offered by the Scouts. Although he had told Ordonez and Merritt that he had merely stood on the front steps, Paton-og now admitted that he and two other Scouts, Barbonga and Andico, had entered the hall, an important point given the Europeans’ contention that the Filipinos had been intruders. Some minutes earlier, Barbonga had made no such admission during his testimony. De la Cruz, Bahinting and Corbe all stuck to the minimalist version of events, denying that any of their companions had ventured inside the hall. The latter added that he could not recognise any of the Australians who had been standing on the steps. Dacillo was the only Scout who dared to be more assertive in his evidence, describing Inspector Moncur as ‘a big fat man’ and stating unabashedly that the Europeans had repeatedly hit him. The Scouts steadfastly refused to confess to committing any crimes and again abjured any suggestion that they had used weapons. They gave no hint that they had returned to their camp in their weapons carrier full of fierce anger, ready to arm themselves with machetes to carry on the fight. And the Australian coroner, unaware of the content of the Scouts’ earlier statements, did not even know that he should ask about machetes. Save for the odd discrepancy, the Scouts held the line, none implicating his comrades in the commission of an offence. The transcript does not

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reveal how the coroner responded to this testimony, though it is reasonable to surmise that Rigby must have found it unhelpful, even evasive.32 As lunch drew near, Rigby called Ronald Russell and Victor Waghorn, the two Europeans who had identified some of the Scouts at the police line-up several days earlier. Russell spoke first, stating that he was one of the Europeans who had been standing beside Moncur as the argument with the Filipinos escalated. The Scouts had been ‘induced’ to leave the hall, but had become ‘a little bit hostile, that was my analysis of it’. ‘It all happened in a split second actually’, with several fights breaking out in the space between the hairdressing salon and the hall. One Filipino had hit a European over the head with a bottle: ‘The man that was hit with the bottle had his back to me, and he was a fairly tall chappy, stockily built. I couldn’t identify him, I haven’t been here very long. He had fair hair.’ Waghorn was another recent arrival, having spent just three months in Lae with the Department of Works and Housing. He too could not recognise the man who had been hit, describing him as ‘a fair lump of a chap’. He was sure that he had not been bald. Waghorn said he had walked down the steps but had later returned to the verandah. There had been three separate fights going on.33 On 9 January, the inquest came together for a third day. Gordon Davenport, another employee of the Department of Works and Housing, was first up. He had initially ignored the altercation with the Filipinos. Soon after midnight, he had been watching the dancing when a woman had rushed past him towards the entrance, declaring, ‘Catch the mongrels.’ Again, a white woman was only too willing to egg on her menfolk to violence. Davenport recalled that he had turned around and walked on to the verandah to see three Filipinos picking up stones. Further afield, he had noticed two Filipinos grappling with a European in white trousers. ‘One of the Filipinos got up and raced behind the corner of the building and came back with what looked like an iron bar or a piece of wood. I

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raced across and … I called out to him to drop the stick. He looked up at me, but still aimed the stick at the person on the ground and then ran away and I chased him.’ Davenport testified that he did not know who the person on the ground was, but he remembered that he had seen Scott later ‘bleeding very badly’. Directly contradicting the evidence of the Scouts, he insisted that the Filipinos had indeed armed themselves with stones and sticks. John Slattery also alleged that he had seen the Filipinos with weapons. He had been helping out behind the bar earlier in the evening when one of the Scouts had come to buy liquor — four bottles of rum, two bottles of gin and a bottle of whisky. He had offered to put the liquor in a box, but the Scout had replied that he would carry the bottles in his arms. As the Scout had turned towards the door, a piece of pipe, about 30 centimetres long, had been poking out of his hip pocket. Slattery said he had seen nothing of the brawl.34 Until this point, every European witness had repeated the same general account of the fight, underlining the culpability of the Filipinos, but the next two men in the stand, Hector Dunn and Charles Mills, departed from this script. Dunn, a mechanic with the Department of Works and Housing, stated that he had watched, from a distance of no more than three metres, as a Scout threw a bottle at one of the Europeans standing at the entrance to the hall. The bottle had hit the man on the forehead, above his left eye. Dunn could not name the victim, stating that he didn’t know any of the local Europeans and had been ‘up the road all the time I’ve been here’. But he recalled that the wounded man was middleaged, bald, weighing about 80 kilograms. ‘I don’t remember what happened to him then, but later on he was still running around. I don’t remember exactly what he did because they were running in all directions … There were quite a few fights.’ About 15 minutes later, Dunn continued, the man with the head wound had reappeared out of the darkness. This bloodied individual was almost certainly Scott. Just as he could not name the victim, so Dunn was also unable to identify the perpetrator. Something of an outsider,

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standing beyond the town’s tight European friendship network, Dunn gave a decidedly less judgmental and more matter-of-fact account than the others of the confrontation.35 If Dunn was an observer, almost neutral in his standpoint, rather than a participant in the fracas, the next witness was prepared to deviate even further from the rigid lines that had divided Lae and the inquest itself into mutually hostile ethnic groups. Charles Mills, an air traffic controller at the local aerodrome, had been in Lae for two and a half months. He adopted a different tone in his evidence from the outset: ‘I knew John Scott. He was in the brawl. When I saw him he was fighting with a Filipino. I didn’t notice either of them hit the other.’ Several things stand out in this initial statement. Mills did not identify Scott as a friend and he did not automatically cast the Filipino as an aggressor, even intimating that Scott was equally responsible for the fight. He told the inquest that he had watched the brawl for some time from the verandah, apparently feeling no urge to join in on the European side. Then after a while I noticed that a Filipino [was] in the midst of six white men and I thought it was a few too many for the Filipino so I went across to his assistance … I saw the Filipino stumble, [but] he didn’t actually fall. He made off towards the orchestra end of the building and through the buildings at the left of the hall.

Given the evidence of the previous few days, the unremitting anger of the other witnesses, Mills’ testimony was startling. He had intervened in the fight to protect a Filipino from being mobbed. Indeed, it is noteworthy that Mills contended that six European assailants had surrounded the Scout, identifying the Filipino unequivocally as the victim. No other European witness at the inquest even hinted at such a scene. In his evidence, Mills had strayed from the closely knit European community, breaching its

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code of solidarity and crossing its lines of separation. Such an act was rare.36 On 10 January, the coroner called his last witness, Assistant Sub-Inspector Patrick Larkin. Larkin testified that he and a second police officer had held a second identification parade at the Scouts’ camp on 9 January after the inquest had adjourned. He had asked Hector Dunn, the mechanic who had given evidence earlier in the day, to try to identify any of the Scouts as one of the assailants on New Year’s Eve. Dunn had walked forward and identified Salavator Andico, declaring, ‘I saw this man throw a bottle which hit a European on the head.’ Five Scouts — Bahinting, Dacillo, Bantilan, de la Cruz and Andico — had now been picked out in the two identification parades as participants in the fight. Briefly recalled to the stand, Dunn testified that the man who had been hit by the bottle was stocky and slightly bald.37 After three and a half days of evidence, Rigby retired to consider his finding. The 26 witnesses had certainly painted a picture of sudden violence, but none of the Europeans had been able to say who had actually hit Scott. Despite their repeated protestations of innocence and passivity, there was now some evidence at hand to suspect that the Filipinos had either come to the dance with weapons such as pipes ready for use or had used stones, sticks and bottles as missiles once the fight had started. At the same time, notwithstanding their equally consistent protestations, there was also enough evidence before the inquest to suggest that the Europeans had acted belligerently from the outset. But, the purpose of the inquest was not to probe the dynamics of the conflict itself but to establish, as far as possible, the cause of the death of John Scott. Rigby found on 10 January 1948, that Scott had died as a result of septic meningitis with cerebral oedema resulting from a blow to the left frontal region of the head. He concluded that ‘the blow was delivered with a bottle by a Filipino member of the United States Army at about midnight on the night of December 31st, 1947, near the Dance Hall at the Hotel Cecil’.38

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There was one notable and poignant absence in the coronial inquest’s list of witnesses, Fitzy Scott. This omission is striking because no one was better placed to comment on Scott’s behaviour and condition in the day or so after the incident at the Cecil. Fitzy had been at the dance with her husband and had accompanied him to the hospital in the early hours of 1 January. She had also been with him when he had returned to the hospital later that day. Yet she was never formally questioned by either the Australian police or the American forces. It is known that she informed her husband’s relatives back in Australia of the death and that she attended his funeral on 4 January. After that she disappears from our story. She left Lae soon after the funeral to return to Melbourne, no doubt too distressed by the violent death of her husband to talk to any of the investigators. She would not even give the Australian police a proper copy of a photograph of her husband, instead allowing one officer to take a photograph of a picture in her possession. This image was rendered in a particularly crude fashion. The officer placed the photograph on the ground, between his feet, and took a blurred snap. This photograph has survived in the US Army Archives — the police officer’s shadow and his shoes appear on the edge of the frame, dusty ground beneath. Unsurprisingly, this method of obtaining a picture of the deceased left the Australian authorities with an unclear image. So unclear that a number of the witnesses, especially the Filipino Scouts, had enormous trouble recognising the ghostly balding man in the photograph that was put before them in the stand. Given the problems of blurred memories, hazy identification and contradictory stories, this imperfect photograph left the inquiry into Scott’s death mired in even more uncertainty.

Chapter Five

A Great and Powerful Friend

THE INQUEST HAD ESTABLISHED that John Scott died as a result of a blow delivered by a Filipino Scout with an object, probably a bottle. The assailant was yet to be identified. A much bigger and potentially more difficult problem hovered over the case. This finding accused a member of the armed forces of Australia’s great protector of being responsible for the unlawful death of an Australian civilian. On Manus, the US Army was an uneasy bystander in a conflict between the Chinese Nationalist Army and the Australian Administration. Major Byers, the local commander of the US ground forces, regarded the Pondranei affair as a distraction, which was frustrating the discharge of his duties, surveying

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the island and getting his men home. The US Navy’s representative, Lieutenant French, was in a more invidious position, charged with the unenviable task of mediating to some extent between the contending parties. But the US Navy had none of its own vital interests at stake in the Pondranei case. Major Merritt could not regard the Scott case with the same hands-off attitude — the Scouts belonged to the US Army. After the inquest, Merritt travelled by air to Port Moresby on 11 January to discuss the case with the Australian authorities. Early the next day he went to the Administration’s offices to meet Cyril McCubbery and his boss, the acting Crown Law Officer, Wally Watkins. A native of Perth, Watkins was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 1938, scoring a job with the Commonwealth Deputy Crown Solicitor. He enlisted in the Army in January 1942, serving first in the Middle East and later in New Guinea and Borneo. He was drawn back to PNG after Japan’s surrender, applying for a job in the Crown Law Office in 1946 at the age of 33. As an army legal officer, he had gained some experience in enforcing the Indian penal code. His appointment as a legal officer with the Administration was rushed through, and he arrived in Port Moresby in mid-November 1946. His contemporaries recall that Watkins was a big, jovial, popular bloke who was easy to get on with and efficient within his legal sphere.1 Although the tone of the meeting on 12 January 1948 was friendly, Watkins took a firm line with Major Merritt; he was determined to find Scott’s killer and enforce Australian justice. Merritt asked Watkins if a member of the US armed forces could be tried in the PNG courts given the 1942 agreement between the United States and Great Britain and ‘its colonies, including Australia’, which left jurisdiction with the US military. Watkins affirmed that such a prosecution was possible, though a cable had been sent to Canberra seeking confirmation. Merritt asked what charge would be preferred against the Filipinos in the absence of a positive identification. Watkins contended that the evidence taken at the

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inquest indicated that six Scouts would be charged jointly with manslaughter — ‘one or more may be found guilty of manslaughter, but in the meantime can be found guilty of a lesser offence, assault’. Merritt asked for the eight Scouts to be placed immediately in the custody of the Australian authorities. Aside from the practical consideration of looking after the soldiers once Lieutenant Ordonez and the rest of the unit had departed, Merritt feared that the Scouts were still in danger given the anger seething through Lae. Watkins agreed that the Scouts could be turned over as a precautionary measure to the local police who would ‘furnish the necessary security’, and Merritt pledged to provide the Scouts with ‘Filipino ration’ while they were imprisoned. Watkins stressed that the US Army’s Judge Advocate Department would not be able to represent the Scouts in the hearing before the PNG Supreme Court. The US Army would have to hire a duly qualified civilian lawyer, though one of its representatives could assist.2 Whatever the uncertainties surrounding the vexed questions of jurisdiction and identification, Merritt opted to cooperate with the Australian authorities, at least for the time being. At this stage of the affair, he appeared to personally accept that a local trial would take place, and he flew back to Lae on 13 January. The very next day, he received two notifications from the Australians. A message from Port Moresby confirmed that six Scouts would be jointly charged with manslaughter. On the same day, Superintendent Grimshaw said they would also be charged with assaulting Gregory Kiley, the unemployed baker who had so eagerly joined the fight. Two Scouts, de la Cruz and Bantilan, would be detained as witnesses in the death of Scott and the assault on Kiley. Now that charges had finally been pressed, Merritt placed the eight Scouts in the local prison at Malahang under the watchful eye of the gaoler, L. Rahaley.3 Given that the scuffle at the Cecil had descended into an allin brawl, it was anomalous that the police hadn’t charged any Australians. From the outset, the Australians, without a second

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thought, identified the Filipinos as the guilty party in the friction that had developed in Lae since November. During the months after Scott’s death no Australian official seem to consider the possibility that the Filipinos might have had some grounds for feeling aggrieved. This was unsurprising given Lae’s rigid racial hierarchy, which set firm boundaries and enforced formal and informal rules. Steeped in the assumptions of the day, most Australians saw the Filipinos as unwanted outsiders who didn’t belong in PNG, let alone in the ladies’ lounge or the dance hall at the Hotel Cecil. In a cable on 14 January, Merritt informed his superiors at Philrycom in Manila that a Supreme Court trial before Justice Phillips would probably begin on Wednesday 21 January. He asked if he should remain in Lae until the end of the trial, noting that his own investigation would require another week to complete. He recommended that Philrycom authorise the hiring of a local lawyer and that it dispatch a Judge Advocate to assist during the trial. A day later, he sent another cable confirming that Captain Morgan, Lieutenant Ordonez and the rest of the search team had departed on a LST (landing ship tank) for Manila via Dutch New Guinea. Morgan was no doubt on board to be the ranking officer, ensuring that Ordonez was not in control. The unit had left behind 60 days worth of rations for the Scouts in Malahang Prison. Merritt told his superiors that Morgan would carry a confidential report on the Lae incident. This step was telling. Isolated from the US military’s communications system at Finschhafen, Merritt had to send his cablegrams via the District Office. Clearly, he felt that some of his observations should be kept from the Australians. He had an army jeep to continue his investigation and 90 days worth of rations.4 In the meantime, he visited the prisoners daily. On 16 January, External Affairs sent a note verbale to the US Embassy in Canberra stating that six Scouts would be indicted for unlawful killing. In a polite and matter-of-fact tone, anticipating no difficulties, the note emphasised that the Filipinos had been determined to ‘foster racial ill-feeling’ in Lae, sparking off several

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incidents at the Cecil. Later in the day, an External Affairs officer, Laurence McIntyre, rang the Counsellor in the Embassy, Harold Shantz, to say that the jurisdiction question seemed clear-cut, adding that no legal machinery existed to hand the Scouts over to the United States. According to McIntyre, Shantz said ‘he would refer the matter to his Government for information but did not consider that we would hear any more of it’, especially if Merritt had agreed that a charge should be laid. Shantz informed Washington that he had not commented on the legal aspects of the case.5 Despite the reassuring noises from the US Embassy, the Scott case was turned upside down by a message from Philrycom that reached Lae a day after External Affairs had handed across its note verbale. Leaving no room for doubt, Philrycom informed Merritt that a US military legal team, including several Judge Advocate officers, would leave Manila on 16 January to ‘promptly convene a public general court martial at Lae’ to try the Scouts. It told Merritt to complete his investigation and find a place to hold a court martial. There would be no need to hire a local civilian defence lawyer at public expense. At the conclusion of the trial, the entire American party would depart on a special flight.6 With this brusque message, the Americans revealed that they did not recognise Australian jurisdiction and intended to resolve the matter in their own way. They apparently did not even envisage the need to negotiate. Having willingly assisted the Australians, Merritt was now placed in an awkward position. It is unsurprising that the Administration took this assertion of American legal and military power as a direct challenge to its authority. With the ground shifting rapidly in the Scott case, an aircraft and a ship arrived in Lae a day apart. The European community welcomed the ship. On 17 January, the River Mitta finally reached Lae with the town’s Christmas presents and a large number of pigs, goats and cattle. The Pacific Islands Monthly declared that longdeferred parties could now be held, though it noted that the belated appearance of the River Mitta emphasised again the town’s

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isolation and its difficult living conditions. ‘There is no beer, no tobacco, no sugar, no soap and several other commodities in everyday use.’7 The European population and the Administration regarded the arrival of the aircraft the next morning with somewhat less joy. Slowed by the need to refuel en route, a Skymaster flew into the town carrying a contingent from the US Army Legal Corps. Deputy Crown Law Officer McCubbery was waiting at the aerodrome, ready to extend every courtesy to the Americans, but nervous about the tough negotiations ahead. Nine in all, the US Army’s legal squad was led by Lieutenant Colonel Seymour Wurfel, a member of the Judge Advocate service, and appropriately stayed at the Cecil. Wurfel wasted little time in presenting McCubbery with a letter from the Philrycom commander, Major General George Moore, which stated the US position in no uncertain terms. The eight Filipino Scouts held in custody in Lae regarding the death of a ‘British national’ were members of the US armed forces and therefore subject to US military laws. Moore was unequivocal. ‘It is my opinion that jurisdiction is vested not in the civil authorities of the Commonwealth of Australia, but in the military authorities of the United States in view of the undisputed fact that our forces, being in your territories by the agreement and sufferance of your government, are exempt from the process of your civil and criminal courts by virtue of the tenets of international public law.’ This was of course the very argument that the Nationalist Army had put forward in the Pondranei case. Moore said he had dispatched his Staff Judge Advocate to conduct a court martial so that ‘speedy and adequate justice may be done’. Knowing that the Australians held a stronger hand as long as they had the Scouts locked up, he asked the Australian police to release them into US custody.8 On 19 January, Wurfel informed McCubbery that one of his offsiders, Captain Max Maule, would act as the defence counsel for the Scouts. Maule interviewed the Filipinos in Malahang Gaol, running through the events of New Year’s Eve. At the same time,

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the Australian Government was considering its options. In Canberra, Ward met Dr Evatt, the Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs, to discuss the case on 21 January. What had at first appeared to be a straightforward matter was becoming more and more complicated by the day. Despite the Australian claim to jurisdiction, Major Merritt completed his own investigation on 21 January, three weeks after Scott’s death, and charged Private Eduardo Bahinting in the presence of Wurfel, Maule and McCubbery with murder under the 93rd Article of War. So, finally the identity of Scott’s alleged assailant was known. Wurfel announced that he would convene a general court martial on 22 January to try Bahinting for murder. This development stung the Australians into a rapid countermove. Shortly before the court martial was due to open at 9am, McCubbery presented Wurfel with a message from Port Moresby requesting a stay in the proceedings. The next morning his superior, the acting Crown Law Officer, Wally Watkins, arrived in Lae to handle the delicate stand-off. After some discussion, Watkins reached a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with Wurfel. The American officer agreed to suspend the court martial, but insisted that American forces had legal immunity, citing an 1812 decision of the US Supreme Court, Schooner Exchange versus M. Faddon. In return for suspending the court martial until the legal conflict was resolved, Watkins pledged that the Administration would not proceed with a civil trial. After the discussions, Wurfel urged Philrycom to instruct the US Embassy in Canberra to push for jurisdiction, contending that he believed that Australia would yield.9 By now, the Crown Law Office was fighting bushfires on different fronts regarding the status of foreign military personnel. Watkins received an urgent message while he was in Lae on 22 January from the District Officer on Manus, Bill Bloxham, asking if the National Security Allied Forces regulations were still in force. This message was not prompted by the Pondranei case, for it reached Lae four days before the Chinese labourers had assaulted

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the young Manus islander. Rather, Bloxham’s query was engendered by an indecent assault on an islander woman committed by a member of the US Air Force.10 So events on Manus and in Lae were linked even before the Pondranei bashing. On 23 January, Wally Watkins and the American legal team returned to Port Moresby for more talks, leaving Merritt in Lae to mind the Scouts, who were still incarcerated in Malahang Gaol. On the same day, the Australian Solicitor General, Kenneth Bailey, advised the Administration that the legal position was quite clear. ‘Australian law asserts full jurisdiction in local civil Courts over offences committed against local law by visiting servicemen from friendly foreign States, particularly where the offence is committed outside the limits of any camp, barracks or other military establishment.’ Bailey said the National Security Allied Forces Regulations had been terminated in 1946, and contended that the Schooner case was irrelevant because it had involved the arrest of a warship. ‘Australian law therefore denies immunity in present circumstances.’ As the alleged offenders were already in custody, Bailey concluded that ‘there should be no delay in bringing them to trial’. He declared that the indecent assault case on Manus was quite different. While the Scouts could be brought readily before an Australian court, the US airman was in American custody and the Administration could do little to stop a court martial, though proceedings in a local civil court might ‘arise at a later stage’.11 McCubbery immediately gave Wurfel a copy of Bailey’s legal opinion. The American officer was unimpressed and insisted that he stood on the agreement that no proceedings should be taken by either side until he had heard from his headquarters in Manila. Nonetheless, he again agreed that the personnel involved would remain in Lae until the matter was settled one way or another. McCubbery took these verbal undertakings as binding.12 Whatever the status of such commitments, the Americans would not concede the field. Aside from a belief in the primacy of American justice, Wurfel probably had something of a soldier’s disdain for a civilian

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court. On 25 January, he sent an urgent cable to Philrycom via the US military radio station on Los Negros stating that Australia had refused to relinquish jurisdiction, citing a 1944 NSW case, Wright v Cantrell. The Administrator had suggested that the US legal team and representatives of the Crown Law Office should travel to Canberra to expedite a settlement. Wurfel asked for permission to proceed south. Three days later, Philrycom instructed him to remain in PNG to continue his investigation and stated that the US Embassy would follow up the jurisdiction question, demanding the release of the Scouts.13 Major Merritt interviewed four more local people on 26 January. First, he discussed the events on New Year’s Eve with Mrs L. M. Heath. The Heaths had been at John Scott’s table at the dance and Bertie Heath, an employee of Bulolo Gold Dredging, had helped to identify Scott’s corpse. Mrs Heath told Merritt that Lieutenant Ordonez had come to her house on 3 January to return an iron and had asked if she had seen the incident at the dance. She had replied that she had not, adding that she ‘was terribly distressed at the news that [Scott] was now dying’. Ordonez had intimated that ‘his Filipino soldiers had been very badly treated and the attack on Scott was just bad luck’. Outraged by this statement, she had asked Ordonez ‘why the Filipino Scouts attended the dance, as no local coloured people ever attend our social functions and I class the Filipinos with them’. Now ‘very annoyed’, Ordonez had declared that ‘his Filipinos were US Army soldiers under his command, well disciplined, and that he had told them that he wished them to attend the dance’. He had added that he had paid them so they could attend. Heath had retorted that she had been ‘astounded’ to hear that a Filipino had ‘dared’ to ask for a woman if he paid the one-pound entrance fee. ‘Why is one pound too much for a white woman?’ Ordonez had replied. ‘He made further remarks about the colour line which we people draw and quite definitely identified himself with the Filipino soldiers. Lieutenant Ordonez spoke so disparagingly of Australia and their

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White Australia Policy that he was asked to leave.’ Merritt could be in no doubt by this time that the Mexican American officer had set out to confront the European sense of superiority and exclusivity.14 His next informant, Mrs J. Phillips-Veirke, suggested that Ordonez had acted even more provocatively, very much playing a part in the exacerbation of tension. Phillips-Veirke told Merritt that she had observed Ordonez dancing with one of her friends in the hall about 12.30am. She described Ordonez’s physical appearance at length: The Lieutenant was … of short stature, no more than 5’5” in height, olive complexioned, dark eyes and hair, wearing a close cropped moustache the same color as his hair. His features had a flattened-in appearance, his face being lean and giving the appearance of Spanish or Mexican origin … He was drunken and being excessively free with his hands and dancing too close to his partner for comfort or for the requirements of decent behaviour in a public dance hall … his behaviour appalled me, and seeing the lady close to tears and trying to thrust away the lieutenant, I immediately crossed the hall and went to her assistance.

Phillips-Veirke moved from an unflattering description of Ordonez’s exotic physical features into an account of his disreputable behaviour. She informed Merritt that she had asked Ordonez to excuse her friend as she had something important to say to her. Swaying and muttering, Ordonez had not released his hold on the woman, and Phillips-Veirke had asked him ‘rather more frigidly’ if she could speak with her friend. ‘Seeing the distaste on my face, he asked me if I were not proud of the United States Army. I replied, “No, if you are an example”.’ Ordonez had then released his dancing partner, but he had followed the women back to their table, where one of the men had spoken to him. ‘Five

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minutes later the lieutenant was asked to kindly remove himself and he did so.’15 We do not have to take all of this statement at face value. In light of the deeply embedded racial attitudes of the European community, it is highly likely that Phillips-Veirke would have cast the lieutenant’s actions in a negative light. She regarded Ordonez as an unsuitable dancing partner for an Australian woman, and her hostility was almost automatic, somehow visceral. But it is hard to imagine that she would have concocted such an encounter. And if much of her account is accurate, then Ordonez had given Merritt and Wurfel a most sanitised version of his own conduct. If PhillipsVeirke was right, Ordonez was probably drunk himself on New Year’s Eve and in no position to control his men. Ma Stewart was more temperate in her statement to Major Merritt, though she arrived nonetheless at some of the same conclusions as the other two women. At the outset, she acknowledged that the Filipinos had always ‘behaved in manner becoming to their uniform’ when they had called at her hotel to purchase alcohol. They had paid for everything in cash and had never attempted to mix with the Europeans in the bar. But she had not invited the Filipinos to attend the dance. She had not seen Ordonez on the fateful night; she met him for the first and last time on the night that he and the rest of the unit were leaving Lae. Even though she did not regard the Filipinos with the contempt so common among the other Europeans in the township, Stewart was just as firm about the Territory’s rules of social interaction: During my long term of 42 years residency in the Territory … I have never known Asiatics to be included with Europeans in any social functions. European ladies definitely would not tolerate dancing with coloured people as they consider that their prestige and social standing would be jeopardized by consenting to do so, and it would leave an opening for the local natives to fraternize with the Europeans.

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So, there it was again, even in a more even-handed individual such as Stewart: that deep and abiding fear that the walls of separation that upheld white dominance and power would be fatally breached by allowing social contact between Europeans and the lesser races. Stewart told Merritt that she had witnessed nothing of the fight, however, retiring to bed after serving supper, she had noticed Filipinos bending down to pick up stones.16 Lastly, Merritt interviewed a member of the local Asian community, Peter Ahtun. It is noteworthy that the American investigator bothered to talk to one of the local Asians, who naturally saw the town’s social and racial dynamics from a different viewpoint. Ahtun recalled that Lieutenant Ordonez and Master Yeoman Agbanawag had come to his house on New Year’s Eve, staying from 9pm until shortly after midnight. ‘We had a bottle of gin and had a few drinks in celebration of the New Year.’ Ahtun said he had agreed to go with the two soldiers to the Cecil. This was an unusual thing for a member of the local Asian community to do, for he well knew, like his fellow Chinese and Malays, that the town’s Europeans did not welcome any racial intermingling. What had encouraged him to consider stepping over the lines of racial demarcation? Had the heady combination of a few stiff gins and Ordonez’s angry talk about the prejudices of the local Europeans emboldened him? Ahtun perhaps had his own reasons for feeling disgruntled about the unequal treatment meted out to Asians. During the war, he had helped Australian soldiers by providing vital information about what was happening in Lae under the Japanese occupation. He had done this at great personal risk. Whatever had enticed him to go to the Cecil, Ahtun had not stayed long. ‘We drove to the Hotel Cecil where a police boy called for Lt. Ordonez. After hearing that there had been trouble just previously, I left the Hotel grounds and went home.’ News of the brawl had reminded Ahtun where he stood in the social hierarchy and he had cleared off immediately.17 A few days later, Inspector Moncur asked Merritt to come to his residence to discuss the case. When he arrived at the Moncur

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household at dusk on 28 January, Merritt found Moncur and Grimshaw waiting for him. The two Australians told the American officer that they intended to bring all eight Scouts to trial the next day on a charge of assaulting Kiley. With Wurfel still absent in Port Moresby, Merritt said he would represent the Scouts and object to the trial because the question of jurisdiction had not been settled. Assistant District Officer Jack Costelloe would appear as the magistrate in the District Court. The son of an Armidale doctor and an accountant by training, 41-year-old John Amery ‘Jack’ Costelloe was very much one of the old hands, having joined the Administration as a clerk in 1926. Appointed as a patrol officer in 1932, he served with ANGAU and later the AIF during the war, rising to the rank of major. He had a sound military record, though he was temporarily demoted to captain after being court martialled in April 1946 for impeding a military police officer in an attempt to arrest a signalman.18 He was one of the first of the old brigade to return to the Administration, arriving back in the Territory with his wife, Olive, in October 1946. After working in the Central Highlands District of Chimbu, he was posted to Lae in 1947. Another kiap, Harry West, recalls that Costelloe was ‘rugged and energetic’, though he occasionally did not handle liquor well.19 The Scouts were duly arraigned before Costelloe at 10am on 29 January. Inspector Moncur appeared as the prosecutor and, as promised, Merritt was there to defend the Filipinos. Despite his forceful words only the day before, Moncur declared without delay that the Crown Law Office had requested that the case be remanded for seven days until a decision could be made concerning the jurisdictional conflict. Merritt readily concurred. But Costelloe was concerned that the assault case had already been remanded four times — hardly a satisfactory situation. Stating that he was not inclined to grant yet another remand, he called on the prosecution to present some evidence straight away or drop the assault charge there and then. Costelloe no doubt knew that his insistence on procedural justice at this point favoured the Americans. Moncur realised that he had no

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alternative but to withdraw the charge. The eight Scouts were immediately turned over to Merritt, who restricted them in a building furnished by the local authorities in Malahang.20 Despite dropping the assault charge, the Administration was determined to press ahead and punish Scott’s apparent assailant, Eduardo Bahinting. The Americans were equally determined to resist the Australian insistence on claiming jurisdiction. On 29 January, the Military Attaché in the US Embassy in Canberra, Colonel Jacob Sauer, asked his State Department colleague, Harold Shantz, to approach the Australian Government to find out what the Administration intended to do. The embassy duly handed over a second note verbale requesting that ‘the Australian authorities relinquish jurisdiction to the Court Martial as the United States Army feels that it has a special responsibility in the case, since the accused are Filipinos and were sent to New Guinea by the United States Army’.21 This message touched on much wider issues, reaching deep into that sense of special responsibility, of Manifest Destiny, which was such an integral part of the American international self-image, not least in the Philippines. Many Americans perceived themselves as a uniquely non-imperialistic, democratic nation, regarding the annexation of the Philippines after a brief war with Spain in 1898 as another blow against the iniquitous colonialism of the decadent Europeans. They saw Asian countries as wards in need of instruction. But this American conception of special responsibility could be inconsistent, patronising and selfserving, its idealistic notions compromised by the hard-headed pursuit of commercial and political advantage. The Filipino political situation sharpened this sense of special duty and its underlying ambivalence. Having ousted the Spanish, the Americans suppressed rebellious Filipino forces by military means — they took and held the archipelago by conquest. This reliance on force increased the power of the US military in the Philippines. Alison Broinowski captures the cross-currents in the standard perception of Filipinos well: ‘Americans in the Philippines called Filipinos

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their “little brown brothers” once they were colonised — and before that they were said to be gorillas and savages.’22 Despite this professed commitment to anti-imperialism, the Americans granted their Filipino wards independence only gradually, and even then reluctantly. When full independence finally came in 1946, Americans cast the relationship between the two nations in traditional idealistic terms. John Carter Vincent, Director of the State Department’s Office of Far Eastern Affairs, articulated this outlook in October 1946: Our relationship with them is not the ordinary relationship of two independent nations. There is a bond of common ideals and common objectives that comes from working together over two generations. A spiritual and mutual bond has been established which physical separation does not alter … We should help the Philippines to help themselves … We want to discharge our responsibilities and obligations without being paternalistic.

The United States retained major military bases across the country and maintained, as we well know, the Filipino Scouts as a separate unit in the US Army. After tough negotiations, the Philippines granted the US military virtual extraterritorial rights, largely exempting them from local jurisdiction. Notwithstanding all the idealistic rhetorical commitments to anti-imperialism, the American population in the Philippines continued to cleave, even after independence, to classically colonial attitudes. White superiority was vigorously maintained. The Australian Consul General, Keith Waller, observed that the Americans had introduced ‘all the taboos’ of British India or the Dutch East Indies. ‘Clubs are closed to Filipinos. Europeans do not ride in certain vehicles as these are used by “natives”. Certain residential areas are regarded as “white”. Filipinos are discouraged from living there.’ It was striking how little Americans mixed with Filipinos.23

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It was hardly surprising that such attitudes and the continuing military presence provoked a backlash. Many Filipinos believed the US bases infringed national sovereignty and regarded the remaining American troops with increasing dissatisfaction. General Carlos P. Romulo spoke for many of his compatriots when he declared in late 1946: Filipinos cannot understand why American troops should continue to be stationed in civilian sectors and enjoy what … amounts to extra-territorial privileges. They are resentful of the American soldiers’ arrogant contempt for the local laws and customs and of their abusive treatment of Filipino civilians … There is certainly no reason why American military police … should patrol the streets of our cities.

The international press noted that American soldiers were being called ‘ambassadors of ill-will’ because of their slovenly demeanour, idleness and unconcealed dislike of Filipinos. Some committed crimes, including looting and hit-and-run accidents as a result of reckless driving. General MacArthur responded to Romulo’s strong words carefully, stating that ‘the presence of alien soldiers in a free country always represents a delicate hazard which can only be solved by the utmost of self restraint and goodwill and a mutual realisation of advantages to be gained by both sides’.24 This exchange leaves us with an exquisite sense of irony on several levels in light of the events in Lae in 1947–48. Given that Filipino soldiers continued to occupy an unequal position in the US Army, were the actions of the Scouts in Lae in part an expression of pentup frustration? It is arguable that by trying to barge into the dance at the Hotel Cecil, Bahinting and his comrades were confronting not only the colour line in PNG but the same kind of racial hierarchy that was still operating in their own homeland two years after independence. Perhaps they were trying to do what they could not do in Manila — enter a whites-only preserve.

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The Cold War added a fierce anti-communist dimension to the American sense of mission in Asia. Convinced that the world was threatened by a red conspiracy run by the Soviet Union, Washington backed the independent Filipino Government in its struggle to eradicate the Hukbalahap, a nationalist group led by communists. But some Filipinos saw the American bases as a greater threat to peace and stability. In this context, with its own troops enjoying virtual extraterritorial immunity in the Philippines, the US Army could hardly hand the Scouts in Lae over to the Australians. Many Filipinos would surely have regarded such an act as yet another example of the high-handedness and double standards of the Americans, yet another reason for insisting that they close their bases and leave the Philippines. The military connection was crucial; the US Army probably would have been less exercised about the fate of some Filipino civilians. In contrast with the long, entangled and often fraught history that tied Filipinos and Americans together, Australia had a thin relationship with the Philippines. Aside from limited trading links, the two countries were more or less strangers until the middle of the 20th century. To be sure, Australian political leaders lauded Filipino bravery during World War II in high but necessarily disembodied terms, much as they greeted Filipino independence in 1946 with genuine, if detached, enthusiasm. In the first few years after the war, Australian and Filipino leaders spoke about a partnership between the two countries, though this rhetoric was based on infirm foundations. An Australian consul general was sent to Manila shortly before the declaration of independence, but this small diplomatic presence was unsupported for some years by any broader sense of political engagement. It was also based on old stereotypical notions. ‘There is a widespread school of thought,’ wrote the Australian Consul General, Keith Waller, in March 1949, ‘that the Filipino, having regard to the advantages lavished on him, is one of the world’s most backward peoples.’25 The Philippines did not dispatch a consul general to Canberra until

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mid-1948; that is, until after the Scott case had been resolved, leaving the US Embassy in the meantime to handle Filipino affairs in Australia, including consular matters such as the welfare of seamen. Far from being marked by closeness, Australia’s relations with the Philippines saw rising friction by the end of the 1940s. The Gamboa case revealed this trend most starkly. Although a highly decorated soldier in the US Army, Sergeant Lorenzo Gamboa had been forced to leave Australia in 1946 even though he had married a Melbourne woman and had two children with her. Two years later, by that time a naturalised American, he applied for permission to re-enter Australia, but was rejected in December 1948. ‘During the war, when I was ready to give my life for your country,’ Gamboa declared several months later, ‘there was no question of race, colour or creed.’ After a long campaign, in which he was backed by the Australian media, Gamboa finally won the right to remain in Australia in February 1950. By this time, his shabby treatment at the hands of the Australian authorities had created great bitterness in the Philippines. Rodney Sullivan has argued that Filipinos learnt about the White Australia Policy from the Gamboa case. ‘In the interregnum between the end of the war and the ban on Gamboa the Filipino elite … appears to have been extremely well-disposed to Australia with little if any knowledge of its discriminatory immigration policies.’ Although this might have been the case in broad terms, the events in Lae in early 1948, a year before the Gamboa case incited a furore, reminded a contingent of Filipino soldiers that many Australians still saw the world through a racial prism. The kind of discrimination that the Scouts confronted in Lae was already souring relations between the two countries from the ground up.26 If Filipino-Australian relations were beginning to fray, there was a strong sense of special responsibility at the heart of Australia’s engagement with PNG. As we have seen, many Australians regarded PNG as a special zone of Australian influ-

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ence, interest and duty. The conflict in the Scott case was based in part on a clash of contrasting convictions of special responsibility. Australian officials such as the Crown Law Officer, Wally Watkins, lacked the economic, political and military power required to pursue an expansive sense of special mission. In the Scott case, they were motivated by a more prosaic and less inflated desire to enforce Australian justice. On 2 February, Watkins and Lieutenant Colonel Wurfel agreed to change the terms of their gentlemen’s agreement. Watkins said he would charge Bahinting with manslaughter, but promised that the trial would not proceed until the jurisdictional question was settled. Wurfel accepted these terms. On 3 February, Bahinting was duly charged before the District Court with voluntary manslaughter under Section 303 of the Queensland Criminal Code (adopted) and remanded until 11 February. His defending counsel, Captain Max Maule, emphasised that he would ask for another stay in proceedings if a jurisdictional ruling had still not come from Manila on 11 February. Watkins felt that he could not oppose a further remand without breaking his verbal pact with the Americans. Wurfel warned Watkins that any attempt to start the trial would be taken as a breach of the gentlemen’s agreement, stressing that the court martial had been suspended at the Administration’s request. The Australian police immediately informed the other seven Scouts that they would be required as witnesses. Once more the acting Administrator, Justice Phillips asked Canberra to use all its diplomatic efforts to achieve some finality in the case.27 So, Bahinting now faced two serious charges, one Australian and one American. One cannot overestimate how important it was that the Australians were trying to simultaneously pursue tricky criminal prosecutions in two locations in PNG — Manus and Lae. In each case, the initial attempt to enforce Australian law and order was being blocked or frustrated by the intervention of a third force. It was on 24 January, a day before Pondranei was assaulted on Manus and two days before White and his troopers tried to arrest the

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culprits at the Chinese camp, that Canberra gave the Administration the go-ahead to prosecute the Filipinos in Lae for manslaughter. As acting Administrator, Justice Phillips was in charge of both investigations. The Pondranei case fell into a hiatus during February, in part because District Officer Bloxham was diverted by other duties. This lull also flowed from the fact that the Administration was preoccupied throughout February with the more serious incident in Lae involving the death of an Australian. All the while, the US Embassy in Canberra kept pressing the Australian Government to relinquish jurisdiction in the Scott case. On 5 February, the Counsellor, Harold Shantz, called Laurence McIntyre in External Affairs to say that the military attaché, Colonel Sauer, wanted to know what was happening. While he thought they didn’t want to make an issue of it, Shantz stated that the US authorities ‘did feel a certain responsibility and considered that the Filipinos ought to be handed over to them’. In a memo to External Territories, McIntyre said he had informed Shantz that the Commonwealth believed it had good legal grounds for holding a civil trial. ‘I tried to convey the impression to Shantz, however, that the door had not been completely closed and that the Administrator would no doubt have had consultations with the United States authorities who had arrived from the Philippines with the intention of taking over the case.’ As an officer of External Affairs, McIntyre was aware of the need to maintain good relations with the Americans, but in trying to smooth ruffled feathers, he had created a false impression that the Administration might still be prepared to reconsider its position. The door was closed as far as Murray was concerned. Encouraged by McIntyre’s assurance, Shantz told Sauer that the Administrator was still prepared to discuss the case before making a decision.28 At this delicate juncture, with the Australians and Americans at loggerheads in Lae over the Scott case, events threatened to escalate once more. In early February, just as Bahinting was being charged by the District Court with manslaughter, a second

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US Army war graves search team arrived in Port Moresby to begin work in Papua. Like Ordonez’s unit, this team was led by an American officer and composed of American NCOs and Filipino Scouts. It irked the Australian authorities that the US Army had not asked for permission for the team to disembark in Port Moresby. Although he directed that no obstacle should be placed in the way of the team carrying out its task, Eddie Ward insisted that it should be ‘made quite clear to the American commander that any civil offence committed by American personnel while in the Territory will be dealt with by the Australian civil administration’.29 It did not take long for things to go wrong. A day after the arrival of the search team in Port Moresby, a member of the RSSAILA tried to sign some of the Filipinos in for the night at the League’s Club at Ela Beach. As soon as they entered the front door, however, members of the club committee ordered the Scouts to leave forthwith. Ela Beach was a white preserve, patrolled by native police and staked out with a sign reading, ‘No Natives, No Dogs’. The Government Secretary, Bob Melrose, later reported that the Filipinos had ‘left the premises quietly’.30 Although one war veteran had been willing to extend the hand of friendship across the racial divide, the white Australian elite in PNG had again rejected the Filipino Scouts, indicating that they were not considered to be equals. Lieutenant Colonel Wurfel realised that he now confronted a much wider problem: the Filipino Scouts were simply not welcome in white PNG society and their continued presence threatened to provoke an explosive conflict. Another search team was on the way, this time to scour the area around Daru in the south-west corner of Papua near the Fly River. Wurfel sent an urgent message to Philrycom recommending that all the search teams containing Filipinos should be withdrawn from PNG without delay, given the Scott case and what he called ‘the brush’ at the Ela Beach Club. Philrycom accepted this recommendation, and the vessel carrying the third team was diverted on 6 February to Dutch New Guinea. Wurfel asked Justice Phillips on the same

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day if the Australian authorities could assist search teams composed of purely American personnel to hire ‘native labourers’ to help with the work. He assessed that this arrangement did not risk crossing the Territory’s colour line. Phillips readily agreed. The second Filipino search team departed from Port Moresby on 9 February on a freighter bound for Dutch New Guinea.31 By this time, Wurfel and most of his legal team had also flown out of Port Moresby on a courier aircraft for Dutch New Guinea. Philrycom had accepted his contention that there was little point in keeping the entire US Army legal team in PNG while the jurisdictional question was deadlocked. Wurfel left behind two officers in Lae: Major Merritt, who would continue to represent the US position in general; and Captain Maule, who would act as defence counsel if Bahinting was brought before the local courts. Watkins informed Wurfel before he departed that a court martial in Manila could try Bahinting if jurisdiction was eventually granted to the United States.32 More than five weeks after Scott’s death, the case was still in a legal limbo. By this time, Bahinting was back in Malahang Gaol under Australian lock and key. On 11 February, he appeared again before the District Court, and Magistrate Jack Costelloe readily accepted Captain Maule’s request for a second remand given the unresolved jurisdictional conflict. The seven other Scouts were still in the town waiting to testify if need be. A day after this second, brief hearing in Lae, the Secretary of External Territories, Reg Halligan, told Murray that the Americans had had ample time to get a jurisdictional ruling. If no ruling was forthcoming from Manila at the expiration of the second remand period, the Administration should proceed with the trial.

Chapter Six

Dark Deeds

JUST AS THE JURISDICTIONAL negotiations with the Americans appeared to be finally reaching a climax in mid-February, the ground shifted again. The Australian authorities in Lae already had enough on their plate with the protracted bid to find and then prosecute John Scott’s assailant; they didn’t need to tackle simultaneously another complicated criminal case. But that is just what they got. And this time the legal challenge was even more testing, for the Administration was called on to judge two of its own number, Assistant District Officer Harry Hamilton and Patrol Officer Jeffrey Gill. The charges against the two men were serious indeed; each was accused of having abused his official authority and committed especially dark deeds against local villagers. The collision of these two complex cases — one involving a soldier in a foreign army and the other two members of the Administration’s

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own frontline service — raised potent questions. Was Australian justice in PNG equal? Were the Australians able to control this sprawling country? Was their authority strong or was it succumbing to multiple challenges? It was not the first time during his career in PNG that the older of the two men, Harry ‘Hammy’ Hamilton, had been in trouble. Hamilton, born on 14 November 1909, was the son of a grazier who owned a property in the Wanneroo district just north of Perth. In 1932, he decided to leave the University of Western Australia to apply for a job in PNG, even though he had completed the third year of his law degree. Backed by 12 referees, including the Attorney-General, John Latham, Hamilton stressed in his application that his significant bush experience acquired on the family property and his study of ‘the archaic legal conceptions of the primitive Anglo-Saxons’ had equipped him well for service in New Guinea.1 However, in 1934, a year after his appointment as a patrol officer, Hamilton was reprimanded for encouraging two Melanesians to beat another man for some infraction. In December 1935, he was deemed unsuitable to be a District Officer and was dismissed from the patrol service. But, after working as a clerk with the Administration for some time, he appealed to the highest political levels — even Prime Minister Lyons considered his case — and was reinstated as a patrol officer in 1937. The incident in 1934 was a portent. Having served with ANGAU during World War II, the unmarried Hamilton rejoined the Administration as soon as he could, arriving back in Port Moresby in March 1946. In the next 18 months, he was posted to Lae and then Wau, a mining town in the Bulolo region. It was on Sunday 16 November 1947, two days after his 38th birthday, that Hamilton committed a bizarre offence in Kaiapit, an old mission village to the west of Lae in the upper Markham Valley and the site of an airstrip during the war. He had travelled to Kaiapit on a routine inspection to hear any complaints from the villagers. After attending to his duties, he had a few glasses of rum in the late after-

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noon with two visiting Europeans, chatting idly. As the sun slipped below the horizon, he left the Europeans and assembled several police constables and a number of villagers, including a man called Tuwara, on the lawn in front of the police station. As a kiap, Hamilton was an officer of the Court of Native Affairs, empowered to hold informal court hearings while on patrol.2 He sat on a chair and demanded that Tuwara stand before him naked. He informed Tuwara that a local woman, Orat, had seen him molest a young girl, Kankan, back in August. Villagers watched from a distance, the scene on the lawn illuminated by lamps. Hamilton first abused Tuwara verbally, calling him ‘a bloody bastard’, and then slapped his penis and testicles, repeatedly and hard, with both hands. Throughout this thrashing, two police constables pinned Tuwara’s arms behind his back. But Hamilton did not stop there, ordering his constables to continue the beating, repeatedly stating, ‘Go on, work his penis.’ Tuwara was forced to lie on the ground. Hamilton’s next act was even more depraved, for he instructed Orat, the woman who had witnessed the alleged molestation, to first hit Tuwara’s penis and then ‘play with him’ until he ejaculated. Orat complied with Hamilton’s orders most unwillingly and she too was shamed by the whole event. This treatment had reduced Tuwara to a wretched state and Hamilton had him thrown into the police cell for the night. With Tuwara lying in the cell, deeply ashamed and in considerable pain, Hamilton retired for his dinner at 8pm. The nightmare did not stop. In the middle of the night, Hamilton and two of his constables woke Tuwara up and again repeatedly slapped his genitals. By now quite traumatised, Tuwara lost control of his bowels, and, with Hamilton, the constables and Orat looking on, he was forced to clean up his own excrement, deepening his already intense sense of humiliation. The next morning, Tuwara appeared briefly in court, and Hamilton, now acting as magistrate, sentenced him to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour. After this quick trial, Hamilton caught a plane back to Lae.3

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This was not, however, the end of this horrible story: Jeffrey Gill, a much younger patrol officer, watched from the steps of the Kaiapit Police Station as Hamilton and the constables bashed Tuwara. This scene made quite an impact on the raw and impressionable kiap. Gill, born on 26 February 1923, had left Melbourne’s Scotch College in 1938 at the age of 15 to work for Richard Allen & Sons, a soft goods warehouse on Flinders Lane, and later as a jackeroo on farms in NSW. After serving as a sapper and later as a seaman with a water ambulance brigade during the war, he joined the Administration as a patrol officer, arriving in PNG in February 1947, just shy of his 24th birthday. He had been in the Territory for little more than nine months when he witnessed Tuwara’s systematic humiliation. Six weeks later, Gill was still in Kaiapit, carrying out routine patrol work and supervising the reconstruction of the Administration station, including the building of married quarters. On New Year’s Eve, the very day that John Scott was fatally injured in the brawl at the Cecil, Gill committed an offence that was perhaps even more grotesque than Hamilton’s maltreatment of Tuwara. Early in the day, he discovered that a local woman, Iatsa, was committing adultery with her childhood sweetheart, Porpua, who was incidentally being employed to help build the station’s married quarters. Iatsa had been forced by her parents to marry another man, Boba, but she had recently run away to be with Porpua. Acting, like Hamilton, well beyond his official powers, Gill decided that Iatsa and Porpua could marry, but only after they had performed sexual intercourse in public, thus shaming them for their earlier adulterous acts. He ordered that the two be brought naked before him on the lawn outside the police station. Several constables and the police ‘cook boy’, Didi, were standing in a loose circle on the lawn, no more than two metres from the couple, while a number of villagers looked on from a distance. People from another village had arrived in Kaiapit that morning with food supplies, swelling the crowd of onlookers. Although the village headman declared

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that forcing the couple to have sex in public would shame the whole village, the young kiap pressed ahead. Iatsa and Porpua initially refused to comply with Gill’s orders, but a representative of the Administration was a powerful figure and Iatsa agreed after some time to lie down on the grass despite her shame. Although he lay on top of her, Porpua would not at first insert his penis. Goaded and bullied by Gill and his constables, Porpua eventually penetrated Iatsa, though he made only a pretence of having intercourse. Gill then instructed Didi to insert a plank under Iatsa’s buttocks to raise her pelvis. When this had little effect, he ordered the cook boy to place a glowing ember under Iatsa’s buttocks, close to the genitals of the young couple. But even this cruel act did not achieve the desired effect, so Gill dropped several flaming matches on Porpua’s back and prodded his buttocks with a cane, yelling ‘push-push strong’. By now, Iatsa and Porpua had been subjected to this ordeal for quite some time in the hot late-morning sun. Gill ordered the couple to move under the shade of a tree and to continue having intercourse, in plain view of a large number of villagers. Eventually, after nearly an hour and a half, Porpua ejaculated and Gill walked back into the police station, leaving the couple to retreat to a private place to bathe. Once they had washed, Gill marked out a hut where Iatsa and Porpua could live together.4 Hamilton and Gill entered their own heart of darkness in Kaiapit in late 1947, apparently casting aside all normal moral constraints and indulging in acts of considerable cruelty. We can swiftly push to one side any suggestion that PNG was somehow responsible for this descent into barbaric behaviour. The two kiaps were acting outside the constraints of their own society and indigenous village life. If anything, it was the enormous powers invested in kiaps that in part allowed the commission of such dark deeds. Deep in the Markham Valley, far from the restraining legal and moral structures of the Administration itself, Hamilton and Gill believed that they could rule in an almost godlike manner,

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inflicting cruel and degrading punishments without compunction. It is also hard not to conclude that this context permitted some deeply embedded urges to surface and find expression; each man appeared to be releasing, even acting out, certain sexual and emotional tensions. Such behaviour by two of its own officials threatened the ethical foundations of the Administration. Any attempt to prosecute outsiders such as Private Bahinting or the two Chinese labourers on Manus would be nullified if such acts went unpunished. Whatever the wider considerations at stake, it is clear that the other kiaps in PNG were genuinely shocked by the actions of their colleagues. In mid-February, Inspector Monty Moncur arrested Hamilton and Gill, immediately suspending both men from duty and incarcerating them in Malahang Gaol alongside Bahinting. Hamilton was charged with unlawfully and indecently assaulting Tuwara. Gill, who had just arrived back in Lae from Brisbane with his new wife, Nereda, was charged with having abused his authority to procure Iatsa with the intent that Porpua might have carnal knowledge of her. Hamilton’s preliminary trial was convened in Lae in the District Court on 12–13 February. Two of the protagonists in the Scott case were again called into action: Jack Costelloe as magistrate and Moncur as prosecutor. Representing himself, Hamilton argued that his actions had been reasonable and were supported by the local community. He failed on each count. At one point, Lance Corporal Naruwali told the court that he did not ‘think it was a good thing for [Hamilton] to allow the woman Orat to see Tuwara naked’. Asked by Hamilton why he had not objected to the treatment of Tuwara, Naruwali said he had assumed that ‘there was official approval or a new law’. Re-examined by Moncur, he stated that he would not have slapped a man’s penis if a European officer had not been there. Such evidence from one of Hamilton’s subordinates was damaging. At the end of the hearing, Hamilton declined to say anything, and Costelloe had no hesitation in ruling that the prosecution had established

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a prima-facie case and that Hamilton should stand trial before the Supreme Court.5 The arrest of Hamilton and Gill probably made the Administration even more determined to prosecute Private Bahinting; it could hardly try two of its own while allowing a foreigner to escape justice because he was a US soldier. The pressure was steadily mounting in the Scott case. On 16 February, Captain Maule sent a message to Lieutenant Colonel Wurfel in Manila outlining his strategy for defeating the Australian claim to jurisdiction. If the case was brought to trial, he still planned to object to Australian jurisdiction based on the Schooner decision. If this gambit failed, which seemed highly likely, he proposed to up the ante by challenging the basis of Australia’s entire rule in PNG. He noted that Australia’s mandate was derived from the ‘defunct League of Nations’, and recommended that US diplomats at the United Nations should examine the ‘statutes’ governing Australian control of PNG and the authority of the Australian courts to exercise jurisdiction over people other than those owing allegiance to Britain. This line of reasoning seems quite wrong-headed given that the United Nations had reconfirmed the Australian presence in PNG after the war under a Trusteeship Mandate. Maule also advised that the US Army should inform the Justice Secretary of the Philippines of developments in the case.6 Although he did not canvass the likely Australian response to this approach, there can be no doubt that Canberra would react vigorously to such a challenge to the foundations of Australian rule in PNG. And bringing the Filipino Government directly into the case for the first time certainly complicated matters. Philrycom swiftly informed Maule that the State Department had advised that all future negotiations concerning the Scott case should be conducted between the US Army and the Administration. It invested Maule with ‘full authority’ to negotiate. Should the case come to trial, he should argue the jurisdictional question as well as every defence on the merits. If the

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judgment was adverse, he should appeal. This was a tough line, indicating that the US Army wanted to press the matter all the way. Perhaps acknowledging that this toughness would antagonise the Australians, Philrycom did ask Maule to thank Justice Phillips for ‘his fairness’.7 At this point, District Officer Allan Roberts left Lae to travel to Port Moresby for the first peacetime conference of District Officers, from 18–28 February, which covered all aspects of the Administration’s work. As we know, Bill Bloxham, the District Officer on Manus, also ventured south for this meeting. Some of the other protagonists in the Pondranei and Scott cases — Colonel Murray, Bob Melrose and Wally Watkins — joined the conference, and the discussion naturally turned to these challenges to Australian jurisdiction. Everyone around the table agreed that Australian authority had to be enforced. The Hamilton and Gill prosecutions only added to the sense that Australian law and order was threatened. Much as Josiah Francis stirred up the Pondranei affair with some difficult parliamentary questions, Thomas ‘Tommy’ White, a Victorian Liberal MP, stepped into the middle of the Scott case by asking a series of provocative questions in the House of Representatives in the third week of February. A trade minister in the 1930s, White would become minister for air and civil aviation in the second Menzies Government. Given that the Scott case had been kept under wraps, someone had clearly supplied the Victorian parliamentarian with detailed information. White asked four questions: Was Mr John Scott, of the New Guinea Gold Co., killed on New Year’s Eve at Lae, after an affray with Filipinos of a United States war graves unit? Have members of this unit menaced the lives and safety of other white men and women in this district?

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What action has been taken for the arrest and trial of the Filipino responsible for the death of Mr Scott? When will the unit be leaving New Guinea?8

White all but presupposed the guilt of the Filipino accused, and his reference to ‘white women’ hinted at the threat of sexual crimes. Such language suggested that bands of violent Filipinos were roaming around Lae and preying on its defenceless European inhabitants. It is revealing that White made no mention of indigenous men and women; the Filipinos’ allegedly ‘menacing’ behaviour was all the more unacceptable because it was directed at Europeans. White would have been even more passionate had he known that the Americans were challenging the legal basis of Australian rule in PNG. On 18 February, Eddie Ward provided Parliament with a written reply, stating that Scott had died as a result of head injuries caused by missiles thrown after some Filipino soldiers had tried to enter a dance hall without payment. Noting that minor incidents had occurred between Filipinos and Europeans before Scott’s death, he said one Filipino Scout was in Australian custody pending trial on a charge of unlawful killing. He reassured Parliament that the Americans were removing the last Filipino personnel.9 The Australian press reported this exchange in matterof-fact articles, the West Australian carrying the headline on 19 February, ‘Filipinos to Quit New Guinea’. Without correspondents on the spot, the mainland newspapers were again unable to follow a colourful story, especially given that the authorities had once more concealed so much. Reflecting the pattern in the Pondranei affair, the Government was fortunate that the press was unable to dig up the details and reveal the seriousness of the conflict between the US Army and the Administration. At the very time that the Australian Parliament was turning its attention to the Scott case, Major Merritt and Captain Maule

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were travelling back once more, over the central mountain range, to Port Moresby to try to find a solution to the protracted jurisdictional dispute. Their talks with Phillips and Murray on 20 February failed to break the deadlock. On the same day, Jeffrey Gill’s committal hearing in the District Court on the charge of procurement opened in Lae, again before Jack Costelloe. Two exhibits were presented — a piece of timber and a small cane — both allegedly used by Gill during the events in Kaiapit on New Year’s Eve. The evidence appeared to be compelling, and Costelloe had no hesitation on 21 February in ruling that Gill should stand trial before the Supreme Court in early March. The pace of work did not let up for Costelloe. After committing Gill for trial, later in the day he again remanded Bahinting. With the Scott case still drifting in a legal limbo, Maule sent a radiogram back to Philrycom on 24 February, summarising his discussion with the Administration and mapping out the next stage of his strategy. Murray had refused to yield jurisdiction, arguing that ‘the US authorities would make the same decision under like circumstances if the situation [were] reversed’. He had contended that the sexual assault committed by a US airman on Manus was different because the offence had been committed on a US base. Maule said he had replied that the US Army had ‘continuously maintained troops … at Finschhafen to which base [Bahinting] belonged at time of alleged offense’. But Murray had been unmoved. Turning to the impending trial, Maule said he would first launch ‘a plea of lack of jurisdiction of court alien in territory mandated by defunct League of Nations’. If overruled on the plea, he would reserve his appeal and fight the case on the merits. If the ruling by the District Court was adverse on the facts, he would appeal to the PNG Supreme Court. In the event of another negative ruling, Maule said he would ask Philrycom to go through the necessary procedures to allow himself and Wurfel to appear before the High Court in Australia to fight the appeal to finality.10 Again, the young lawyer did not consider the wider

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implications of his strategy, for there is little doubt that a High Court appeal would strain relations between Canberra and Washington and ensure that the details of Scott’s death were finally described in the Australian press. Maule was determined to fight an appeal all the way to the High Court, but his colleague, Major Merritt, was in a difficult position, and a second urgent radiogram to Philrycom on 24 February admitted as much. Merritt said he and the seven Filipino Scouts had been served with subpoenas to give evidence for the prosecution. ‘In the performance of my official duties, I have come into possession of certain evidence that I anticipate will be attempted to be elicited from me by the Australian authorities.’ Although he did not give any details, Merritt stated that the prosecutor would call on the other Scouts to ‘give evidence concerning statements the accused reputedly made to them’. Given these circumstances, he asked Philrycom if he and the Scouts could refuse to testify as prosecution witnesses. Further, he asked that Philrycom supply him with the grounds for refusing to testify.11 This radiogram revealed two things: Bahinting had indeed made an admission to his fellow Scouts and Merritt concerning Scott’s death; and the Americans were determined to frustrate the Australian trial one way or another. Without delay, Wurfel approved Maule’s trial strategy, including the attack on the basis of Australian governance in PNG. He ordered Maule to stay in the Territory until the Supreme Court disposed of the case. ‘Diplomatic representations for permission to appear before the High Court will be made if necessary.’ Wurfel instructed all subpoenaed witnesses to testify, though he commanded Merritt to warn the Scouts ‘not to give any testimony which might tend to incriminate themselves’. Last, he ordered Merritt to ‘render every legal assistance to the defense’.12 Although he rightly instructed the Scouts to testify, avoiding a direct repudiation of the Australian courts, Wurfel left Maule and Merritt enough room to manoeuvre. And so the American strategy was agreed.

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But the Hamilton and Gill cases again interrupted the course of events and created another delay. The American officers were no doubt watching these cases with great interest, for they were testing the Administration’s insistent claim that Australian justice was applied equally to all, including its own servants. Continuing his relentless workload, Justice Phillips travelled north to preside over the Supreme Court in Lae to hear the Hamilton and Gill cases. Late on the afternoon of 2 March, he opened the trial of Hamilton on the charge of indecent assault. Cyril McCubbery appeared for the prosecution and N. A. White for the defence. The trial proved to be a short affair, for Hamilton immediately pleaded guilty and Phillips adjourned proceedings until 8pm. The court reconvened in the evening heat, and Hamilton made a long and at times moving statement in mitigation. He claimed that he had been working under enormous strain for several years, experiencing a breakdown in Madang in December 1944 and had been diagnosed as suffering from ‘over strain’ and paranoia (his war service records indicate that army doctors concluded that he had a psychotic personality13). He admitted that this breakdown had been precipitated in part by binge drinking with rum. After a nine-month convalescence in Australia, he had returned to work for the Administration. At the time of the events in Kaiapit, he had been working for 23 months without taking leave. He confessed that he had drunk a number of rums before confronting Tuwara, though he insisted that he had been only ‘slightly inflamed’ and not drunk. Stressing that he had worked for 15 years in controlled and uncontrolled areas, he said he had never before come across a case of an adult male sexually assaulting a child. ‘My intention was to subject Tuwara to the greatest degradation and fear, and to prevent him repeating his actions; and as a … warning to any other natives … who might have similar inclinations … I would not normally have attempted the investigation that evening, had it not been for the fact that … I had a considerable amount of work to get through the next day in order to catch

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the plane back to Lae.’ Hamilton admitted that he had acted illegally and beyond his statutory functions, but he was unrepentant. He claimed that several Melanesians had subsequently told him that they approved of his treatment of Tuwara. His actions had been in the best interests of the village, and were ‘a perpetual sanction’ against similar behaviour. Although he said he could not ‘honestly express remorse’ for the punishment inflicted on Tuwara, he conceded that he felt ‘a moral responsibility’ if his actions encouraged younger officers to depart from recognised procedures.14 White called one character witness, Assistant District Officer Jack Costelloe, the magistrate in the Bahinting trial. Costelloe said he had always known Hamilton in a period of 15 years to be ‘an upright and decent fellow’. He admitted, however, that his colleague was an eccentric and highly strung individual who became ‘excitable and irresponsible’ after drinking alcohol. It was unsurprising that Costelloe could empathise with the accused to some extent, for he too had grappled with his own troubles with liquor, getting into strife on several occasions after drinking heavily as an officer in the Army during the war. After Costelloe had given his testimony, White submitted that Hamilton’s actions had been abnormal and recalled that his client had suffered a breakdown because of over work, though he was quick to stress that he was not mounting a plea of insanity. He emphasised that the accused had ‘a long and honourable record’ with the Administration and the armed forces. Hamilton was perhaps fortunate that no one had brought up his earlier indiscretion, which had led to his temporary dismissal from the patrol service. White asked Phillips to consider his client’s future, noting that the criminal code allowed the court to suspend the sentence conditionally. Such a suspension would permit Hamilton to get some rest and leave. McCubbery had been called on to play little part in the trial. He again had nothing to say, and Phillips adjourned the trial until 5 March. The Gill trial, which started early on 3 March, was not quite so straightforward, for the accused pleaded not guilty to the procurement charge. The same cast of characters was reassembled,

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with Phillips, McCubbery and White again taking up the central roles. The Melanesian witnesses from the District Court trial also reappeared to give the same damning evidence; on a second hearing, Gill’s behaviour seemed no less cruel and arbitrary. White’s brief cross-examination failed to punch any holes in the prosecution’s case. At 9am on 4 March, the court reconvened for the closing statements, with McCubbery crisply summarising the evidence against Gill. No doubt realising that he could gain little by trawling over the witnesses’ testimony, White took a different tack, mounting a technical defence that the term of procurement should be given its plain and natural meaning. He suggested that section 218 of the criminal code was ‘designed to deal with a very old evil, commonly called “procuration”, that is, a kind of traffic in women’. In turn, the ‘procurer’ had to be the agent of the man who fornicated with the woman. White contended that the evidence did not support a charge of procuration. ‘There is evidence of an assault and of acts which deserve the strongest censure; but no evidence of procuration. Gill, the accused, was not a “procurer”, nor was he Porpua’s agent.’ Justice Phillips dismissed this argument in short order and found Gill guilty as charged. McCubbery asked for a severe sentence given Gill’s official position.15 Before sentencing, Gill made an unsworn statement that suggested that his early life had been unsettled and at times hard. He said his parents had divorced when he was nine on account of his father’s physical and mental cruelty; divorce in prewar Australia was still uncommon and carried a stigma. Gill and his three siblings stayed with their mother in the family home. At the age of 15, he had been forced to leave Scotch College at his father’s behest even though he had wanted to go on to a profession after attending university. His father had placed him in a soft goods warehouse, similar to his own business. ‘I was still in contact with him and his atmosphere which I loathed and hated. He was oppressive.’ Determined to escape from his father’s thrall, he had left Victoria to become a jackeroo in NSW. ‘I liked that work.’ In June

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1940, he had joined the armed forces at the age of 17 and had eventually been discharged honourably in January 1946. After wandering around for some time in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane looking for a job, he had joined the Administration as a patrol officer in early 1947. Gill fitted a distinct pattern here for he was certainly not the first Australian man to travel north to PNG to avoid his demons back home. Nor was he the first to discover that he could not leave his past behind. Gill told the court that he had worked hard for the Administration, long hours in difficult conditions, confronting at times ‘fanatical’ cargo cults. ‘I was proud of my work.’ At this point, Gill broke down in the witness stand. After composing himself, he noted that he had just married and said simply, ‘I can only say that I have done my best in my job. I tried to find some goal, but I have failed. That is all.’16 His young wife, Nereda, was sitting at the back of the court. White addressed the court in mitigation. ‘I know that everything in this case that is manly and chivalrous in a man seems to cry out for retribution. I know the lightning of the law must strike.’ He asked the court to consider, however, that Gill had grown up without the guidance of a father or ‘the firm hand of correction in his formative years’. After joining up, he had unfortunately been left for a long time in rear areas, which were stagnant and morally degenerating. ‘When he was sent to Kaiapit he did not have, I suggest, the background to equip him to deal with the problems he was bound to cope with; it was a job beyond his capacity; he failed.’17 Even more keenly than in Hamilton’s case, one can see here how much the over-stretched Administration asked of its staff in the postwar period. It was forced by the pressure of circumstances, the pressing need to reassert Australian authority in the midst of chaos and limited resources, to send individuals into the field who were sorely unprepared, by dint of their own temperament, a lack of proper training or a combination of the two, to confront the challenge before them. After these powerful statements, Phillips adjourned the trial and released Gill on bail to face

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sentencing, like Hamilton, the next day. Both men were immediately dismissed from the Administration. The Supreme Court reconvened early on 5 March. Justice Phillips handed down the sentences for the two kiaps in less than an hour. His judgments were searing. Befitting his more senior rank and his more advanced years, Hamilton was first up. Phillips first discounted any suggestion that such behaviour could be justified. Hamilton was ‘the Government’ in outlying areas and the villagers naturally obeyed his orders. Many natives consider it unwise … to disagree with a Government officer. One native constable … had the moral fibre to consider your conduct unseemly. Tuwara, at the time this outrage was inflicted upon him, had not yet been tried or found guilty. When anyone is charged with, tried for, and found guilty of the offence he allegedly committed, the punishment prescribed by our law is sufficiently drastic. It is not for anyone to invent and inflict punishments outside the law and anyone who does so, whether his motive be lofty or base, does so at his peril.

Hamilton had subjected Tuwara to ‘the greatest degradation that may readily be conceived’. Yet his heinous actions had not stopped there. He had then subjected an innocent woman to ‘an equal degradation’ by forcing her to masturbate Tuwara. These crimes had gone further. ‘You also degraded yourself and the Administration whose officer you were. You degraded your race. The punishment you inflicted on Tuwara was savage and barbarous … you are unfit to be entrusted with any share in the administration of justice in this Territory.’ To a modern eye, these words, especially the reference to degrading the white race, are bracing. Phillips’ deep disgust was genuine; he was appalled by Hamilton’s cruelty and he revealed considerable sympathy for Tuwara and Orat. He was keenly aware that Australian rule in PNG was in some ways fragile.

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Phillips acknowledged Hamilton’s psychological difficulties and the arduous work he had put in over many months, but this did not lead him to be lenient. I realise that there are cases when leniency would merely be weakness and would be prejudicial to the due maintenance of law and order; and this, I think, is such a case … because of its atrocious character, [your offence] would amply warrant the full punishment allowed by the law: and your sentence should be one that is not only a just punishment on you but also one that will be an effective deterrent to others who may think of doing as you have done. You seek mercy, but you showed none to Tuwara. The Court, however, will give you some mercy — although you have forfeited all right to it. I shall not order a whipping and I shall not order (as you have been long in the Territory) that you be put to hard labour, but I shall sentence you to imprisonment without hard labour for three years.18

Hamilton had abused the sacred trust to serve the indigenous people, which Phillips took so seriously. As Hamilton was led out of the courtroom at 9.20am, Gill stood up before Phillips, his young wife, Nereda, watching from the gallery. Noting that the offence of procurement carried a maximum sentence of 10 years, Phillips was blistering. ‘Look at your actions how you will, they may only be described as sadistic, diabolically so, and thoroughly vicious. And you are only 25 … Just three weeks after you had committed this abominable offence, you went to Brisbane to marry … I do not know whether you thought that no report of your offence would reach the eyes and ears of the Administration.’ Gill’s sense of humiliation as he heard these unsparing words must have been intense. Although mindful of Gill’s troubled early life, Phillips felt he had little choice but to hand down a sentence of five years’ imprisonment with light

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labour.19 None of the surviving records indicate how the Territory’s European population reacted to these judgments, but it is safe to assume that many people would have shared Phillips’ deep sense of outrage. The Sydney Daily Telegraph carried a short article on 8 March reporting that two PNG officials had been sentenced to ‘long terms of imprisonment for offences against natives’. It offered no comment. Hamilton and Gill were locked up in Malahang Gaol alongside Private Bahinting, the man accused of killing John Scott. Nereda Gill immediately left Lae for Australia. After so much wrangling, Bahinting’s manslaughter trial finally began on 9 March in the District Court. Having just convicted two of their own, the Australians were, if anything, even more determined to nail the Filipino Scout. Just before the trial began, Lieutenant Colonel Wurfel sent one last message to Maule, stating that he believed ‘your chance of winning on merits are [sic] good’. If the decision in the District Court was, however, adverse, Maule should appeal to the High Court. ‘This stage or acquittal must be reached before you return.’20 So, the battlelines were drawn, with Maule as the defending counsel and Deputy Crown Law Officer McCubbery appearing as prosecutor. The magistrate, Jack Costelloe, quickly rejected Maule’s objection to Australian jurisdiction and ruled that the case could proceed. On the first day of the trial, nine people were called by McCubbery to testify: five civilian members of Lae’s European community; the two leading local representatives of Australian law and order, Inspector Moncur and District Officer Roberts; and two doctors, Roy Scragg and Theodore Braun. All nine had already testified at the coronial inquest two months earlier and none departed substantially from their earlier evidence, though some picked up themes that had appeared at the inquest, adding more details or, in one important instance, trying to rebut certain points. Two crucial elements distinguished the two hearings: Bahinting was now in the dock, and he was being defended by a determined lawyer. Although he had been forced to accept that the trial would proceed under Australia’s jurisdiction,

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Maule was in no mood to offer a tame defence. From the very first witness, he objected to various aspects of the trial itself, truculently asking that his objections be conveyed to the Supreme Court. McCubbery asked the witnesses to identify Scott from the ghostly photograph that the police had acquired several months earlier, and on each occasion Maule objected to this blurred image. Costelloe rejected this contention, and Maule insisted that his objection to this ruling be noted.21 During his cross-examination, Maule honed in on the fact that no one had been able to testify at the inquest that they had actually seen the blow that caused Scott’s fatal wound. Maule’s questioning made this failure of identification even more stark and undeniable. Ronald Russell, a surveyor with the Department of Works and Housing, was the first witness to make this admission. ‘I don’t know the accused. I never saw him before the episode. I first saw him at the entrance of the dance hall. I did not know Scott. I did not see any person strike Scott during all the time I was at the dance.’ This was not a good start for McCubbery. Russell was an important prosecution witness: he had identified Bahinting at a line-up in January; and he had later testified at the inquest that he had seen a Filipino hit a European over the head with a bottle on New Year’s Eve. McCubbery tried to retrieve the situation, asking Russell again if he had seen Bahinting strike Scott. Maule immediately objected that Russell had already admitted that he did not know Scott — Costelloe allowed the objection. Somewhat exasperated, McCubbery asked how Russell could say that he did not see anybody strike Scott. Russell replied, ‘I could not swear to the man who was struck. I couldn’t swear whether the man who was struck was Scott or anyone because I did not know him.’22 Charles Mills, the air traffic controller from Lae aerodrome, was no more helpful for the prosecution. He declared that he knew Scott and that he had seen him drenched with blood after the brawl. But, under cross-examination, he admitted: ‘I do not know the accused. I did not see him at the hotel on the night of the party

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… I did not see any blow struck.’ Irwin McKillop, an employee of Bulolo Gold Dredging, repeated his contention that he had seen a Scout hit Scott on the shoulder or the small of the back with a bottle. Maule forced him to concede, however, that he was not sure if the assailant was Filipino: I could not recognise the man who threw the bottle. He was a man in uniform. I say he was a Phillipino [sic] because he was of small stature, with dark hair, wearing regulation US Army clothing. I did see some white American soldiers late November or early December 1947. I do not know to my own knowledge that it was a Phillipino [sic] who threw the bottle … I have never seen the accused before.

It was apparent that their aloofness from the Filipinos meant that the Europeans could not recognise them. Although they had been in the town for weeks, the Scouts had remained strangers. McKillop also conceded that the blow to the back or shoulder had not injured Scott. He did state that he had overheard Scott tell a Melanesian servant after the fight that he had been hit by one of the Filipinos, but he then admitted that his pidgin was poor, suggesting that he could have misunderstood this conversation. In any case, he was sure that Scott had not identified the Filipino.23 The prosecution case by now was looking decidedly shaky. Inspector Moncur and District Officer Roberts were able to do no more than describe the events either leading up to or after the brawl. Roberts said he had at first thought that the brawl was nothing much. Indeed, as the rain had come thundering down, he had asked himself, ‘Is it worthwhile getting wet?’ Moncur did make one interesting aside, telling the court that he had attended the ball ‘partly to police the place and partly to enjoy myself’. But he admitted that he had not been in uniform and he had not put any police on duty, expecting no trouble. On another longstanding point of contention — the nature of the celebration itself — the

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police inspector stated that the dance was ‘a public event managed by several public bodies’ with an entrance charge of one pound. Earlier in the day’s evidence, Russell had stated that the dance was not an invitation event and had been open to ‘all the fraternity of Lae’. It was incontrovertible by now, however, that the terms ‘public’ and ‘fraternity’ meant the European population alone.24 Aside from establishing that no one had seen the fatal blow, Captain Maule accentuated another factor that undercut the testimony of the Europeans: their drunkenness. The witnesses responded to Maule’s questioning hesitantly, at times evasively. Mills was the first witness to reply to this probing and he said nothing to make McCubbery rest easy: There was considerable drinking taking place at the party. The usual amount … I cannot remember any particular one under the influence. Generally everyone had had a few. I would say that the majority of the people were intoxicated. I was drinking. I don’t think that is why I cannot specifically say whether the brawl occurred before or after midnight.

This rambling answer boosted the defence’s case. McKillop was just as equivocal: ‘There was quite a bit of drinking. No more than usual. Perhaps a few of the community imbibed more than others.’ The problem was, of course, that the usual amount of drinking in Lae was a great deal. Roberts contended that there had been considerable, though not excessive, drinking. ‘I could see that [Scott] had a “Christmas feeling”, [but] he was not boisterous.’ George Kiley, one of the most enthusiastic brawlers, did not help the prosecution, admitting that he could not recall when the dance had ended. ‘It would only be a guess to say what time I left. It was true what I said. I was excited and had a few drinks. I had no watch and no reason to worry about the time.’25 Maule created yet more doubt by zeroing in on the medical treatment Scott had received, on the night of the fight and in the

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subsequent three days. This moved the young medical officer at the hospital, Dr Scragg, into the spotlight. Indeed, his testimony was to be the longest one given on 9 March, and not only because much of it involved technical detail. At the inquest, Scragg had admitted that he had misdiagnosed Scott’s condition as malaria and that he had delayed X-raying the patient’s skull until it was too late to save his life. Aware that his own actions were at issue, Scragg was defensive, and, early in Maule’s cross-examination, he tried to shift some of the blame to the District Officer. ‘I did not think there was a fracture. I did not make as thorough an examination as I would have had I known the full facts of the case. I went on what Mr Roberts told me.’ This was, however, a weak response. After the operation performed by Dr Carl Gunther on the afternoon of 2 January, Scott was unconscious but restless. ‘I had to hold his head,’ Scragg told the court, ‘to stop it from moving about.’ The young doctor was now at some pains to demonstrate that he had done everything possible to save Scott, stressing that he had visited the mining manager frequently. After staying overnight in Lae, Dr Gunther had returned to Bulolo. ‘I was more worried about the case than he was.’ Scragg said he had been at the bedside when Scott expired. One has to feel for this doctor, far from home, suddenly caught up in a legal drama about a violent death, fending off questions about his professionalism.26 McCubbery knew that his case was lost unless he could produce a trump card, and he thought he had just the right trumps: the Scouts and Major Merritt. Indeed, the Australian authorities had pressed the manslaughter charge on the basis of what Bahinting had said to Merritt during his inquiry. As far as the Australians were concerned, the American major had promised to take the witness stand. McCubbery first called one of the Scouts to testify, but Maule immediately requested that the Scout be granted immunity. Confronted by this stratagem, McCubbery dismissed the Scout without asking a question, and called Merritt to the stand. Maule jumped, however, to his feet and objected on the grounds of

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privilege, claiming that Merritt had been present during a conversation between himself and his client. Maule also claimed immunity for the other Scouts. Much to the shock of the Australians, Jack Costelloe upheld the privilege plea, undercutting the prosecution completely. Maule argued that the charge should be dismissed because the prosecution had failed to establish a prima-facie case.27 Two days later, on 11 March, Costelloe realised that he had no choice but to dismiss the case against Bahinting. Without delay, McCubbery served the Scouts with a notice of appeal. The notice stated that ‘the magistrate was wrong in law in holding that certain evidence given to Sylvester Aloysius Merritt was inadmissible on the grounds of privilege and that therefore information should not have been adjudicated on without hearing the said evidence’. McCubbery asked that the accused and the Filipino witnesses remain in PNG until the matter could be heard again. For his part, Maule told Wurfel back in Manila that he fully expected that he would have to fight appeals in the Supreme Court and later the High Court.28 An impartial observer might well have asked why the magistrate had not questioned Maule about his behaviour. On the face of it, the American lawyer had breached legal ethics by attending the conversation between the accused and the investigating officer. Costelloe could have instructed Maule to stand aside. It also might be said, on the other hand, that the prosecution was basing almost its entire case concerning a serious charge on one piece of evidence, the alleged confession of Bahinting, a private, to a superior officer, Major Merritt. If a trial had proceeded, the defence, Maule or a replacement, could have suggested that the confession was the result of coercion, implied or express. Applying civilian remedies to a disciplined, uniformed organisation such as an army or a police force was intrinsically more complicated than a normal criminal prosecution. Although the trial had fizzled, the Australians were determined to win the appeal in the Supreme Court. Maule flew to Port

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Moresby to continue the negotiations. On 12 March, the Administration reported that he had agreed that the Scouts would not leave Lae until the appeal was heard. But this was in fact not so. In a cable to Philrycom a day earlier, Maule had stated that Merritt and the Scouts were ‘now free and may leave [PNG] upon proper military order’. Noting that McCubbery had admitted that the Supreme Court could not hear the appeal until late March, Maule recommended that Philrycom order the Scouts to return to the Philippines forthwith. Two days later, Wurfel duly commanded the Scouts and Merritt to return on the first available craft. He asked Maule to convey this order to Watkins and Phillips, though he added an important rider: ‘The order will not repeat not be carried out if resisted by valid civil legal process.’29 Phillips informed Canberra on 15 March that the outlook was not promising. Merritt’s testimony was the ‘sole evidence inculpating accused’. On the basis of this evidence, the Administration had dropped the assault charges concerning Kiley and charged Bahinting with manslaughter. Phillips revealed that Philrycom had ordered Merritt and the Scouts to leave PNG within days. An American craft would arrive in Lae the next day for this purpose. As ‘matters of high policy’ were involved, Phillips was agitated. ‘Do you wish us to attempt to counter this move?’ He said it would be possible to press a holding charge against Bahinting and subpoena the Scouts, but warned that a difficult situation could arise if they endeavoured to leave, probably resulting in international friction.30 Captain Maule told his superiors in distant Manila on 16 March that he did not know what the next move would be. ‘From events that have transpired anticipate anything. Prosecutor most disturbed by defeat in lower court. I do not expect any assistance from now on as the matter is too critical.’ Maule said his exposed position in Lae prevented him from sending a complete report. Keenly aware that McCubbery was incensed and determined, he again recommended that Merritt and the Scouts should be removed from PNG ‘by most expeditious means … Time is of the

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essence’. If the case proceeded, Maule said he would have to be properly accredited to appear before the High Court.31 But could Australia keep pushing its claims? On the same day that Maule sent his report to Manila, Laurence McIntyre in the Department of External Affairs pointed out that the Administration was on shaky ground given the way in which the Dutch authorities had handled a difficult problem on Morotai, an island in the Dutch East Indies. A RAAF aircraftman had committed an offence on Morotai and the Dutch had eventually relented when the Australians claimed jurisdiction. McIntyre stressed that the Lae case was the exact reverse, and he doubted Australia could have it both ways. He suggested that Dr Evatt and Professor Bailey might well decide that the Bahinting case could not proceed because a trial had been held and the defendant dismissed. Based no doubt in part on this contention, Reg Halligan, the Secretary of External Territories, recommended to Ward that no further action should be taken.32 Port Moresby saw the situation quite differently. On the day that Halligan recommended backing off, Phillips sent another urgent cable to Canberra passing on a message from Roberts in Lae. ‘In compliance orders his headquarters Merritt intends depart with eight Filipinos per American ship due leave here today unless definitely prohibited by civil court procedure.’ Roberts asked what steps he should take to ‘restrain’ the Americans. Phillips knew the game would be up if the Scouts were allowed to leave, and he instructed Roberts to inform Merritt that the group’s departure would breach the verbal agreement between Watkins and Wurfel. At the same time, the Administration sent a message to Manila stating that the Scouts should remain in Lae until the appeal was decided.33 Ward was just as dissatisfied as the Administration. He told his department that it was unsatisfactory that the case had been aborted because Merritt had not given evidence. He wanted to know who had instructed Merritt not to testify and thought a protest should be made in Washington. He asked External Affairs

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to approach the US Embassy. The Australians were deeply unhappy, but they now realised that they could not prevent the Scouts from leaving PNG without risking a much bigger and more damaging confrontation, one they had little chance of winning. External Territories told Phillips on 17 March that ‘no good purpose would be achieved by endeavouring to restrain [the Scouts]’. Instead, the whole matter, especially Merritt’s failure to testify, would be taken up at a diplomatic level.34 The US Army was quite determined by this point to end the matter. About 20 March, Merritt and the Scouts were moved from Lae to Finschhafen. Several days later, they departed on a US ship with their equipment, including foot lockers and cots, bound first for Hollandia (now Jayapura) in Dutch territory and then the Philippines. Maule left soon after. With the Scouts now out of the way, the Americans wanted to register a few strong points with the Administration. On 23 March, Philrycom asked the US Air Force liaison officer in Port Moresby to hand over a sharp message to Phillips. Wurfel had never given an assurance that Merritt and the Scouts would remain in PNG until the matter was disposed of. He had agreed that the American party would remain until the jurisdictional question was settled in return for a stay in the civil proceedings. This deal terminated when the ‘judge’ dismissed the case in Lae. ‘Your request that these nine persons be held in New Guinea indefinitely without charge is not sanctioned by legal principles.’35 Exacerbating matters for the Administration, the Bahinting case happened to reach a climax just as the Pondranei story was hitting the pages of the Australian press. Two days after the departure of the Scouts, Superintendent Grimshaw and his police contingent arrested Chou and Hsueh on Manus for abducting and assaulting Pondranei. The abortive attempt to prosecute Bahinting left the Australians feeling thwarted, a sense of grievance sharpened by the knowledge that the perpetrator of this betrayal was Australia’s great ally, the United States. The Administration suggested that

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the Americans had deliberately scuttled the prosecution. In his summary of the case written on 2 April, the acting Crown Law Officer, Wally Watkins, contended that Lieutenant Colonel Wurfel in particular had acted in bad faith. It was Wurfel who had instructed Merritt to attend the conversation between Bahinting and his counsel, Maule, allegedly on the odd grounds that this would ‘avoid any question of privilege’. And it was Wurfel who had given a firm verbal assurance that Merritt and the Filipinos would not leave PNG until the matter had been settled. ‘As Notice of Intention to Appeal was served immediately on the dismissal of the case I consider that the proceedings were still continuing and that the question of jurisdiction had not been finally decided.’ Watkins stressed that Maule had stated before the trial that he would appeal if the magistrate ruled against him on jurisdiction, if need be to the High Court.36 Merritt wrote up a quite different account of the case. He stressed that no positive identification had been made ‘as the visibility was poor and nobody knows who struck who’. If Bahinting had confessed to the American officer, this conclusion was disingenuous to say the least. Merritt did not record on paper any of Bahinting’s admissions. Turning to the cause of the conflict, he blamed the commanding officer of the search team. He asserted that the whole incident would not have occurred if Lieutenant Ordonez had used commonsense. ‘He was already familiar with the situation as to the color line in New Guinea. He continued to insist for equal rights in a foreign country whose policy is contrary to equal rights especially when the color line is drawn so tightly.’37 At no point in his summary did Merritt criticise the European community. There is no doubt that Ordonez had gone out of his way to confront the Australian sense of racial superiority, but it was cruel that his own army should use him as a scapegoat for the events at the Cecil. Ward was still angry. On 10 April, he told his department that the Americans had ‘impeded the course of justice’ and

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demanded answers to several questions. Did the American Government concur with the steps taken by the US Army? Did it intend to bring the accused to trial or would it return him and the witnesses to the jurisdiction of PNG’s civil courts?38 External Affairs sent another note verbale to the US Embassy. After reviewing the foregoing developments, the Australian Government is unable to feel satisfied that the incident involving the death of John Scott has been properly and fully dealt with. The Embassy will appreciate the concern felt by the Australian Government that full justice should be done in a case involving the death of an Australian citizen. In this case, furthermore, the Australian authorities cannot escape the impression that they have been impeded from exercising their rightful jurisdiction.

External Affairs then put Ward’s questions: had the accused been tried under US jurisdiction or would he be returned for trial in PNG? At the end of April, the embassy promised to pass the Australian inquiry back to the State Department.39 Washington did not respond. After so much feverish activity, the Scott case fell into a lull in the next five or six weeks. This quiet was dramatically broken in early June by another and even more provocative question in the House of Representatives. Howard Beale, the Liberal member for Parramatta, NSW, rose in Question Time to tackle the Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs, Dr Evatt, about Scott’s death. A lawyer by training, Beale had entered Parliament only two years before at the age of 48 and was already eyeing a ministry in a future Menzies Government. By the middle of 1948, the Labor Government was increasingly beleaguered, with the conservative Opposition gleefully pouncing on every suggestion of mismanagement. The Scott case offered another promising opening to embarrass Chifley and his ministers. Beale’s interest in the case was perhaps not entirely

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accidental, for he had an aunt who was a notable missionary in PNG.40 Curiously, this was not the only strand of our story that came to involve Beale. Back on 18 March, just days before the Scouts left Finschhafen, Beale rang Halligan about Jeffrey Gill, the patrol officer convicted in Lae on a procurement charge.41 It is not known why Beale decided to lobby External Territories about Gill, but it is possible that his interest in the young kiap had brought him unexpectedly across the Scott case. Or had someone in official circles leaked some of the details to him? However the information had come his way, Beale’s account of Scott’s death was nonetheless garbled: Is the Minister … aware, as I have been informed, that recently in New Guinea an Australian citizen — I think he was a police officer named Scott — was murdered by an American Filippino soldier and that when proceedings were taken by the New Guinea authorities to have a magisterial inquiry, American officers flew from the Philippines and made a claim that the soldier in question should be tried, not by the Australian courts according to Australian law, but by their own tribunals according to American law, and that, when that was resisted, the magisterial inquiry did proceed for some distance, but then the soldier in question and the witnesses disappeared from New Guinea soil? Are these facts stated correctly? If so, what steps have been taken to assert beyond all doubt Australia’s claim to exercise sovereignty within its borders and also to bring the murderer to justice?

Beale raised the stakes here in two respects. First, he claimed that Scott had been murdered. Murder is a more heinous act than manslaughter, a crime motivated by a deliberate and malevolent intent to kill and deserving of much harsher punishment. Second, the use of the word ‘disappear’ enveloped the events in Lae in a cloud of mystery, suggesting that the murderous culprit had been

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spirited away in the dead of night without trace. Oddly, Beale spoke as though he was unaware that one of his colleagues, Tommy White, had already tackled Evatt about the case some months earlier. Although he recalled some of the facts of the Scott case, Evatt was caught off guard and was able to say little on 2 June. He told Parliament that there had been ‘a disputed jurisdiction’ in the case, which had involved soldiers from ‘a special Philippine contingent’ who had been locating the graves of American soldiers who had fallen in New Guinea. Evatt had not dealt with the matter for some months and he promised to provide a fuller response in due course.42 In the next few weeks, officials prepared an answer. Ever the cautious bureaucrat, Reg Halligan questioned the reply drafted by the Attorney-General’s Department. ‘I doubt the wisdom of giving such full details for public use at this stage.’ Halligan thought it best that External Affairs provide some steer on how much information should be released. He personally favoured a brief response, saying as little as possible.43 No doubt wary of creating further controversy, Halligan was a traditional public servant who took a dim view of allowing the public, the press or Parliament for that matter to meddle in government affairs. While these deliberations were going on, the Administration discontinued its appeal. On 9 June, the Crown Law Officer, Esme Bignold, wrote to Phillips to say that he had dropped the appeal. Bignold had been absent on recreation leave throughout the whole brouhaha. He stressed that the magistrate, Assistant District Officer Jack Costelloe, had decided the question of jurisdiction in favour of the prosecution and he was quite satisfied that no court of appeal would overturn this ruling. Nevertheless, no notice of the date for the hearing of the appeal had been served on Bahinting because he had left PNG. Bignold saw no alternative to giving up. A sour taste lingered. Merritt had not carried out his undertaking to conduct a proper police investigation in such a way as to make the evidence available in a trial. ‘Whether this failure is a delib-

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erate one or due to an inability to appreciate the consequences of his acts is a matter which can best be determined, I suppose, by a report being obtained by the American authorities from Major Merritt himself.’44 On 17 June, Evatt rose in the House of Representatives to answer Beale’s question. Halligan’s advice had been rejected and Evatt gave a fairly lengthy outline, stressing that the Administration had upheld Australian sovereignty. However, while he did not stint on offering detail, the normally pugnacious Attorney-General pulled some punches. A comparison of a draft reply in the National Archives and the answer recorded in Hansard indicates that Evatt toned down his criticism of the United States. The draft reply stated that Australia ‘felt that the matter had not been fully and properly dealt with and has addressed an appropriate Note to the Embassy [asking] … whether it is proposed to bring the accused to trial under the United States jurisdiction or to return him and the necessary witnesses to the jurisdiction of the Civil Court of Papua New Guinea’. In Parliament, Evatt merely stated that the Government had asked the embassy if the accused would be brought to trial under a US jurisdiction, dropping any reference to Australia’s displeasure. Criticism of the American authorities was still implicit in Evatt’s response, but the sharper words had been excised. Turning back to Beale’s insinuation that the Government had bungled the case, Evatt contended that all that could be reasonably done by the Administration in the circumstances had been done. The continuing correspondence with the United States ‘has as its object the prosecution to finality of the trial of the accused’. Evatt dispelled any suggestion that the accused had ‘disappeared’ from Australian soil; rather ‘the United States officer and the Filipinos returned under instructions to Manila’. Oddly, he did nothing to counter Beale’s other misconception that Bahinting had been charged with murder. Evatt did not say what the accused had been charged with, implying that his offence was indeed murder. It is noteworthy that

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Hansard recorded Evatt’s reply under the heading, ‘Murder in New Guinea’.45 Not long after Evatt spoke in Parliament, the Pacific Islands Monthly ran an article in its July edition entitled, ‘Death of John H Scott: Victim of Filipino Resentment of Color Bar’. The article was based almost entirely on a ‘private’ letter from an angry American soldier. But this American was not aggrieved by the Administration’s attempt to enforce Australian jurisdiction and to bring Scott’s assailant to book. Not at all. Although the magazine did not identify him, it is clear that the unnamed correspondent was a white soldier who loathed his Mexican and Filipino comrades. The magazine explained that the soldier had served extensively in the Pacific, forming ‘a contempt for the Filipino Scouts … and their filthy, unpleasant habits’. It is worth quoting the soldier’s letter at length: While we were proceeding south we met a northward bound US boat, which was transferring an American Search Team from Lae to Manokwari [in Dutch New Guinea]. This was when I heard first of the Lae incident — and it made my blood boil. This was a team in the command of an American-Mexican officer — he had two American assistants and the rest were Filipino Scouts. These Scouts were accustomed to going to dances and buying liquor and other ‘diversions’. They had plenty of licence in other territories — but this did not go so well in the Australian Territory, and in Lae they noticed the coldness of the Europeans towards them. But the American-Mexican officer assured them in Lae that they were as good as the next man — and this in turn encouraged them in their arrogance. It was the offensive attitude of these Filipinos which caused a brawl at a New Year’s Eve dance in Lae and, as a result, an outstanding citizen of Lae was struck on the head with

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a bottle by one of the Scouts, and died from his injuries. I understand that there has been a lot of jabbering between Washington, Canberra and Manila in regard to this incident and the trial of the Filipino. The last word of it I heard was that the Filipino had been let off, as he had killed in selfdefence. In Manila, according to the newspapers, the killing of an American is not an uncommon thing and the stealing of Army jeeps, at gun-point, is so frequent as to be hard to bear mentioning.

The soldier wrote that the Scouts had been bundled out of Lae to Dutch New Guinea, ‘where the Government has a more kindly attitude towards this class of native’. He stressed that the Dutch officials thought ‘we were taking the Lae incident too seriously’.46 And, so, by the middle of 1948, the events surrounding John Scott’s death had become part of the folklore of the South Pacific and the Philippines. The news of his death and the failure to punish his assailant had spread far and wide.

Chapter Seven

On the Brink

PRIVATE EDUARDO BAHINTING escaped Australian justice, leaving the death of John Scott unexplained and unpunished. The anguish felt by Scott’s family and friends cut deeper and longer, finding no release in a full trial and a conclusive verdict. His death was also not closed, legally and emotionally, for the Australian officials who had tried to judge and punish Bahinting. From Colonel Murray down, these officials felt that Australian justice had not only been denied, but belittled and shunted to one side. They were not going to let this happen again. Chou and Hsueh, the Chinese labourers who had been arrested for abducting and assaulting Pondranei, had no way of knowing that their own fate had been unexpectedly linked to the fate of two men whom they had never met, a Filipino soldier and an Australian mine manager. The image of John Scott, so ghostly in that grainy photograph, was to haunt the trial of

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Chou and Hsueh. Would the labourers pay in part for Bahinting’s apparently unpunished sins? The stakes in the Manus case continued to rise. Australia was the strongest voice in the South Pacific Commission, a body that brought together Australia, Britain, New Zealand, France and the United States to promote development in the Pacific Islands, principally through education and economic aid. The commission met for the first time in Sydney on 11 May 1948, less than a month before the trial of Hsueh and Chou began in Inrim. Confronting several hundred restless Chinese labourers and soldiers on Manus, the Administration was determined to enforce Australian authority. In early June, as the final preparations were being made for the trial, the Americans, but not the Australians, knew that law and order was again becoming more tenuous on Manus. The State Department’s Office of the Foreign Liquidation Commissioner (OFLC) was informed via its Guam branch that the situation inside the Chinese camp at Lorengau was spinning out of control; this intelligence was almost certainly not passed on to the Australians. A fire in the mess hall at the Chinese camp on 4 June killed two labourers and left another in a critical condition with severe burns covering 25 per cent of his body. Captain Wang Yee informed his commanding officer on Guam, General Ting, that the other labourers had become restless and were demanding that their injured workmate be evacuated immediately. Ting instructed Wang to urge the labourers to be patient and to use the military police to maintain order in the camp. Wang was in a difficult position, however, because the military police answered to a separate chain of command running through their own commander back to the provost headquarters in Nanking. ‘The fire and the death of the two labourers,’ one OFLC official, Captain Marcus DeWolf, observed later, ‘started the kettle of human emotions boiling.’ Late in the evening on 6 June, a dispute erupted between Wang and the Chinese military police on board a vessel moored at the local pier.

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The police insisted that some labourers were hiding arms and ammunition in their bags. When Wang denied this and stressed that he had already inspected the luggage, 10 military police savagely beat him, knocking him to the deck, repeatedly kicking his head and chest. The unconscious officer was saved only by the ship’s crew and the labourers. At midnight, Wang was still unconscious, his body badly swollen and his forehead bleeding profusely from a deep gash. Dr Chen, the main BOSEY representative, informed Ting that the camp was gripped by fear and demanded that the assault be punished heavily. He had tried without success to disarm the military police to prevent more conflict and asked that they be withdrawn immediately. Ting promptly appointed Chen commander of the camp until Wang could resume his duties. In a second message to Guam, Chen revealed that the military police had searched the luggage after the beating and found no arms. The commander of the military police had failed to place the offending soldiers in the stockade. Ignoring instructions and still carrying their weapons, the police were unruly. Chen said he would use ‘great patience in handling them’ and affirmed that outloading of the surplus US stores was proceeding as usual. The Chinese and US military authorities on Guam could see that the Chinese camp was delicately poised. They realised that the Administration would react strongly to another and much more serious indication that the camp was lawless. Ting ordered the military police to surrender their weapons to the US Navy’s liaison officer, Lieutenant French, once more forcing the young American to play an unenviable mediating role, and to avoid further conflict until they were evacuated. With Wang recovering, the military police departed from Manus on 13 June.1 Just as the Chinese military command was reasserting its control on Manus, the Chinese Embassy in Canberra moved to secure the release of Chou and Hsueh. On 11 June, an External Affairs official, Laurence McIntyre, called on the Secretary of External Territories, Reg Halligan, to run through his recent conver-

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sation with the Embassy about the fate of the labourers. McIntyre was the official who had liaised throughout early 1948 with the US Embassy about the Scott case and he once more found himself the go-between in an international jurisdictional conflict. He told Halligan that the Chinese Embassy had told him unofficially that it would soon make a formal demand for the labourers to be discharged because no trial had been held. He had asked the Chinese to hold off until he could get an update on the situation. One of Halligan’s offsiders noted that the Embassy would ‘not act if there is some definite reason for the delay and an early trial is now likely’. On 15 June, External Territories asked Murray for a trial date because the Chinese Embassy was ‘again pressing’. Transport difficulties between Port Moresby and Manus were slowing things down, Murray replied some days later, and no date for the trial could be given.2 About this time, the Solicitor General, Kenneth Bailey, confirmed that the Chinese could be tried under Australian law, noting that the Manus case conceivably affected three groups of people. First, the members of a foreign military force who were based in PNG with the consent of the Australian authorities could be prosecuted for offences committed while not on duty and outside their billet or camp. It was important that such offences did not ‘relate only to the internal discipline of the force’. Although he did not say so, Bailey indicated that foreign military personnel would be subject to a court martial of the foreign power for offences committed while on duty or within the perimeters of their camp. Second, unless they possessed diplomatic privileges, the civilian employees of a foreign government were ‘in the same position as ordinary residents of the Territory in regard to criminal jurisdiction’. Lastly, civilian employees of private individuals or corporations were in the same position as the second group. Bailey stressed that External Affairs had ‘no objection … to [these] views’.3 As McIntyre had warned, the Chinese Embassy formally requested on 18 June the immediate release of the two labourers and asked ‘the Commonwealth Government to give all necessary

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protections to the Chinese personnel of the Marianas Service Command now stationed on Manus’.4 Despite the traditional florid compliments of a diplomatic note, the embassy’s requests were abrasive, even confrontational. It was significant that the embassy simply asked that Hsueh and Chou be unconditionally released without indicating if a trial would take place under Chinese auspices. The Secretary of External Affairs, John Burton, urged his colleagues in External Territories to provide a response as soon as possible so he could brief the embassy.5 While this diplomatic to-and-fro was taking place, events on Manus again threatened to get out of hand. All had been quiet in the Chinese camp for nearly a week after the departure of the rebellious military police, but this calm was shattered on 18 June by the death of the third labourer who had been severely burned in the mess hall fire. After fighting for his life for two weeks, Liang Shuloong succumbed to septicemia, and his corpse was placed in a casket. A few days earlier, Captain Kuo Ke-cha, the officer who had handled much of the Pondranei affair, had punished some labourers from Hupei Province for stealing from the camp’s warehouse. The labourers now charged that Kuo had placed Liang’s body in the casket too early, preventing the proper mourning ritual, as a form of revenge for the theft. Incensed by what they took as a deliberately insulting gesture, they assaulted Kuo, slightly injuring him. Later in the day, the camp’s commanders sent a message to Guam revealing that the labourers had assaulted another officer. Although the situation was ‘under control’, they said weapons were needed urgently and asked the US Army to order Lieutenant French to hand back the arms and ammunition that he had taken off the Chinese military police. The US Army was far from happy about this, and it suggested to General Ting that ‘the issuing of arms to the Chinese would raise future conflicts from bare hand to automatic weapon level if insurgent groups stole them’. After some discussion, French was ordered to give one pistol to the commander of the Chinese camp.6 As far as the extant record indi-

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cates, the Administration was unaware of the growing tensions inside the Chinese camp. What would District Officer Bloxham have done if he had found out? Arguably, this was a question of the Chinese contingent’s own internal discipline, but the assault on Captain Wang on 6 June had been committed outside the confines of the camp, squarely in Bloxham’s jurisdiction. A small makeshift courtroom in Inrim on Manus was a long way indeed from Nanking and Canberra. On 26 June 1948, five months after the events in the Quonset hut on the road from Lugos to Lorengau, the trial of Hsueh and Chou for assault and deprivation of liberty finally commenced in the Supreme Court before Justice Phillips. Once more the dividing lines between the executive and judicial arms of the Administration were blurred. As acting Administrator, Phillips had overseen the operation to force the Chinese camp to hand over the labourers. This whole episode had become intensely political, involving several senior ministers, including the Prime Minister, and questions in Parliament. Phillips had been under considerable pressure to ensure that the situation on Manus did not get out of hand, and he had certainly felt harassed by the probing questions of the press and by Canberra’s insistent cables. Now, months later, he was charged with the task of deciding guilt or innocence. Like his fellow judge, Justice Ralph Gore, Phillips faced a gruelling judicial workload in 1948, sitting regularly in Port Moresby and going on circuit on six occasions, usually for three weeks or more at a time. In the middle of all of this, he still managed to attend a conference in Australia in May to discuss the establishment of the permanent Administration. In June and July, when he sat in the Pondranei case, Phillips also heard cases in Lae, Rabaul, Wewak and Goroka. At the end of 1948, he told Murray that this workload took its toll: These circuits and journeys involved thousands of miles of air travel, mostly in approximately 200 mile stages, in all

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kinds of aircraft and conditions … in order to get as much work done as possible, I have sat extremely long hours and repeatedly at night and on Saturdays … obviously there is a limit to this sort of thing (the limit of one’s physical and mental endurance) and in any case it is wholly undesirable to sit such long hours over long periods.7

Phillips often added the taxing tasks of the job of acting Administrator to this formidable judicial burden, but, whatever the strains, he was committed to the cause of upholding law and order. Given his background and his inclinations, Phillips strove to judge fairly and firmly, and Hsueh and Chou would see plenty of both qualities in the course of their trial. The Deputy Crown Law Officer, Cyril McCubbery, appeared for the prosecution, the abortive attempt to prosecute Bahinting for the manslaughter of John Scott still fresh in his mind. Who would defend the labourers? The two private lawyers based in Port Moresby were either otherwise engaged or unwilling to appear before the court in Manus for anything less than a hefty fee. They would not appear in the case under the Poor Persons Legal Assistance Ordinance. Using the terms of the ordinance, the Administration appointed another representative of the Crown Law Office, Adrian Jones, to defend the labourers. Jones was the fifth and last member to join the severely understaffed Crown Law Office. Born in Richmond, Melbourne, on 12 October 1907, he completed a law degree at the University of Melbourne and was admitted to the Bar on 1 October 1934. He worked first for his father in Melbourne and later established his own practice in Wangaratta in north-east Victoria. In May 1941, he sold the practice and enlisted in the AIF at the age of 33. His active service was short. He was captured after the fall of Singapore in February 1942, and spent the next three and a half years in Japanese POW camps. Like so many Australians, he returned home in poor health and was discharged from the Army in April

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1946 with the rank of corporal. When he applied for a job with the PNG Crown Law Office in June 1947, Jones was working for the Deputy Crown Solicitor in Melbourne, prosecuting breaches of federal regulations. In his application, he stressed that he had acquired some experience of living in the tropics during his military service and was ‘accordingly quite prepared for appointment outside Australia’.8 It was left to James McCrae, a family friend and private secretary for the Minister for Defence, John Dedman, to point out that this application was motivated in part by personal unhappiness. McCrae wrote to Halligan: ‘The reason for him desiring this appointment is owing to his unhappy domestic life — apparently this is one of those unfortunate cases where the marriage has run off the rails, and he finds that life in his home town under the existing conditions is intolerable.’ This explained why ‘a man holding a lucrative position in a temperate climate’ was willing to go to PNG.9 Although his appointment was approved in October 1947, lingering poor health from his wartime internment held Jones back for some months and he was unable to set off for Port Moresby until 4 June 1948. He left his wife, Roma, and two sons, aged seven and 11, behind in Australia. The over-stretched Crown Law Office could not allow its new recruits any time to settle into such a new working environment, and Jones was asked to defend the Chinese labourers within weeks of arriving in the Territory. The Pondranei case landed in his lap so suddenly that Jones had not been admitted to the local bar, and Justice Phillips had to make an exception to allow him to appear for the defence. Given his legal experience in Wangaratta and Melbourne, standing up in a ramshackle court in distant Inrim must have been quite strange. He quickly discovered that Hsueh and Chou were in a vulnerable position. The Chinese Board of Supplies had neither hired a lawyer nor provided any financial support. At this stage at least, the labourers would receive no significant backing from their own government. Phillips granted Hsueh and Chou legal aid and Jones provided his services free of

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charge. It is noteworthy that the Administration went to some lengths to ensure that due process was followed and that the defendants were represented. The Australians did not want any suggestion to arise that the Chinese had been railroaded or denied the full protection of the legal system — they wanted to prove that justice could be applied fairly. This was a complicated trial, a meeting of three very different cultures in one small courtroom. Most of the witnesses were Melanesians who spoke either Tok Pisin or one of a number of indigenous languages. The two accused were Chinese and could speak neither English nor Tok Pisin. And the judge, lawyers and police officers were Australian who could speak no Chinese and perhaps some Tok Pisin. This confusing situation required three groups of interpreters: Chinese, Tok Pisin and indigenous. Bruno Chan, a Chinese resident of Rabaul, could speak English and the Chinese dialect of Changsu, the home town of the two defendants, not far from Shanghai. Chan was sworn in as chief interpreter, taking a Christian oath. Another member of the Chinese labour force, Gat Sing Kui, was sworn in in ‘Chinese fashion’ as assistant interpreter.10 Gat was also a native of Changsu. Cyril Lambert, the assistant medical officer at the District Office in Inrim, stood by as the Tok Pisin interpreter. At one point during the trial, a Melanesian named Boasing was called on to interpret Usiai, the language of the people who lived in the inland areas of Manus. Throughout the trial, Lambert and Boasing translated the evidence of the Melanesian witnesses from Tok Pisin or Usiai into English, before Chan and Gat rendered the English version into Chinese. Such laborious interpretation left plenty of room for changes in emphasis, mistakes or misunderstanding. Hsueh and Chou heard the evidence through two filters. And, of course, the judge’s comments and adjudications had to be translated from English into either Chinese or Tok Pisin.11 Running to more than 100 typed pages, the trial transcript provides a window into the mind-set of the colonial authorities. At

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times, the original flavour and rhythm of the evidence of the Melanesian and Chinese witnesses comes through, with colloquial phrases or non-English terms appearing in inverted commas. Unfortunately, the notes represent Phillips’ own compressed version of the evidence and much of the character of what the witnesses said is lost. Nonetheless, this document is one of the very few in the bureaucratic record in which the thoughts and statements of the Melanesian and Chinese actors in this drama are preserved. It demonstrates abundantly that the Melanesian, Chinese and Australian participants were working from different cultural premises and understood the world in different terms, making some misunderstanding unavoidable. The Chinese and Melanesians were operating in the Australian legal system, a world governed by unfamiliar rituals, practices and modes of speech. It is notable that the trial transcript and the files of the Department of External Territories reveal little about the lives of the accused. What the Australians knew about the Chinese accused can be swiftly summed up: Hsueh and Chou were the employees of an American corporation working for the Chinese Army; one was a cobbler, the other a carpenter; they came from a town called Changsu in central China; and they did not speak English. Nothing more. The Australians did not even record the ages of the two defendants, let alone a short biographical profile. Driven by a lack of curiosity, the pressure of events or something harsher, this paucity of information ensured that the two men at the centre of the trial remained largely anonymous. After a brief opening statement, McCubbery called his first witness, Dr William Smythe, the Administration’s local medical officer. Smythe said he had examined Pondranei at the District Office in Inrim on the morning of 26 January. ‘I found he had two black eyes; a bruise on the right side of his thorax or chest, posteriorally, about four square inches in area, from which some blood had escaped; another bruise of a similar area on left buttock from which some blood had also expressed; also he had abrasions on both

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wrists.’ McCubbery asked what could have caused such injuries. The abrasions on the wrists had been caused by something rubbing with ‘fairly considerable force’, Smythe stated, while the bruise on the chest ‘might be the result of a blow with a hard object’. Under cross-examination, Smythe said he had decided it was not necessary to treat Pondranei’s injuries because they were only minor. A ‘doctorboy’ in the village could attend to such relatively simple injuries. But it is worth noting that a significant number of deaths in postwar PNG resulted from minor assaults that ruptured the spleens of the victims. A high malaria rate meant that many people had dangerously swollen spleens, which were liable to rupture much more easily than would normally be the case. Smythe did not mention this phenomenon, but it demonstrates that the two Chinese could have faced a manslaughter charge with a different turn of events.12 Adrian Jones tried to minimise the nature of the crime. Pondranei had told White and Smythe that his assailants had tied him to the horizontal beam of a Quonset hut with his hands tied behind his back and his toes just touching the ground. Jones suggested that this pose could have dislocated Pondranei’s shoulder. Smythe admitted that being tied up in such a fashion could indeed dislocate shoulders or muscles. Jones pressed the issue. ‘Did Pondranei have any such injury?’ No, Smythe said, he did not. Clearly, then, Pondranei’s physical injuries were not particularly serious. Yet that was not the point. The prosecution had established that the islander had sustained discernible injuries, which could have been caused by the application of force. Smythe’s evidence, delivered in a direct, scientific manner, was interpreted for the accused. But the interpretation was not direct. Rather, Phillips read out his notes summarising Smythe’s evidence and this rendition was then translated into Chinese by the interpreters. The going was not easy. Pondranei himself took the stand next with Lambert interpreting. The young Melanesian must have found the European

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court, even in its less than formal surroundings in a Quonset hut, strange and perhaps a little scary. Phillips’ physical appearance would have been daunting given that he would likely have appeared in formal judicial attire, scarlet robes and grey wig. After stating that he ‘belonged’ to Pulsa, a village on the road to Lugos, Pondranei recalled the day that ‘this trouble arose’ between him and the Chinese. ‘It was a Sunday — after the white man’s Christmas and New Year — but exactly how many moons ago it was, I cannot now say because I don’t understand “counting” time.’ An off-the-cuff comment can reveal much. This statement demonstrated how the Melanesian and European societies existed side-by-side on Manus, sometimes overlapping but often remaining quite separate. The whole modern, Western conception of time, marked by the scientific divisions of a mechanical clock, was unfamiliar to Pondranei — ‘counting’ time made no sense. After her second sojourn on the island in 1953, Margaret Mead argued that the exchange of the old system of genealogical ties for the European calendar was one important mark of Manus’s engagement with the outside world. Before the war, the islanders could not count time and located themselves instead in a bloodline linked by generations of men. The war changed this world view profoundly. Mead maintained that calendrical life began on Manus in 1946: Before 1946 the Manus did not know what date it was; they lived in a different time, a time in which each generation counted forward and backward from themselves, unconcerned with whether there had been a beginning or would be an end. As events were once anchored in a mesh of genealogical relationships, they can now be anchored in time and space, if each of these events is written down on paper.

The last point was crucial. Mead believed that the new conception of time made sense only if an islander was literate. Like most of his

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fellow islanders, Pondranei’s sense of time was still traditional, tied to the rhythms of nature rather than mathematics and devices; the lunar cycle indicated the passage of time. The absence of seasonal changes aside from a brief monsoonal break reinforced this nonchronological sense of time. Mead also noted that old Manus lacked a ceremonial calender: ‘All events of importance were triggered by individual happenings in the lives of human beings, a birth, menarche, ear piercing, marriage, death.’ European settlement introduced the Christian calendar with ‘its recurrent day of rest and its high points at Christmas and Easter and Pentecost’.13 In line with this broad cultural change, this redefinition of societal markers, Pondranei recalled his imprisonment in relation to two major European festivals, Christmas and New Year. He had a hybrid sense of time, which combined the pre-modern and the modern. Throughout the trial, the court followed a strict chronological schedule, adjourning and resuming at precise times. This chronological order mirrored the structured, precise steps of the Western legal system, its emphasis on due process, accuracy and objectivity. Pondranei’s passing comment about not ‘counting’ time also underscored the different way that Melanesians ‘remembered’ things; they recalled one event in relation to others rather than by placing it on a calendar. ‘[Melanesians] were as exact about place as Europeans about time,’ writes Bill Gammage, ‘as approximate about time as Europeans about place.’14 Phillips and the two lawyers accepted Pondranei’s non-chronological sense of time, revealing that the European legal system had accommodated certain aspects of the underlying Melanesian culture. If his sense of time was imprecise by European standards, Pondranei’s description of the events on that fateful day was sharp and immediate. He had gone to the bartering place at Lugos, he told the court, to sell some pineapples to the Chinese. ‘Plenty boys’ regularly went to this location to trade with the residents of the Chinese camp. Rain had forced him and other ‘boys’ into a nearby hut, where he had swapped the pineapples for some cigarettes. The

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rain had continued so he had decided to shelter in the hut, falling asleep on a raised platform, about two metres above the ground, with a friend, Hapkas (Tok Pisin for half-caste).15 ‘Four Chinese who were walking about in the rain, came inside the house, saw us sleeping on the bench, and sang out “come down”.’ The Chinese had come to the hut armed, Pondranei remembered, one with some pitpit (reed), a second with a plank, a third with a piece of telephone wire and the last with some ‘wire-brass’. Pondranei indicated that this ‘wire-brass’ was thicker than the electric cable strung up in the courtroom. Turning towards the accused, he stated that Hsueh had carried the pitpit while Chou had wielded the plank. Held by the wrists by two of the Chinese, he had been pushed by a third in the centre of the back, out of the hut. Outside, the Chinese had accused him of stealing the cigarettes, Pondranei continued, a charge he had denied repeatedly to no avail. Next, the Chinese had pulled his arms behind his back and fastened his hands with a lap-lap (a cotton loincloth) and a thick wire cable. Pondranei said he had not dared to turn his head so he had not seen who tied his hands. A portion of the wire cable had been left free to dangle down. Chou had taken hold of the cable, shoving him along the road towards Lorengau. At this stage, his captors had declared that they would take him to the Chinese military police. ‘But they did not take me to the police at Lorengau but to a “house” [the Quonset hut] at a locality we call Pondalis.’ There, the Chinese had tied him to one of the semicircular iron supports of the hut. Using a ‘policeboy’ as a subject, Pondranei showed the court how he had been ‘hung’ from the rafter. His arms had been pulled high up behind his back, his wrists tightly bound, pushing his body forward and leaving his toes, but not his heels, just touching the ground. With him hanging from the rafter in this uncomfortable posture, the beating had begun. Hsueh had been the first one to hit him, a hard slap across the face and eyes. Pondranei said he had closed his eyes as he did not want them to get hurt. ‘I felt another

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slap across the face but could not see who had delivered the blow.’ The Chinese had then beaten him with the plank and the pitpit around the back, buttocks and legs until he had become unconscious. Some time later, he had ‘come to’ and found that he was no longer fastened to the rafter. The Chinese had left him lying on the floor with his wrists still bound with the lap-lap. He had then fled from the hut into the bush and walked to a village called Tingau, where an old man, Pokawi, had untied his wrists, severing the laplap with a bush knife. Pondranei’s evidence suggested that he had been subjected to a carefully planned assault: his assailants had come fully armed and equipped with material to subdue their victim. Given that they apparently did not share a common language, the communication between the four Chinese and the Melanesian throughout the encounter must have been halting and frustrating, small misunderstandings fraying tempers. The prosecution now turned the young Melanesian to the crucial subject of identification. Pondranei recalled that he had gone to the Chinese camp with ‘the number one police officer’ (Superintendent Grimshaw), Assistant District Officer White and Sub-Inspector Day. At Lorengau, the police had ‘lined up’ the labourers and he had identified ‘the China’. Jones now stepped forward. As the cross-examination unfolded, it became apparent that he hoped to base the defence on one main ground: faulty identification. First, he emphasised the imprecision of Pondranei’s memory and the inadequate nature of his powers of observation. Under questioning, Pondranei admitted that he ‘could not see any of the Chinese who had assaulted [him]’ in the first line-up presided over by White. Perhaps more tellingly, he said he could not tie either parade to a specific date. The second line-up organised by Grimshaw ‘was some time later, not too long, but how many moons later I cannot say’. Pondranei said he had ‘marked’ the taller of the accused, Hsueh. ‘Do all Chinese,’ asked Jones, ‘look alike to you?’ Pondranei admitted that Chinese did resemble each other. ‘So I was careful not to identify anyone I was

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not quite sure of — I was only quite sure of one — the accused I marked.’ Although he established that Pondranei had not struggled against his captors and that he had often been unable to see who delivered the blows, Jones turned to an old truism of Western folklore, the sameness of Chinese faces, to mount his defence — a crude but possibly effective tactic. Given the standard beliefs of his day, he would have found nothing untoward or improper in his line of questioning. As the cross-examination drew to a close, Pondranei claimed that the Chinese who had bartered the cigarettes for the pineapples were not the accused, reminding everyone that two of the alleged assailants remained at large.16 Other Melanesian witnesses testified that they too had travelled to the Lugos bung to trade with the Chinese. Hapkas, a resident of Sori village, said he had sheltered from the rain in the hut, sleeping on the same raised bench as Pondranei. He identified Hsueh and Chou in the courtroom as two of the Chinese who had come into the hut, actually touching the accused as a form of recognition. ‘After saying something in their own language,’ he remembered, ‘they beckoned Pondranei (not me) to come down.’ From the bench, Hapkas had watched the conflict between Pondranei and the foreigners, following the garbled conversation. Pondranei had denied stealing the cigarettes, but the intruders had pushed him roughly out of the hut. ‘The two accused held him — a third Chinese, who is not here in Court, did the binding of the wrists.’ Under cross-examination, Hapkas said he had ‘marked’ the shorter accused, Chou, at the second line-up. ‘Do you understand what happens,’ Jones asked, ‘if you tell lies in Court?’ Hapkas replied that he understood. He had seen Chou enter the hut carrying a plank of wood and with wire coiled around one shoulder. Later he had seen Chou hit Pondranei with the plank. Sinyenyam, a resident of Harian Island, told much the same story, though he did not see any blows delivered by either accused. He declared that he too had ‘marked’ Chou at the second parade.17 And so the first day of the trial ended.

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Until this point, the trial had focused on mundane issues, suggesting that the case would be a simple criminal matter, decided as a matter of fact. Were Hsueh and Chou guilty of assaulting Pondranei? The defence counsel, Jones, had indicated that he would base his case on faulty identification. All very straightforward. On 28 June, the second day of proceedings, Jones tried a different gambit, suddenly raising the case to a more complicated level. He told Phillips that he had received new instructions over the weekend directing him to tender a plea that the accused are members of an armed military force of a friendly foreign power admitted to the Territory with the consent of the Territorial Government; and that therefore, the Territorial Government has impliedly [sic] undertaken not to exercise any jurisdiction over the force collectively or its members individually which would be inconsistent with its continuing to exist as an efficient force available for the purposes of its Sovereign.

Jones contended that Hsueh and Chou were ‘completely exempt from the territorial jurisdiction’. This was, of course, the argument that Wurfel and Maule had run so relentlessly in Lae during the Scott case. Jones said it would now be necessary to call highranking Chinese officers from Guam to testify, and he requested an adjournment until the new witnesses could travel south to Manus. Phillips asked how long this would take. Despite his bold bid, Jones was a little sceptical and he admitted that Manus and Guam were connected by infrequent transportation links. Given that they had not seen fit to supply a solicitor, would these same high-ranking officers be willing to travel a long distance to testify?18 Jones did not reveal who had provided these new instructions, and we can only assume that the commanders of the Chinese camp had so instructed him, though this is not clear. The Chinese authorities were still playing a low-key role in the trial. Were they uninterested

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in the outcome, seeing the accused as expendable labourers? Did they fear becoming entangled in a messy court case in a distant land? Or had they decided to ignore the trial almost as a matter of principle, denying its very right to sit in judgment of the two labourers? It is conceivable that the Chinese generals on Guam had concluded that any official or high-level Chinese involvement would merely lend credence to the trial. Whatever their motivation, the Chinese left Jones in an uncomfortable position. It was not practicable, Phillips pronounced, to hear evidence on the plea concerning jurisdiction in the makeshift courtroom in Inrim. Normally such pleas were handled at the beginning of a trial but ‘the circumstances here, at Manus, and the circumstances of the accused (for example, as to facilities for getting advice) are not normal’. Phillips ruled that the trial would reconvene in Rabaul in late July to deal with this complicated matter of law, but, in the meantime, he would continue to hear ‘evidence on the merits’ in Inrim.19 Several other islanders testified. Under cross-examination, Sirip, a resident of Harengan Island, said he had been unable to identify the attackers at the second parade. ‘They all looked alike to me; they all have the same kind of eyes … there were so many Chinese there.’ He was now sure, however, that the shorter accused, Chou, had beaten Pondranei with a plank. This statement was unconvincing. Next, Nowan told the court that he had travelled from Pitilu Island to buy some cigarettes at the bung. Returning home, he had walked past the hut near the pier just as four Chinese had dragged Pondranei out. ‘They pulled him along the road … I followed.’ Hsueh had grabbed Pondranei by the hair and drawn a knife across his throat in a ‘showing’ way but not cutting the flesh. Nowan said he had ‘sang out’, trying to stop Hsueh, but had fled when he too was threatened. He affirmed that he had been able to identify only Chou at the second line-up.20 Nowan was the last Melanesian witness. Assistant District Officer Richard White now moved into the witness stand. He was the one official who had been involved in

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the incident since its beginning, visiting the Chinese camp on at least four occasions and attending both identification parades. He told the court that the first line-up on the parade ground of the Chinese camp had been ‘very difficult … the Chinese were truculent, jumping from rank to rank, and shouting out’. About 200 Chinese had been asked to stand in lines in a parade area surrounded by huts, no more than 18 metres by 45 metres. Pondranei and the other islanders had been unable to pick out the assailants. Given the fraught events earlier in the year, White’s testimony was surprisingly muted and he left out much of the detail contained in his statement written in late April. He did not mention the Administration’s fears that the Chinese had rebelled, acquiring weapons, including submachine guns and grenades, and turned their camp into a fortress. Similarly, he did not reveal that he had ordered his constables during the first parade to load their rifles and fix bayonets. White emphasised that Superintendent Grimshaw had been careful to organise the second parade on 25 March in a proper fashion, making sure that the islanders approached the line-up one by one, the rest remaining in a nearby office. ‘After each “boy” inspected the lines of Chinese, the Chinese were invited to move about and change their position in the lines.’ Pondranei had placed his hand on Hsueh’s shoulder and Nowan had ‘marked’ Chou. Under cross-examination, White admitted that as many as six natives had tried unsuccessfully to identify the attackers. ‘The position looked ugly … and some [of the islanders] said there was too much row, and too many Chinese.’ White said some of the islanders had been too frightened to venture out onto the parade ground. Jones drew White’s attention to the delay between the two parades. ‘Would two months be a long time for natives to remember?’ White replied that it ‘would be in this case, I think, for natives to remember Asiatics’.21 The two Australians here reflected the common belief that Melanesians were either primitives, less capable of logical thought and reliable memory than

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Europeans, or somehow akin to children, easily confused and misled. White was followed in the stand by Sub-Inspector Charles Carr. Superintendent Grimshaw, the key actor in the resolution of the stand-off on Manus, did not testify, sending one of his junior officers instead. Most likely Grimshaw was too busy to travel all the way north again. Carr said he had sat in on the interrogation of Hsueh, Chou and two other Chinese before the second parade had occurred, taking rough notes as Grimshaw asked questions. He recalled that Hsueh had stated, ‘I tied a native up. I did not beat him.’22 He confirmed that the second parade was conducted properly and that Pondanei and Nowan had both made positive identifications. Early on 29 June, the third day of the trial, Jones asserted that the evidence against the accused was ‘so slight that it would be dangerous to let the case go to the jury’.23 No one had been identified at the first identification parade and a full two months had elapsed before a second line-up was organised. Contending that two months was ‘a long time for natives to remember Asiatic faces’, Jones submitted that there was insufficient evidence to make a prima-facie case. Phillips rejected this submission, however, and ruled that he would not ‘usurp the functions of the jury’. At this point, more than two days into the case, two voices had not yet been heard — the accused. They had not been called by the prosecution and had merely listened to the proceedings anxiously through interpreters. Jones now revealed that he had advised his clients not to testify or to make a statement, ‘though in some ways they want to’. Although he accepted full responsibility for this advice, he clearly felt uneasy about this situation, aware of the unusual nature of the case. ‘I am not sure if they understand my action in so advising them.’ Here, the defence lawyer had put his finger on one of the most vexed aspects of the trial — the accused were being tried and judged by an alien legal system. Phillips decided it was time to provide the labourers with a run-down on

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the basic features of Australian criminal law. It was somewhat late in the piece to launch into an explanation of the principles of the Australian justice system and its rules of evidence. Such an explanation would have been better at the start of the trial, but Phillips could see an obvious problem, and he called Captain Kuo into the court to help explain the criminal procedure being played out in Inrim. Kuo had been involved in the case from the outset and he had himself been assaulted by his own labourers less than three weeks previously. Phillips explained that the prosecution in a criminal case had to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The defendants could opt for one of three courses of action: they could remain silent; they could give evidence under oath or affirmation, laying themselves open to cross-examination; or they could make unsworn or unaffirmed statements, in which case they could not be cross-examined. At some length, Phillips ran through the pitfalls and strengths of each option, noting that testifying usually carried more weight than making an unsworn statement. ‘Sometimes counsel think that accused adopting either of these courses may “say too much”, but I do not say that this is the position here.’24 It is, of course, impossible to judge how well these concepts were translated into Chinese. Were Kuo and the interpreters able to render the difference between sworn and unsworn statements comprehensible? In any case, after conferring with Jones and Kuo for half an hour, Hsueh and Chou opted not to testify. Although this course of action might well have been in the best interests of the labourers, it meant they remained largely silent in the trial. With the accused still looking on from the sidelines, Jones announced that he intended to call only one witness, Captain Kuo. According to the transcript, Kuo was not a Christian but believed in ‘solemn affirmation — not in plate breaking and blowing out of match’. It is not clear from the transcript if Kuo himself referred to these alternative Chinese oaths, though this notation highlighted the exotic nature of the trial. Duly affirmed, Kuo testified in

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English with the interpreters translating his words into Chinese for the accused. On 26 January, White and some ‘native soldiers’ had come to the camp to lodge a complaint of assault against four labourers. After a discussion with White, Kuo said he had agreed that Pondranei could attempt to identify his assailants. In contrast with White’s picture of near pandemonium in the mess hall, Kuo painted a scene of military discipline: At dinner time, in the dining room, I told all the workmen to sit in their proper places at the tables. There are foremen for each section of labourers (carpenters’ section etc.) and I asked them to keep watch on their respective sections. I then suggested to Mr White that the identification take place in the dining room. But he refused this and asked that they should be called out on to a space on kitchen side. I called the men out and they were lined up.

Kuo said ‘everybody in the camp was on the parade ground’, though he admitted that it was impossible to know if every single man was present given the large size of the workforce. Pondranei and several other natives had picked out one man, but, after asking a few questions, White had decided that this man ‘was not involved and had not been at Lugos at the time of trouble’. Under cross-examination by McCubbery, Kuo denied that the labourers were shouting and jumping about. Like White a day earlier, Kuo was being economical with the facts. He did not admit that he had resisted Australian authority and he failed to disclose that he had travelled to the District Office a day after the first parade offering some quick rough justice to settle things by allowing the islanders to thrash the labourers. The prosecution also opted not to raise this incident, again containing the scope of the trial.25 Guided by Jones, the main thrust of Kuo’s evidence was directed at establishing that the Chinese labourers were subject to Nationalist military discipline, thus rendering them exempt from

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Australian jurisdiction. Kuo told the court that the Chinese were employed by BOSEY, the Board of Supplies, an arm of the Executive Yuan. Just as the Chinese accused had been taken through the unfamiliar principles of Australian justice, so Kuo now ran the court through the intricacies of the Nationalist system of government. Here, the trial moved away from the more prosaic facts of the case to a consideration of a distant and alien political structure. Now it was the turn of the Australians to feel out of their depth. The implications of Kuo’s political and administrative description were clear: the labourers were not liable to Australian prosecution. Kuo stated that a contract between China and the United States permitted BOSEY to remove the supplies from Manus in a military-style operation. The labourers were provided with military uniforms, while soldiers guarding the camp were ‘told to take extreme measures to prevent looting, even shooting’. A lieutenant of the military police was empowered to handle misdemeanours such as theft before consulting the camp’s commanding officer. Kuo said the head of the Board of Supplies, Major General Kiang, was responsible for the Manus camp. Based in Shanghai, Kiang was still on the Army’s active list.26 After three days of evidence, Phillips adjourned the trial on the afternoon of 29 June. Inrim had never seen such an unusual legal procedure. Ten witnesses had given testimony: six Melanesians, three white Australians and one Chinese. The prosecution had steadily built a case against the accused, establishing positive identifications. Ever conscious of the need to prevent the case from escalating, External Affairs informed the Chinese Embassy back in Canberra that the accused had again been released on bail and that the trial would reconvene in a month in Rabaul. Unfortunately, the official records do not contain anything concerning the activities of Hsueh and Chou during the one-month adjournment. They were still a long way from home, but at least they were not languishing in a prison and could instead retreat during the lull in proceedings into Rabaul’s Chinatown, a much more familiar

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cultural setting. While Hsueh and Chou sat around with nothing to do and waited, the Chinese operation continued apace on Manus. By this point, the trial had unexpectedly assumed much wider implications, with questions of international law muddying the waters. During the adjournment, the defence and the prosecution scrambled to find any documents that would clarify the status of the Chinese on Manus. How indeed had they come to be on the island? Jones had claimed in Inrim that the Chinese and Australian governments had reached an agreement conferring extraterritorial immunity on the Chinese labour force on Manus. On 5 July, the Administrator, Murray, informed Canberra that Jones had requested two things. First, he wanted ‘to be furnished with formal proof acceptable by court of alleged agreement’. Second, he had asked that the Chinese Embassy arrange for General Ting to be sent from Guam to appear before the court in Rabaul to establish the status of the accused.27 Armed with this document and a Chinese general in the witness stand, Jones felt sure that he could clinch the case. The prosecution was equally determined to sink any notion that the Chinese were on the island with some kind of official immunity from prosecution. After scouring its files, External Territories could find no evidence of a written or oral agreement between the two governments concerning the Manus operation. External Affairs came up with the same result. Unbeknown to the Australians, the Americans had, as we shall see, examined this very topic themselves a month earlier to keep an obstreperous Australian planter under control and found no evidence of an agreement between Australia and China. This glaring gap gave the Pondranei trial a whole new twist.

Chapter Eight

Judgment Day

HARRY OCKENDON FLETCHER was a colourful character, at times unconventional and always larger than life, who managed to create trouble wherever he went. A New South Welshman born on 22 July 1894, in Wallsend, he was a veteran of World War I, having fought with the 6th Lighthorse in the Middle East in 1915–16. According to his last wife, Joyce, he was mentioned in dispatches on Gallipoli.1 After the Great War, he was one of that group of Australians who travelled up to New Guinea in the early 1920s to run plantations. He worked a property near Madang for a decade and then purchased the Salami Plantation, covering 1,000 hectares of Los Negros on the eastern tip of Manus, for £16,000 in 1935. From all accounts, Salami was hardly a thriving proposition, and Fletcher still owed nearly £12,000 at the beginning of World War II. Like the other European residents on the island, he was

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evacuated before the Japanese occupation, hurriedly taking a few personal belongings with him. He later joined the Australian Army, serving as a lieutenant in the War Graves Unit. His stint in the armed forces was short, however, and he was discharged as medically unfit on 3 May 1942, having served for nine months, three of those in Port Moresby. Meanwhile, his property on Los Negros was not faring well. In mid-December 1941, retreating Australian soldiers destroyed buildings and stores across Manus to deny the Japanese anything of value, damaging part of Salami. After the Allied reconquest of Manus in 1944, the plantation was subsumed into the American base, engineers removing many palms to make way for a vast war machine. By the end of the war, Australian sabotage, Japanese occupation and American landclearing had reduced Fletcher’s property to a sorry state. Soon after the Japanese surrender, Fletcher set about reclaiming his plantation and securing compensation from the Australian Government for the damages inflicted by the war, at one point demanding as much as £20,000. Manus was a restricted zone for several years after the war, requiring special entry permits, initially from the US Army, and Fletcher was forced to press his claims for some time from Dubbo and later Karuah, NSW. A tenacious and cantankerous fellow, he bombarded politicians, from his local member right up to Prime Minister Chifley, with a string of letters that were at once beseeching and threatening. Officials in Canberra quickly came to see the planter as a problem, dreading his regular telephone calls. They acknowledged that he had some grounds for claiming a certain amount of recompense, but also noted that other parties, including a firm of labour overseers, had mounted counterclaims against the owner of Salami. Revealing that he was an aggressive litigant, Fletcher engaged a firm of solicitors in Sydney in late 1947 to press his claims for compensation and a re-entry permit. Fletcher finally managed to get back to Manus in early March 1948, only weeks after the Pondranei assault had taken place, to

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find that a large part of his dilapidated plantation was now unexpectedly occupied by the Chinese contingent. From that moment, he engaged in an energetic vendetta against the Chinese, striving to evict the labourers from his land, hiding some of the surplus US stores in secluded parts of the plantation, and submitting often highly inflated bills for rent and compensation to the BOSEY commanders and the remaining US personnel on the island. After a lull in his efforts, Fletcher escalated his vendetta in June, just days before the Pondranei trial started in Inrim, forcing the Chinese to stop their operations until he was paid rent and posting Salami against trespassers. The Americans took this as a direct challenge to their authority. Fletcher was an ex-soldier and had several weapons in his possession. The State Department presented the Australian Embassy in Washington with an aide-mémoire on 23 June contending that Fletcher and District Officer Bloxham had pledged not to interfere with the Chinese operations. But now Bloxham had ‘washed his hands of the matter’, stating that he had ‘a power to act only when civil law is violated’, while Fletcher was threatening to initiate legal action. This impasse was preventing the orderly completion of the Chinese mission and delaying indefinitely the departure of the labourers. The State Department affirmed that the US Navy was on Manus ‘as a belligerent occupant of territory taken from the enemy’ and insisted that the Chinese should not be hampered in their activities. ‘The Chinese are not present … as trespassers, but by permission of the US Naval authorities.’ Fletcher’s claims were ‘improper and without sound basis’. The State Department asked the Australian Government to ‘initiate such action as it sees fit to restrain Fletcher’.2 But it did not reveal that it had scoured through its files to find a formal legal document confirming pre-eminent US authority on Manus and found nothing. With the Pondranei trial in adjournment for several weeks, Fletcher became the centre of attention on the small island. The angry planter was determined that the Chinese would face a day of

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reckoning, and he sent a letter, written in his usual fine copperplate hand and florid style, to the Crown Law Office in Port Moresby on 1 July, providing Bloxham with a copy. Emphasising that he had reoccupied Salami in March, he maintained that the Chinese had agreed to pay rent for the rest of the outloading operation. Nonetheless, the weekly accounts had been ignored for six weeks, with Captain Wang simply referring the question to Guam. The Chinese labourers had brought ‘their full weight to bear in moving heavy equipment on to my property’. Fletcher’s next accusation suggested that his conflict with the Chinese had reached a critical level. He claimed that he had been visited at his plantation on 9 June by a group comprising Lieutenant French, an OFLC official, John West, and two Chinese, Captain Kuo and Dr Chen: The Chinese indicated that they had no intention of paying rental and were going to make whatever use they chose of the plantation and told West to instruct me accordingly: his reply was that they must deal with me personally, Capt. Coo [ie., Kuo] then threatened to ‘take me for a ride’ although I had not entered the discussion at the time and later on Dr Chang [ie., Chen] described circles around my belt buckle with a butcher’s knife, all of which I take it was in the nature of Oriental intimidation.

Although they had ‘evacuated the area after systematically wrecking the place’ in mid-June, the Chinese had continued to trespass daily on Salami, threatening to use ‘sufficient force’ to remove ‘fantastic’ quantities of material. Fletcher finished with a plea: ‘We are so isolated here that we are virtually hamstrung … It is not with any spirit of frivolity that I am asking you for a direction … it is a case of dire necessity.’3 Bloxham for one was not altogether unswayed by Fletcher’s complaints. On 5 July, the harried District Officer informed Port Moresby that he had called together the parties for a conference to

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defuse the confrontation. Two days later, he reported that his mediation had failed. Fletcher would not let the Chinese remove any more property from Salami until he was paid a weekly rent of £90. Although he considered this rent ‘exorbitant’, Bloxham said Fletcher was ‘within his rights in proposing action for trespass’. He could see no way out of the conflict given that the Chinese were not empowered to pay rent and neither side would compromise. He conceded that Fletcher was impeding the Chinese operations, for he had compelled one of BOSEY’s vessels, the Lakeland Victory, to load less valuable items than those that were still on his property. Passing on Bloxham’s latest report to Canberra, Murray recalled the ‘previous Chinese incidents at Manus’ and emphasised that the matter should be settled by the parties in the PNG Supreme Court. When Canberra underlined the importance of permitting the Chinese to wind up their operations to allow Australia to take up the remainder of the US stores, Murray stressed that Salami was private property. The Administration had no standing in the dispute.4 By stepping aside, the Administration was in effect backing the planter’s cause in a hands-off manner. The mounting controversy surrounding Fletcher once more pushed Manus into the news. According to a United Press report on 9 July, the Foreign Office had stated in Nanking that China had asked the United States to postpone the withdrawal of its forces from Manus until all Chinese surplus property had been removed. ‘It was feared that complications might arise if Australians resume complete control of the Island.’ The Foreign Office said it had ‘not received any reports of armed clashes between Chinese workers and Australians on the island’. In Shanghai, BOSEY also denied that any armed clashes had occurred, though it admitted that ‘two weeks ago there had been a minor incident involving only Chinese personnel’. This remark is tantalising, and presumably refers to the assaults on the two Chinese captains, Kuo and Wang. For the first time, someone alluded publicly to conflicts inside the Chinese camp itself. United Press did not leave the story there, though,

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claiming that sources close to the Foreign Office and BOSEY had confirmed that the labourers were dissatisfied with the local authorities on Manus. ‘However they are not asking for extraterritorialities but merely to be given the same treatment as that given to United States forces.’ The UP report was picked up by the shortwave listening post in Melbourne and passed on to External Affairs in Canberra.5 The officials back in Australia were determined to pin Fletcher down. The head of External Affairs, John Burton, conceded on 12 July that Fletcher might have grounds for proceeding against the United States or Australian authorities because he had been unable to work his property. But he stressed that important national interests were at stake. ‘We cannot unduly stress the necessity for avoiding any conflict with the United States authorities.’ The Australian Government had to take ‘action against Fletcher for his completely unreasonable and, in fact, blackmailing attitude’ or the United States would consider that Australia was ‘not treating their problem with the sympathy which they can expect in view of the wartime arrangements’. He recommended that the Administration warn Fletcher that his entry permit would be withdrawn unless he allowed the Americans to proceed with their operations. It is significant that Burton did not refer to the Chinese once, for he saw the Manus problem in the context of Australia’s relations with the United States, not China.6 The view still looked different from Port Moresby. The Administration continued to see Manus overwhelmingly as a test case of the credibility of Australian civil authority and the maintenance of law and order. On 13 July, Bob Melrose, the Government Secretary, again informed Reg Halligan, the Secretary of External Territories, that the Administration had ‘no standing at all’ in the Fletcher conflict. Whereas Burton highlighted the overriding interests of maintaining good relations with Washington, Melrose underlined the Chinese angle, making only one perfunctory reference to the Americans in his letter. If Fletcher’s allegations of

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threats were true, the tension could ‘boil over’, leading to a breach of the peace. ‘Should the Chinese take direct action in respect of the removal of property which they consider is theirs, trouble may occur for it is quite possible that a man of Fletcher’s temperament would resist any such action by the Chinese.’ There is no doubt that Melrose knew that the planter was obstreperous and required careful handling, but he still saw the Chinese as the source of friction. Anxious to avoid a boil-over, he ‘strongly recommended’ that External Territories should ask the Chinese Embassy to instruct ‘the Chinese at Manus not to do anything likely to create a breach of the peace’. If this approach did not settle the conflict, then the ‘only course remaining is action in the Supreme Court which must necessarily be instituted by one or the other party to the dispute’. He told Canberra that Sub-Inspector Charles Carr would immediately leave for Manus ‘so as to be on the spot and take such action as later may become necessary’. He would ‘use tact and discretion’.7 So Carr was back on Manus little more than two weeks after testifying in the Pondranei trial in Inrim. Another issue was feeding the difference of opinion between Canberra and Port Moresby: the return of the District Office to Lorengau. Murray and his people were no doubt unwilling to go in hard against Fletcher because they felt that the planter was being kept off his land in much the same way as the Administration was being kept out of its rightful headquarters. On 20 July, Justice Phillips penned the Administration’s most bitter protestation yet about the state of affairs on Manus. ‘The delay in reoccupying Lorengau is causing the Administration to lose prestige in the eyes of the natives … [this] may result in incalculable harm from the Administration’s standpoint unless these matters are speedily corrected.’ The District Office at Inrim was still housed in insubstantial huts, which were ‘gradually collapsing’. Rebuilding at Inrim was not practicable. Phillips stressed that the impact on the morale of the European staff was ‘indeed bad and there is creeping in a spirit of hopelessness and helplessness which does not augur

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well for the administration of the district’.8 Handling Fletcher in these circumstances was all the more difficult. Just when it seemed that either an armed conflict would occur or the Administration would be forced to take tough action to restrain the planter, Fletcher unexpectedly quit the field. On 21 July, Murray informed Canberra that Fletcher had departed for Australia a week previously, though he was unable to say why.9 One can only assume that Fletcher had become heartily fed up when the Australian officials would not meet his demands to arrest Captain Kuo and evict the Chinese from Salami. After conducting an investigation, Sub-Inspector Carr and District Officer Bloxham came to regard the planter’s allegations with great wariness. They stated that Lieutenant French, the custodian of the US Navy’s installations on Manus, had denied that the Chinese had systematically wrecked Salami. More importantly, they reported that Captain Kuo and Dr Chen had flatly repudiated any suggestion that they had ever threatened Fletcher with physical violence. Although one could expect the Chinese to deny they had made such threats, it is telling that the Australian officials could not find anyone who would corroborate Fletcher’s version of events. The planter had not helped his cause by repeatedly changing his story. More damning reports followed. After visiting Manus some weeks later to discuss the Australian purchase of the remaining US assets on the island, Brigadier Leslie Binns said it was unclear ‘just who might have indulged in a little homicide’. Fletcher had not only posted his plantation with no-trespassing signs, but had mounted himself on the boundary as an armed guard. ‘Vinnell-BOSEY officials allege Fletcher threatened to shoot anyone trespassing on his land.’10 Harry Fletcher left Manus midway through the adjournment in the Pondranei trial, determined to fight his enemies, who by now included the Chinese, Americans and Australians, from back in Sydney. Whatever the legitimacy of his claims, the irascible planter had been a lightning rod for trouble ever since he had reap-

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peared on the island in March and the Administration was glad to see the back of him. His vendetta against the Chinese labour contingent had strained relations with the United States and China and risked complicating the Pondranei prosecution. Murray and Phillips did not need another violent incident involving the Chinese camp at this delicate juncture. Although Fletcher’s obstinate insistence on his rights was not directly related to the bid to prosecute Pondranei’s assailants, it did touch, in the end, on the same wider issues that were at stake in the trial: questions of sovereignty and jurisdiction. After an intermission of just more than a month, the trial of Chou and Hsueh reconvened before the Supreme Court in Rabaul on 28 July, only weeks before the Chinese operation on Manus was scheduled to wind up. The second half of the trial focused on the wider question of the Chinese camp’s alleged impunity from Australian civilian jurisdiction. On the back foot about the facts of the case, the defence counsel, Adrian Jones, hoped that this aspect of the case would win the day. But the outlook was not promising. During the adjournment, Jones had tried to elicit some support from the regional Chinese headquarters on Guam. ‘Despite repeated efforts,’ he told the court, ‘this has not been obtained.’ The higher Chinese authorities still appeared unwilling to become involved, presumably because they believed that they would lend credibility to the trial if they provided overt support or allowed General Ting to testify. Jones was also forced to admit that he had been unable to find any documentary evidence of an agreement between Australia and China concerning the status of the Chinese personnel. The Australian Government had given the Chinese express permission to remove war material from Finschhafen, but it did not appear that the same permission had been obtained for the Manus operation. Neither Jones, nor the court, knew that there was at least one precedent for this kind of unilateral, even high-handed, action by the US military. In September 1946, the US Embassy approached

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the Australian Government to approve retrospectively the presence of another group of labourers on Manus. Some weeks earlier, 1,000 Filipino workers had arrived on the island under a contract with the Luzon Stevedoring Company to load material for the US Pacific Fleet. When the bid to move the Filipinos into PNG had been first mooted informally, Murray had baulked, telling Halligan that it would set a difficult precedent. Nonetheless, the US Pacific Fleet simply moved the Filipinos on to Manus some time in August without getting clearance. The US Embassy was given the task of legitimising this step some weeks later. On 5 September, it pledged that the Filipinos would be ‘under adequate Navy control at all times’ and would be removed by about February 1947. Despite these reassurances, the Navy’s control was far from complete, for the Filipinos went on strike in mid-September. Halligan was unhappy, noting that the Filipinos had avoided customs and quarantine restrictions, risking the introduction of diseases that could have ‘serious consequences’ for the indigenous population. ‘The fact that these people have gone out on strike creates a bad example to the native at a time when the Administration is fully engaged with problems associated with the reconstruction.’ Nonetheless, after some debate, the Defence Department decided to raise no objections, and External Affairs informed the US Embassy on 31 October that the Filipinos could remain on Manus until Luzon Stevedoring had completed its contract.11 The Australians discovered during the adjournment of the Pondranei trial that even this retroactive precedent had not been followed in relation to the Chinese labourers. Although the Administration belatedly insisted that customs and quarantine controls should be applied to the BOSEY operation, files in the US National Archives starkly reveal that the Americans and the Chinese defined the rules for the labour contingent without once consulting Australia. The Australian protagonists in the Pondranei trial did finally manage to examine the general agreement covering the contingent, but they were never permitted to see the OFLC’s

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crucial internal operational documents. The most important document was the ‘McCabe Agreement’, a set of ‘general notes’ named after the OFLC’s first head, Thomas McCabe. Covering the entire region of the bulk sale in the Pacific, these notes accorded the Chinese the right to place guards over their warehouses and storage areas on each island. ‘The Chinese will decide how many guards they require to protect their property. The arms and ammunition made available to the Chinese and the regulations governing their use will be determined by the local [US] Naval Base commander.’ Perhaps more importantly, the notes stated that the Chinese personnel would be ‘subject to all laws, orders and regulations in force at the Naval Base on which they are stationed’, but they did not mention, even fleetingly, the laws and regulations of the local sovereign power. The 10th point of the notes was the most telling: ‘In case a serious crime is committed by any Chinese personnel, the head of the Chinese Supply Commission in Shanghai should be notified and appraised of the facts before the trial is held. A special legal officer will accompany each group of Chinese to a U.S. Naval Base and he will handle disciplinary matters within his own force.’12 On islands under general American control, the US military ensured that the Chinese labourers were tightly controlled. The regime of discipline was tough on Okinawa, where the US military forces restricted the Chinese to ‘a fenced-in area’ under their own guards. ‘They are not allowed out of this area except for work or on special passes. They are not permitted to wander around the island. At work they are not permitted to mingle with Americans.’ The regime was no less severe on Guam, where the rules stipulated that the Chinese were required to post extra guards to ensure that the crews on Chinese ships did not stray ‘beyond the limits of the pier and immediate fenced in beach’.13 The Chinese personnel were granted more freedom of movement on Manus, being allowed to travel some distance from the camp to places such as Lugos; Australian officials would have been displeased to discover that the

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Americans had imposed much more rigorous control in their own territories. In the absence of any hint of official dealings between Australia and China, Jones tendered a copy of the general SinoAmerican Agreement as evidence. He called another officer from the Chinese camp, Captain Wang Yee, to bolster his contention that the labourers were immune from Australian jurisdiction. Wang testified that the accused were subject to military law. ‘If they committed serious breaches of military law, they would be sent to Nanking in China for trial by a Chinese Military Court. For minor offences, they would be … tried by a court martial of Chinese officers in Manus. They are not subject to the Chinese civil law while they are on Manus.’ Turning to another issue, Jones asked why the accused had not carried arms even though they were members of the Chinese armed forces. Under an agreement with the American Government, Wang replied, the Chinese had ‘agreed not to carry arms, except in the case of our Military Police’. He admitted that Hsueh and Chou were employees of the Army, not soldiers. Virtually as an afterthought, Jones asked the Chinese officer a significant question: how many Americans were on Manus at the time of the offence? ‘That is their secret,’ answered Wang.14 An observer might well have been struck by a glaring omission in the trial: no American had been asked to testify. This silence is all the more noteworthy because civilian and military Americans had played a central part in the whole drama since its beginning. Indeed, the name of the American subcontractor that had employed the Chinese, Vinnell Corporation, was not even mentioned during the trial. Jones and the Chinese officers skipped over the existence of the American company, anxious as they were to reinforce the image of Chinese military control. Even more striking perhaps was the failure of any participant in the trial to refer to the presence of significant numbers of American military personnel until Jones’s almost inadvertent question. Why were the Americans left out? This lacuna was in part uncontroversial, for the trial was an ostensibly straightforward

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criminal matter involving an attack on a young Melanesian. Given the indifference of the American officers during the protracted Australian attempt to arrest the accused, it seems highly likely that the Americans were similarly indifferent to the trial. No American interest was at stake. On the contrary, the Americans were intent on leaving Manus behind; they did not want to dwell on minor incidents involving islanders and Chinese. Yet, why did the prosecution and the defence not call any American witnesses? Lieutenant French, US Navy, and John West, the OFLC representative, were still on the island. Did they refuse to testify? Or had the Australian and American authorities agreed to leave US personnel out of the trial? Dragging Americans into the trial would have been uncomfortable for both sides. The Administration wanted to emphasise that the trial was about the assertion of Australian jurisdiction, an objective that would have been confused, even undermined, by playing up the American angle. For their part, the Americans no doubt wanted to avoid becoming even more entangled in the messy affair. Whatever the reason for the absence of American witnesses, the US connection remained an important but unresolved element in the trial. As the defence and prosecution came forward to deliver their closing addresses, it was apparent that the trial had two, interrelated dimensions: the more prosaic facts of the case itself; and wider issues of jurisdiction, international law and foreign policy. Hsueh and Chou had become unexpectedly embroiled in a much more complicated affair. Jones mounted a double-barrelled defence, turning first to the question of jurisdiction. The accused were members of the ‘visiting forces’ of a friendly foreign power, the Nationalist Government of China, and were therefore subject to ‘Chinese military law and military punishment’, not Australian civil jurisdiction. These forces were on Manus with the implied consent of the Australian Government. ‘It is quite inconceivable that the Australian Government did not know they were there. The Australian Government had permitted such personnel to

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come to Finschhafen and it might be implied that similar permission was granted for them to also enter Manus.’ This contention was at best shaky. As he built his argument on this point, Jones reinforced the impression that the Australians had been sidelined. It was ‘common knowledge’, he said, that the Americans had recaptured Manus and occupied the island for some time. ‘I have no knowledge of any formal hand-over by Americans to the Australian Government.’ The Administration had established a station on the island, but this was at Inrim, not at Lorengau, the site of the Chinese camp. Jones contended that the Americans exercised de facto authority. ‘They have not abandoned their claim to the possession they gained by conquest from the Japanese.’ The accused ‘were in American rather than in our territory’. Wittingly or not, Jones was restating the very arguments that the State Department and the US Navy had used some weeks earlier. It was just this continuing assertion of American power in an Australian territory some time after Japan’s surrender that so annoyed the Administration.15 Jones was much briefer on the merits of the case. He contended that the identification of the accused by the Crown witnesses was ‘insufficient and unsatisfactory’. One day after the alleged assault, a ‘full muster’ had been held at the Chinese camp — there was ‘no evidence that [the accused] were not present’. No one was identified. The second identification parade in March was no more convincing. Jones maintained that the identifications made on that day were ‘uncertain, contradictory and therefore unsafe’. He stressed that one ‘native’ witness had admitted during the trial that ‘all Chinese look alike’.16 On 29 July, Cyril McCubbery rose to summarise the prosecution’s case, dealing first with the question of jurisdiction. He contended that the claim of legal immunity was fundamentally flawed. BOSEY was not part of the Chinese Army and the accused were civilians, not regular soldiers. Declaring that American views on international law did not necessarily coincide with ‘those of the

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law of England or this country’, he stated that Australia’s National Security (Armed Forces) Regulations had preserved the jurisdiction of the civil courts during the war. Further, the Defence (Transitional Provisions) Act repealed these wartime regulations in December 1946, removing any temporary exemptions. Stung by the defence’s line of argument, McCubbery stressed that Australia had played a part in the reoccupation of Manus, a sore point for many Australians given that Melanesians believed that the Americans were entirely responsible for the liberation of the island. Australian administration of Manus was reasserted during the war by ANGAU, ‘as is well known’, meaning that US armed forces occupied at all times the same position that they did in any other territory under Australian control. McCubbery noted that an important distinction applied between ‘crimes committed within the rayon of the fortress or garrison of a visiting foreign force and those committed outside’.17 On the facts of the case, McCubbery was just as firm. There was ‘clear evidence’ that Pondranei had been taken by the Chinese to a hut, detained against his will and assaulted in such a way as to occasion bodily harm. McCubbery honed in on the fact that Hsueh and Chou had been identified by the Melanesians despite the rowdy conditions that had surrounded both parades. Pondranei’s failure to identify the accused at the first parade was easily explained: the truculence and hostility, shouting and jumping about of the Chinese, is important; there was continual movement which alone would make failure to identify understandable; there is no evidence that the two accused were on that parade; and, if they were, they could easily have moved around … and avoided anyone trying to identify them.

McCubbery stressed that the police had organised the second parade in a fair manner; Pondranei had picked out Hsueh while Nowan, ‘probably the coolest man about at the time’, had

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identified Chou. The Chinese had ‘acted with common unlawful purpose, i.e., to detain and to assault Pondranei’.18 Following a week-long adjournment, Phillips delivered his judgment, which ran to nearly 60 pages, on 5 August. Interpreting this long and complicated judgment into Chinese must have been quite a task. After surveying the relevant international law, American and British, at great length, he concluded that there was no doubt that Australia was the sovereign power on Manus and as such exercised ‘exclusive jurisdiction over all persons and things within that territory, except insofar as [it] concedes immunity from the exclusive jurisdiction’. The defence had ‘produced no evidence of an express agreement’ between Australia and China to exempt the Chinese personnel from the Administration’s jurisdiction. Phillips contended that one could not understand the Australian approach to the status of armed forces without ‘adopting a historical approach’ and considering the longstanding attitudes of British people. ‘In England, a long and unhappy experience of the undemocratic uses to which Kings, particularly the Stuart Kings, had put the armed forces at their disposal, gave the British Parliament and people a deep distrust of a standing army and made them determined to keep armed forces under statutory control.’ Emerging from this tradition, Australia subjected its own armed forces to the jurisdiction of the civil courts. This unexpected digression into 17th century English history and the misdeeds of the Stuarts would have bemused the accused. By underlining the English roots of Australian justice, Phillips accentuated the Britishness that was still an integral facet of Australian identity in the 1940s; most Australians were proud that they came from British stock and saw themselves as loyal members of the British Empire. Despite the wartime alliance with the United States, Australians rarely felt such a strong sense of kinship with Americans. Like McCubbery, Phillips went out of his way to highlight the differences between British/Australian and American approaches to law, reinforcing the Australian insistence that the United States did not automati-

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cally hold sway. These broad cultural traits help to explain why the Australians on Manus were so irked by the seemingly brash, domineering American attitude.19 Returning to the facts of the case, Phillips noted that the Chinese labourers had committed an offence ‘outside the bounds’ of their camp and were therefore liable to prosecution in the Australian courts. He contended that the Australians could have responded to this act in various ways. As ‘a matter of courtesy’, the Australian authorities could have ‘decided to leave the offenders to be dealt with by the appropriate authorities of their foreign force or state’. Alternatively, it might not have been ‘practicable to bring the offenders before our Courts’ for a number of reasons: because they may have eluded arrest by our territorial authorities and may have fled the jurisdiction, or because they may have taken refuge within their camp and their commanding officer may have refused to surrender them to the territorial authorities, or because, in either case, diplomatic representations by our Government for the return or surrender of the offenders may not have been successful.

It is rather odd that Phillips did not indicate that the accused had sought refuge in their camp and that their commanding officers had refused to surrender them to Australian authority for two months. This is the only time during the trial that anyone referred, even obliquely, to the stand-off that had almost precipitated armed conflict between the Chinese and Australians. Phillips left this matter dangling. The Chinese camp was located at Lorengau, Phillips stated, ‘which is but a few miles from, and almost within view of, our Administration’s District Office at Inrim’. It was ‘inconceivable that our Government was unaware of the presence of that personnel [sic] in this Territory’. Phillips noted that the camp had been established after the signature of a Sino-American agreement

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on 30 August 1946; ‘it would appear that the original agreement recorded a commercial transaction between the two Governments which involved a very large sum of money and a considerable amount of property’. So, the Chinese were engaged in a commercial venture. The precise status of the Chinese was ‘not wholly clear’, Phillips declared, given that they were not regular soldiers but appeared to be employees of the Chinese armed forces. The defence had contended that the labourers were subject to Chinese military discipline and would be sent to face trial for serious offences before a military court in China. Notwithstanding these contentions, Phillips stated that he could see no reason ‘why the Courts of the Territory should abstain from exercising jurisdiction over the Chinese’. He dismissed the defence’s plea concerning jurisdiction. The Chinese had committed offences ‘some miles outside their camp at Manus, on a Sunday, and in connection with a dispute with a native villager of this Territory’. This dispute ‘would appear to have no link with any national purpose of their Sovereign State’.20 Phillips’ cool and precise legal language became more emotional when he moved on to another aspect of the defence case: the claim that Lorengau was American rather than Australian territory. With more than a hint of irritation, he noted that a Chinese officer had ‘cryptically’ stated that the number of US personnel on Manus was ‘the Americans’ secret’. The Australian judge was unimpressed by this evasion. The defence had claimed that it was ‘notorious’, he continued, that the Americans had retaken Manus from the enemy. His rejoinder to this was pointed, even heated: I should say that it is notorious that the Americans were not alone in the recapture of Manus, but that European residents of this Territory, natives of this Territory and Allied personnel assisted in the operations which effected the recapture of Manus. I should also say that it is notorious that

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the United States of America was one of a number of Allied and Associated Powers jointly engaged in a World War, and that the recapture of Manus was but one, of many, episodes in a world-wide campaign in which those powers were jointly engaged. I think judicial notice might also be taken of the fact that the term ‘global strategy’ was used ad nauseam in the legislative halls and council chambers of the Allied and Associated Powers (including America), and was also used by Allied (including American) political leaders, service chiefs, military experts, writers and journalists as a succinct, though inelegant, term to describe the worldwide naval, military and air operations in which the Powers were then jointly engaged.

The tempo of Phillips’ judgment, with the repetition of the word notorious, gathered momentum as he moved on to grander political and military planes. This sense of outrage, of being personally slighted, seems almost out of place in a judicial verdict until one recalls that Phillips was a judge and one of the senior officers of the Administration. He had been intimately involved in the attempt to prosecute John Scott’s assailant in Lae and the operation to apprehend the Chinese labourers; Jones had impugned his judicial and administrative authority.21 More than halfway through his judgment, Phillips had barely referred to the accused. He seemed intent on fighting out other, wider issues, not least the highly ambivalent US-Australian relationship. The 1946 Sino-US agreement stipulated that the Chinese Government should ‘take the necessary steps to ensure that its personnel engaged in the custody or handling of the property sold outside the Territory of China, comply with all orders, rules and regulations of the owning agency of the United States having jurisdiction of the territory where the property is located’. Surmising that the ‘owning agency of the United States’ was the OFLC, Phillips became more vehement:

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But this ‘jurisdiction’ was in respect of American war material; and that is hardly the type of ‘jurisdiction’ that may be successfully set up against the jurisdiction claimed by a Government in respect of the peace, order and good government of a territory. In any case, what binding force would any such agreement between China and America have upon Australia — a country that was not a party to it? None whatever, as far as I can see; and the Defence did not enlighten the Court in this respect.

Phillips rejected any notion that the United States could claim Manus as American territory ‘by right of conquest’. Such a contention would suggest that ‘America had the right to regard the Manus operations as a privateering venture of her own, with Manus, part of the Mandated Territory of a comrade-in-arms, as the booty. This is a startling proposition and one that, to me, is distinctly novel.’ As we know, the Americans did believe that they had acquired the right to run Manus by right of conquest. The defence counsel had confused the recapture of Manus, Phillips argued, with the occupation of ‘enemy country, that is, of country that had already been enemy country before the outbreak of hostilities’. This proposition had never been ‘accepted as part of our law or accepted by any British Government’. The reassertion of Australian authority after the surrender of Japan was in no way inconsistent with a tacit or express agreement that ‘America should have time to evacuate its armed personnel and war material from Manus’.22 After this emotional and at times angry defence of Australian sovereignty and authority, Phillips dismissed the second aspect of the defence plea concerning jurisdiction: Manus was Australian territory. Phillips delivered his judgment on the facts of the case crisply. ‘The evidence of the witnesses for the Prosecution, in my opinion, establishes beyond reasonable doubt that at Lugos, on Sunday 25th of January, 1948, four Chinese, whoever they were, entered the hut

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in which Pondranei was resting.’ Armed with pitpit, a plank, a piece of telephone wire and brass cable, the four Chinese had ‘suddenly disturbed … the quiet of the hut’ near the pier, where some Melanesians were sheltering from the rain. They had seized Pondranei and hustled him out of the hut. Acting in concert for an unlawful purpose, the labourers ‘were obviously bent on inflicting punishment and did inflict unlawful punishment on a native they suspected of stealing cigarettes’. They had ‘trussed’ Pondranei up in another hut, beaten him for some time, inflicting bodily harm, and then left him on the floor unconscious.23 Phillips rejected the main elements of the defence case. He accepted Assistant District Officer White’s version of the first parade, rejecting Captain Kuo’s contentions. The circumstances of that parade were clear: 200 to 300 Chinese had ‘massed … in a small space, and very greatly outnumbered the visiting party, which consisted only of Mr White, ten native police, and about a dozen natives brought by him for the purpose of possible identification’. The Chinese were ‘truculent, jumping from rank to rank, and shouting’ — the position looked ugly. These conditions were ‘hardly … conducive to cool and deliberate identification by natives’. Colonel Grimshaw took ‘elaborate precautions’, Phillips maintained, to ensure that the second identification parade was fair. The natives who had come to make the identification ‘were segregated and tucked away, out of sight of the Chinese assembling in front of the office; those natives were put behind the office where the ground sloped down steeply, and they were also put under police guard’. There was no reason to warrant a finding that the police had been ‘grossly careless’ in their conduct.24 Phillips said the Melanesians had testified frankly and honestly: ‘They gave their evidence, I thought, with a restraint not always encountered in native witnesses.’ The defence had argued that ‘to the uninitiated Chinese resemble each other’ and that two months was a long time for natives to ‘remember Asiatic faces’. Phillips did not reject these contentions; on the contrary, he

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appeared to implicitly accept them. Rather, he contended: ‘Pondranei says that, to him, Chinese resemble each other, so he was careful to pick out only the one he was quite sure of, that is, the taller accused.’ There were some small inconsistencies in the evidence of the Melanesian witnesses; Hapkas, Sinyenyan, Sirip and Nowan could easily have ‘yielded to the temptation’ to adopt Pondranei’s exact account of events. Phillips maintained that ‘from a long experience … I think many native witnesses might have done so. But these four native witnesses did not yield to that temptation.’25 His tone here was benevolent and fatherly, highlighting that mixture of protectiveness and superiority that underpinned the whole structure of Australian colonialism in PNG. Phillips would not have objected when one District Officer, John Murphy, declared that he liked to see himself as ‘a stern father, but a loving father’.26 Convinced that the second identification parade had been run properly and that the ‘native’ witnesses had been unusually truthful, he found the labourers guilty of deprivation of liberty and assault. Jones’s plea for mitigation was unconvincing. The gravity of the assault was not as great as assault occasioning grievous bodily harm — the crime was more like common assault. The accused had acted, Jones avowed, under what they thought was provocation and in the honest belief that Pondranei had taken their cigarettes. ‘Then there is the prominence that has been given to the case — the international aspect.’ The case could have been heard in a lower court. Jones was indeed right when he asserted that the case had become entangled with other, wider international questions, transforming a simple act of assault into a contest to reimpose Australian authority against the encroachments of the American and Chinese armed forces. Jones underlined the length of time that had elapsed since the offences were committed. Although they had been free most of the time on bail, the accused had been held in custody on various occasions and they had had to undergo ‘the strain of waiting to be dealt with’. Lastly, Jones stressed that the

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labourers were ‘now hundreds of miles from their camp; they get no pay while not at work’.27 Before sentencing, the defendants made brief statements, the only time their voices were heard in the trial. Chou spoke first. Through the interpreters, he denied strenuously that he had assaulted anyone. The cigarettes had not belonged to him so why should he assault anyone? He had been fishing when he had heard someone yell out for help. He had found one of his workmates, Hsueh, arguing with Pondranei in a hut — the other ‘natives’ had disappeared. Called down from a bench, Pondranei had agreed to accompany Hsueh to see the military police. ‘Along the road it began to rain. We went into a Quonset hut. Because of the rain, we decided not to go to the military police.’ Chou said Hsueh was angry and had slapped Pondranei on the head. He averred that he had then stopped his workmate from hitting the young Melanesian again. ‘So [Hsueh] let the native go and we both went back to the camp. That is all I have to say.’ While asserting his own innocence, Chou admitted that Hsueh had indeed struck Pondranei several times. Hsueh stood up to have his say, portraying himself as the victim rather than the perpetrator of violence. He said he had taken six cartons of cigarettes to Lugos around 18 January to trade for bananas and pineapples. ‘I had my coat over my shoulders, with the cartons inside the sleeves.’ Pondranei had called him into the hut and then stolen one of the cartons, retreating up onto a bench. Although the cigarettes had been at first returned, Hsueh said Pondranei and two other islanders had followed him along the road back to the camp. One of the natives had an axe in his hand. Pondranei asked me to go with them just inside the bush, beside the road. I refused to go with them and kept on walking. The natives ran after me and Pondranei grabbed my coat which still had cartons of cigarettes inside it. I turned around and chased

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Pondranei. Then one of the other natives hit me with his hand, and the other held up his axe. So I could not do anything about it and I went back to our camp.

Hsueh said he had returned a week later to Lugos to retrieve his cigarettes; Pondranei had consented to go with him to the Chinese military police. Halfway to the camp, the rain had started and he and Pondranei entered a Quonset hut. ‘[Chou] did not come into the hut when we did, but a bit later. He told me to let the native go. I hit Pondranei on the head with my hand and told him to go. That is all.’28 It was too late for Chou and Hsueh to challenge the case against them, and one wonders if they would have been better advised to have testified earlier in the proceedings. Unmoved by this belated attempt to explain away the assault, Phillips sentenced both defendants to three months’ imprisonment for assault and six months for deprivation of liberty. The sentences would be concurrent and served with hard labour, and Chou and Hsueh entered a gaol in Rabaul in August 1948. Were these sentences tough? Did they reflect the nature of their crimes? Were all acts of violence against Melanesians punished with the same severity? The Administration tolerated a high degree of violence by planters for a long time. Hank Nelson reminds us: ‘The courts were not troubled by the occasional cuff on the ear or kick up the loin cloth: only incidents that went beyond the behaviour acceptable to most mastas went before a magistrate.’29 Was it easier for the Australian authorities to come down hard on two outsiders? It is arguable that many Europeans in the late 1940s saw firm, even violent, chastisement of ‘natives’ as a necessity, yet regarded such behaviour as their prerogative. They would have seen two Chinese meting out such punishment as unacceptable meddling by outsiders, and Asians at that. Harsh sentences were handed down for Melanesians, often for offences that were trivial, even ludicrous. Many of the ‘crimes’ defined by the Native Labour Ordinance were no more than minor

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infractions or, worse, non-criminal in nature: appearing late for work, breaking a curfew, or entering a town as a non-resident. It would not be inaccurate to say that the justice system in PNG had a sliding scale of offences and sentences for different ethnic groups, pegging out the boundaries of criminality at different places for Europeans, Melanesians and others. There were of course crosscurrents that moved against this structure, people who resisted the strong pull of simplistic images and gut-level reactions, but the broad outlines were indelible. Melanesians were judged with particular severity if they committed crimes where the victim was European, and the Supreme Court responded even more forcefully if the victim was a European woman. Nelson writes: ‘In the 22 years of the Mandate 57 New Guineans were charged with being illegally in a dwelling when a white woman was present, 54 were convicted, and nearly all were given the maximum penalty of twelve months hard labour and a whipping.’ In this context, Hsueh and Chou received lighter sentences.30 It is intriguing to speculate whether Phillips would have imposed harsher punishments had the Chinese abducted and assaulted a European. This is perhaps to judge him too harshly, for he took the ‘sacred duty’ to rule in the interests of the indigenous population seriously. But there is little doubt that the European inhabitants of Lae were particularly incensed that it had been Filipinos who attacked John Scott. Despite the changes that had unquestionably taken place since the 1930s, the justice system still often treated Europeans more leniently, at times for much more violent crimes than Hsueh and Chou had committed. The case of one William Tittle is particularly pertinent. A labourer born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1925, Tittle was employed in July 1948 by Vinnell, the contractor in the Chinese operation on Manus, on a one-year contract to ‘perform services in the Pacific islands’. The term of his employment on Manus was much briefer and unhappy. Less than six weeks after starting work, Tittle quit on 20 August, apparently in some anger. Two days later, as evening set in, he became involved in a hot

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dispute at the Vinnell compound in Lorengau with another American employee of the corporation, James English. Unfortunately, the surviving documents do not indicate what caused the confrontation. Whatever the motive, Tittle savagely attacked English, knocking him to the ground and repeatedly kicking him. This bashing was so brutal that English suffered a double base skull fracture and slipped into a coma. The Vinnell superintendent, Mr Dorsey, drove 29 kilometres through the night to inform Sub-Inspector Charles Carr, then inspecting the police station at Momote, that Tittle had bashed English senseless.31 William Smythe, the Administration’s medical officer, had left the island some weeks earlier for a much needed break, leaving his assistant, Cyril Lambert, to hold the fort. With Manus lacking the medical facilities necessary to cope with such severe injuries, a RAAF aircraft evacuated English on 25 August to the Lutheran Mission Hospital at Finschhafen. Two days later, Theodore Braun, the American doctor who had performed the autopsy on John Scott in Lae in January, reported that English was still in a coma. Back on Manus, Tittle was still at large and it soon became apparent that he was trying to evade Australian justice with the help of some of his compatriots. An Australian army officer, Brigadier Leslie Binns, left Manus on 26 August, a day after English was evacuated. During a flying stopover in Port Moresby on his way back to Australia, he gave Bob Melrose, the Government Secretary, a worrisome account of events on the island. He said the crew of an American ship, the Lakeland Victory, had tried to whisk Tittle away so he could be tried by the US authorities on Guam. Sub-Inspector Carr had blocked this move, arresting Tittle and holding him in custody. Binns declared that the Chinese were again ‘a potential source of mischief. Trouble was always simmering among them.’ He believed that Carr’s police contingent — 30 strong — was inadequate and suggested the Administration send reinforcements to ensure law and order was upheld. ‘A show of force [would] impress all concerned that Australian rule is para-

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mount.’ Murray accepted Binns’ recommendation, despatching 70 more police to Manus to ‘meet any contingency that may arise’. Bill Bloxham informed Port Moresby that Tittle had been charged before the District Court in Inrim with inflicting grievous bodily harm, adding that English would require up to eight weeks’ hospitalisation once he was out of danger.32 The case against Tittle threatened to be complicated and protracted. Several American Vinnell employees had witnessed the assault, but were anxious to leave Manus as quickly as possible. Bloxham proposed to take their evidence under Section 77 of the District Court Ordinance as written statements, though Murray was wary of opting for such an approach. ‘Gravity of charge requires interests of accused protected by availability of witnesses for cross examination at all stages.’ Murray suggested that it might be appropriate to use Section 74 to hold the witnesses on Manus until the trial could be completed. It would also be important to make sure that Dr Braun from the Lutheran Mission Hospital in Finschhafen could be brought to Inrim to testify. Although he had emerged from his coma and was well enough to travel back to Manus on 1 September, English was still in no fit state to testify in court. Bloxham said he was ‘incapable of coherent thought or speech’.33 Bloxham issued summons on three American witnesses, including one member of the US Army, to prevent their departure from Australian jurisdiction. He told Port Moresby that he would arrest these witnesses if need be, and reminded Murray that the Administration would be liable for the costs of maintaining and then repatriating them. In the absence of qualified doctors and nurses, he felt he could not detain English.34 Yet again, the Administration was trying to enforce Australian justice under extremely trying circumstances. There is no doubt that the abortive attempt to prosecute Eduardo Bahinting for the manslaughter of John Scott and the long-running Pondranei saga made the Australian officials doubly determined to press ahead

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with the Tittle prosecution. In contrast with the earlier cases, this time the perpetrator and the victim were neither Australian nor Melanesian, but American. At least membership of a foreign military force was not a complicating factor. Murray agreed that everything possible had to be done to ensure that English would get the best possible treatment — he could not be asked to testify. ‘Every step should be taken to ensure continued availability of accused and all witnesses other than patient.’ Murray insisted that any financial costs of keeping the witnesses on Manus should not deter Bloxham from pressing ahead. The possibility of a graver charge could await events; Tittle would be arraigned for manslaughter, or even murder, if English died. About this time, the Crown Law Officer, Esme Bignold, judged that it ‘may be possible to produce sufficient evidence against the accused … on a charge of inflicting grievous bodily harm without calling the victim’. Medical evidence and eyewitness testimony should be enough. ‘All necessary action should be taken to ensure that the case for the prosecution does not collapse owing to the departure of any material witnesses.’35 The abortive Bahinting prosecution had angered Bignold. Some months after Bahinting was removed to Manila, Bignold had virtually accused Major Merritt of engaging in a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Nearly a month after he was bashed, English departed Manus on 18 September on a vessel bound for Guam, and Bloxham swiftly brought the case to trial. Oddly, he was forced to require the attendance of Dr Braun by threatening him with arrest. It remains a mystery why Braun was apparently reluctant to testify. Murray, Bignold and Bloxham need not have worried about the strength of the prosecution case because the trial went smoothly. Bloxham reported crisply: ‘On 23rd September, 1948, evidence was taken, Tittle pleaded guilty, and was committed for sentence.’ At no stage was anyone willing to make bail for Tittle, and Bloxham had no choice but to hold the American in custody in Lorengau to await sentencing before the Supreme Court. After a rather long delay,

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the Supreme Court sentenced Tittle in Lae on 8 December to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour.36 He spent the next three months in Lae prison, the very establishment that had held Bahinting. Given the savagery of Tittle’s actions, kicking a man repeatedly on the ground, and the severity of English’s injuries, principally a double base skull fracture, which induced a coma, this sentence must be considered light. Even though he had been held in custody for more than four months awaiting trial and sentencing, Tittle could still consider himself lucky. In contrast, Hsueh and Chou were convicted of two offences, assault and deprivation of liberty, and given a total sentence of six months. Yet, as Dr Smythe testified, Pondranei had suffered comparatively minor physical injuries: two black eyes, a few mild bruises and some light abrasions. The difference between the sentences is striking. The labourers received a much stiffer penalty, perhaps giving some credence to the Chinese suspicion that they had been singled out, or at least treated unequally. A contemporaneous case involving an aircraftman in the RAAF many kilometres away in the Dutch East Indies suggested that the application of Australian justice was indeed far from straightforward.

Chapter Nine

A Death in the Spice Islands

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CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT on Friday 20 February 1948, Corporal Alexander Newman walked away from the jetty on the southwestern tip of Morotai into the clammy darkness. The monsoon that came every February had already saturated the island’s volcanic mountainous interior and its coastal palm groves earlier in the day, leaving the night air heavy with moisture. A leading aircraftman, Newman was a fitter with the RAAF’s No. 60 Operational Base Unit, and he had been on Morotai in the Dutch East Indies for nearly a year, having arrived in March 1947. On that Friday night, he spent some hours carousing with other Australian servicemen on the RAAF’s refrigeration barge, drinking beer and gin to celebrate the departure of three marines. There was much singing accompanied by a mouth organ. While the celebration wound down, Newman set off into the night, strolling 300 metres up the hill that ran down to the jetty. He headed along a disused track, close to the sea, towards a house overlooking the harbour. Set back from the road, the galvanised-iron house was humble, no more than 17 metres in length and five in width. It had neither flooring nor electricity. It was owned by a local woman, Sophia da Costa. The house appeared empty and dark, though Newman thought he saw a flickering light within. He knocked on the door, gently at first but with increasing force, his knuckles rapping hard on the wood, his annoyance building into anger. Kicking and pulling, he bashed the door open and stepped inside to confront a figure in the gloom. Newman did not know that the man before him was Willem Anker, a Dutch engineer from the SS Nassau, a ship owned by the Netherlands New Guinea Petroleum Company. The Nassau had been at Morotai for only several hours, having moored not far from the RAAF barge at 3pm. For whatever reason, Newman assaulted Anker, delivering three quick blows, which knocked him to the ground. He retreated from the house in an agitated state and walked back down the seaside track to the barge, where he had a few more drinks, brooding over the conflict in the hilltop house, before going to bed.

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The northernmost island of the Moluccas, Morotai has a colonial history that is even more exotic and violent than that of New Guinea. Explored by Magellan in 1511–12, the Moluccas were first claimed by Portugal and became a prized source of nutmeg, mace, cloves and other spices, acquiring the romantic and pungent name, the Spice Islands. The Dutch advanced into the East Indies in the 17th century, eventually ousting Portugal and establishing a colonial regime that lasted for more than 300 years. Although Muslim Malays were the dominant religious and ethnic group, substantial animist and Christian minorities lived in the Moluccas, generating deeply rooted tensions. By the late 1930s, Morotai had a population of 9,000. The Dutch ascendancy in the East Indies was ruptured by the Pacific War. Stabbing south with stunning speed, the Japanese conquered the Moluccas in 1942, stationing garrisons of varying sizes along the archipelago. But their occupation was brief. The US 31st Division retook Morotai in September 1944, encountering almost no resistance from the small Japanese contingent. Morotai became one of the stepping stones in MacArthur’s recapture of the Philippines, Allied forces carving two airstrips out of the coconut groves on the southern tip of the island at Pitu and Wama. As the juggernaut charged north into the Philippines and beyond, RAAF bombers and fighters flew raids throughout the Moluccas and the Celebes Islands, targeting Japanese troops left behind the frontline. No. 60 Operational Base Unit took on the daunting task of running the Wama airfield in early 1945. At its height, the strip had 17,000 personnel and aircraft took off every 15 seconds. The few Japanese who were still at large in the interior rarely ventured near the airfields. Although the Moluccas became a backwater in the war, the commander-in-chief of Australia’s armed forces, General Thomas Blamey, accepted the surrender of the Second Japanese Army on Morotai on 8 September. In the wake of Japan’s surrender, Morotai was caught between the backwash of the Pacific War and the Indonesian independence

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struggle. Its geographic position highlighted the fluidity of the immediate postwar years in South-East Asia. Just to the west, the Celebes Islands were unsettled. The beak of Dutch New Guinea, the Vogelkop Peninsula, lay little more than 200 kilometres to the south-east, while Mindanao, the southernmost island of the newly independent but restless Philippines, lay 475 kilometres to the north-west. After a brief hiatus, the Dutch reimposed their control throughout the East Indies in 1945–46, meeting varying degrees of resistance from Indonesian nationalists. The two sides agreed in November 1946 to establish a United States of Indonesia linked in a special relationship with the Netherlands. This truce was uneasy, however, and localised conflicts continued. Morotai was the headquarters of the Northern Moluccas Command of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, though only 70 of the 1,100 men and officers in the 19th Regiment Jaegers were white. A secret Australian military assessment in March 1947 judged that the loyalty of the ‘native’ troops was questionable: ‘In most cases the Ambonese are 100% loyal to the Dutch, the Minahasa about 8% loyal and the other native races in the Army will stab either side in the back depending on the mood of the moment.’1 About 200 Dutch civilians, mainly officers of the colonial administration and employees of Netherlands New Guinea Petroleum, lived on the island. Indonesian nationalists waged constant low-level sabotage against the Dutch, adding water to petrol and scattering broken coconut shells across the airstrips. Given that the island’s flatter southern region was the only land suitable for skirmishing, the RAAF feared that its contingent would be caught between the contending sides. It was decided that, if things fell apart, the remaining Australians would be evacuated to Darwin. In February 1947, the nationalists joined forces with some Japanese POWs to attack the Dutch army camp. Although the Dutch reasserted their control on this occasion without casualties, much greater violence was in store. Just three months later, the Dutch launched a brutal ‘police action’ to crush the national-

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ists across their troubled, sprawling colonial possession, provoking much criticism, including from Australia and India in the United Nations. A ceasefire was declared in December 1947 with the Americans acting as brokers, but the situation remained tense, heavy with the realisation that further violence had been merely deferred rather than stopped permanently. Relative peace continued until the next phase of large-scale violence erupted in September 1948 when the Dutch launched another police action. A remnant of the once large RAAF contingent was kept on Morotai throughout 1947 to maintain Australian military aircraft operating between Australia and Japan and to provide accommodation for transiting passengers. The British had withdrawn their last forces, while the Americans maintained a small camp of their own. The depleted Australian unit was unable to defend itself and depended on the Dutch to guarantee its security. Even the need for this outfit, the No. 60 Operational Base Unit, was quickly passing, and the RAAF was rapidly winding down its operations. Life for this dwindling contingent was trying. The RAAF acknowledged that living conditions were ‘deplorable’, with its rear party lacking fresh food, basic building materials and various household items, including crockery, tablecloths and chairs. Mail sometimes took two months to reach the island, exacerbating the already intense sense of loneliness. Recreational facilities were particularly poor, and, in August 1947, the RAAF dispatched 15 billiard cues, six fishing rods, six Australian Rules footballs and six rugby balls to help stave off the boredom. The unit had at least managed to fashion a tennis court out of crushed coral. Each departure added to the air of isolation and torpor, and by January 1948 there were just 19 men left. But the pull-out generated some tension with the Dutch Airforce, which charged that the Australians were removing too much equipment and endangering the future viability of the airstrips.2 The assault on a Dutch civilian by an Australian serviceman came at an awkward time, when Australia’s brief military presence on Morotai was drawing to a close.

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Bleeding from the face and dizzy, Willem Anker staggered down the hill towards the jetty in the early hours of Saturday 21 February, assisted by Sophia da Costa, the owner of the hilltop house. Not far from his ship, the Nassau, the Dutch engineer collapsed. Cornelis van Dongen, a Dutch solider on guard duty that night, noticed the crumpled man in the gloom. Da Costa appealed to the soldier for help, and van Dongen summoned assistance from the Nassau. Several men carried the groaning Anker aboard on a stretcher, settling him as comfortably as possible into his bunk. About 3am, Dr Johan Tielung, an employee of Netherlands New Guinea Petroleum, examined the injured engineer. Tielung returned to the ship on several occasions during the day, but Anker’s condition steadily worsened. Early on Sunday 22 February, just as Tielung had completed the arrangements to transfer his patient to a hospital on shore, Anker slipped into a coma and died at 9.50am, leaving behind a wife and two children in the Netherlands. That night several officials of the Dutch Civil Administration on Morotai came to the RAAF camp and told its commander, Squadron Leader K. S. Brown, that a Dutch civilian had died earlier in the day after a fight with a member of the unit. They brought Sophia da Costa with them as a witness and asked Brown to produce the accused. The Australian commander readily agreed and assembled his men in an identification parade. Da Costa quickly pointed out Corporal Newman, approaching the line-up and touching him. The Dutch officials declared that they wanted to arrest Newman, but Brown demurred, stating that he did not think an arrest was justified until further evidence was obtained.3 One of the Dutch, an officer of the Justice Department, asked if Newman could be taken to the hospital to view the corpse. Although this step was odd, given that the identity of the deceased was not in question, Brown agreed. A day later, on Monday 23 February, Newman looked down at the cold body of Willem Anker, and the Dutch Administrator of Morotai, G. W. Hartmans, asked if

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he knew the deceased. Newman replied that he did not. Hartmans asked the same question twice more, and each time Newman answered in the negative. The Dutch believed that Newman had attacked Anker without provocation and wanted to charge him with murder or manslaughter. Brown would not hand over his subordinate, however, and Newman left the hospital unimpeded. Hartmans agreed to hold off until a representative of the RAAF Provost Marshal could reach the island. Brown contacted his headquarters, the North West Area Command in Darwin, and John Tiernan, a warrant officer with the special investigations branch of the RAAF service police, arrived on Morotai two days later. While the Dutch authorities continued their investigation, news of the fight between Anker and Newman reached Canberra on 28 February. Jonkheer de Ranitz, a diplomat in the Netherlands Legation, rang Laurence McIntyre in External Affairs, summarising the known facts of the case. He said Newman was still at large and stressed that the Dutch authorities wanted him arrested and held. McIntyre was circumspect, telling de Ranitz that he was unclear what procedures would be followed in a case of this kind and promised to look into the matter. In an internal minute, he noted that the question of jurisdiction was undecided.4 The Morotai situation was the exact opposite of the Lae and Manus cases, in which Australia was striving to impose its jurisdiction on foreign nationals by pressing criminal charges. On the day that de Ranitz spoke to McIntyre, the Dutch Legation sent a note verbale to External Affairs that used harder language. It charged that Newman had ‘severely maltreated’ Anker, resulting in the latter’s death, and demanded that the Australian aircraftman be detained by his superiors so the Dutch Army Air Force could conduct a hearing. On 1 March, the legation fired off a second note, declaring that Batavia, capital of the Netherlands East Indies, had decided that the question of jurisdiction could not be satisfactorily resolved unless the Dutch authorities were allowed to complete a preliminary inquiry. ‘Therefore it would be appreciated if the

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Australian Commanding Officer on the island were instructed immediately to afford his full cooperation in this respect.’5 Far to the south in Melbourne, Melville Langslow, the longserving Secretary of the Department of the Air, was inclined to insist on an Australian court martial. With the situation on Morotai deadlocked, he asked his much younger peer at External Affairs, John Burton, for his opinion. McIntyre ran through the options in a handwritten note for Burton, asking two questions: where did the offence take place and was Newman on duty? These were just the issues that Murray and Phillips pressed so resolutely to pin down the Chinese labourers on Manus and the Filipino scouts in Lae. In each case, the labourers and the scouts committed their offences outside the boundaries of their bases while off duty. In the light of these awkward parallel cases, McIntyre suggested that Canberra should make a diplomatic approach to clear the way for Australian jurisdiction. ‘If Dutch concede jurisdiction, would probably be no objection to Dutch holding something on a par with a coronial inquiry (cf cases of U.S. Service personnel in Australia during the war).’ McIntyre stressed, however, that allowing the Dutch to hold a preliminary hearing would be a partial admission of jurisdiction. If Australian jurisdiction was admitted, a Dutch observer could attend the court martial. ‘Essential to be co-operative as far as are able short of admitting jurisdiction.’6 So at the very time that the PNG Administration was battling to fend off American and Chinese attempts to undercut Australian jurisdiction, the Australian Government was preparing to do exactly that to the Dutch in the Moluccas. On 4 March, as the Lae case was entering its last fateful week, Burton sent a telegram to Langslow: It appears to us that attempt should be made to reach agreement on the spot on lines of practice followed under former National Security (Allied Forces) Regulations … [the Dutch] should be given all facilities for conduct of coronial

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enquiry on the understanding that they will then hand Newman over to RAAF court martial … even if no charge is laid against Newman he might at least be confined to barracks … any attempt to resolve question of jurisdiction through diplomatic channel at this stage would lead to tedious delay.

It is telling that Burton advised his colleague to rely on the lapsed National Security (Allied Forces) Regulations to claim Australian jurisdiction, when this argument was turned on its head in PNG to contend that the Americans and Chinese could not claim jurisdiction because the very same regulations had lapsed. Langslow was unsurprisingly gratified by this advice, informing Burton in a return telegram on 8 March that the regulations should provide a ‘procedure acceptable to both countries’. He said he had dispatched three senior officials to Morotai — Air Commodore Allan Walters, Wing Commander John Davoren and a medical officer — to handle the case. If the Dutch refused to concede jurisdiction, he promised to consult External Affairs before making another move. Newman, now in custody at the RAAF unit, would not be charged until Walters had completed the RAAF’s investigation.7 Meanwhile, Warrant Officer Tiernan had still not received any instructions from his headquarters, and a week after his arrival he took matters into his own hands, starting an investigation into Anker’s death. He questioned Newman and another RAAF corporal, Colin Henderson, on 5 March. Squadron Leader Brown asked the policeman who had the right to try Newman. After consulting a legal textbook, Tiernan replied that ‘a British subject could be tried in England for a murder committed anywhere in the world, and [he] presumed the same rule applied in Australia’. Brown and Tiernan now assumed that Newman would be tried for murder. On 7 March, Tiernan walked up the hill overlooking the harbour with Newman to inspect da Costa’s house. Newman merely said, ‘This is the house of the native woman.’8

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Despite the assertive attitude of the Netherlands Legation in Canberra, the Administrator on Morotai, Hartmans, was more willing to cooperate with the Australians. After a lengthy, friendly discussion with Air Commodore Walters, Hartmans agreed that the Australians could convene a general court martial to try Newman for murder. On 11 March, Langslow informed Burton that the Dutch on Morotai had conceded the jurisdictional ground to Australia, though it was possible that Hartmans would need to seek final confirmation from Batavia. With the legal way now apparently clear, the RAAF arrested and charged Newman, placing him in custody. On 12 March, External Affairs informed the Dutch Legation that a court martial would take place with the full concurrence of the Civil Administrator.9 A day later, the story hit the Australian press. Under the headline, ‘Dutch Seaman Killed after Brawl with Australian’, The Canberra Times stated that international complications had arisen after the death of a mercantile officer on Morotai. ‘It is understood the Dutchman died after a fight in which no weapons were used.’ The article unfortunately misspelt the Dutch engineer’s name as Ackers. The Daily Telegraph was closer in its article, rendering the name as Ankers. All the while, the Australian presence on Morotai was continuing to wind down. On 12 March, the River Norman left the island bound for Melbourne with another load of equipment and stores, leaving the small rear party in a stripped-down base. The general court martial of Corporal Newman for the murder of Anker began at the RAAF’s base on 15 March, three weeks after the fight. No confirming word had come from Batavia that the Australians could proceed, and the rapidity with which the court martial was convened leaves the suspicion that the RAAF wanted to pre-empt any Dutch move to hold a civil trial. Just as the US Army had swooped into Lae two months before to try Eduardo Bahinting for the manslaughter of John Scott, so the RAAF now flew in a legal team from Darwin to try Newman. Air Commodore Walters was the president of the court, flanked by two wing commanders and

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two squadron leaders. A 24-year-old Flight Lieutenant, Vernon Hubbard, was appointed as prosecutor. As judge advocate, Wing Commander Davoren was charged with the task of summarising the evidence and surveying the relevant areas of the law for the members of the court who lacked legal training. At the age of 46, he was much more experienced than the young prosecutor. Newman was apparently unable to afford his own counsel so the RAAF appointed a civilian solicitor with the Legal Aid Bureau of the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department in Darwin, F. D. Green, to defend. Newman pleaded not guilty. Born in Sydney on 6 March 1914, and educated at Hurstville Central Technical School, Alexander Newman was an unemployed waterside worker from Wollongong when he first applied to join the RAAF as an aircrew member in early 1944. His initial RAAF assessment found that Newman had ‘a good physique and fair bearing and manners’, being ‘pleasant and quietly self-confident’, but concluded that he was unsuitable for aircrew training because he was ‘mathematically too weak’. Several months later, Newman reapplied to join the air force as ground staff. He declared one sporting interest on his enlistment form — boxing — and admitted that he had civil convictions. Perhaps pressed by the need to get as many men as possible into uniform at the height of the war against Japan, the RAAF did not ascertain what these criminal convictions were for and rated Newman an ‘average type’ suitable for service with ground staff as a technical trainee. When he joined the RAAF in October 1944, he was living apart from this wife of three years, Edith, and his young daughter, Janice. His wartime service was unremarkable, though he did sustain an accidental bullet wound to the abdomen in October 1945. Newman re-enlisted for a two-year stint in April 1946. This time the RAAF investigated his criminal record. A search revealed that his fingerprints were the same as those for one William Matheson. The NSW Police stated that ‘Matheson’ had three criminal convictions against his name: willfully killing sheep with

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the intent to steal the carcass (Quirindi, northern NSW, 27 June 1934); indecent language and offensive behaviour (Wollongong, 29 October 1940); and inducing a clergyman to officiate at a marriage (Sydney, 1 September 1941). These offences were not deemed serious enough to prevent his re-enlistment. His fourth criminal trial, a court martial on a remote island in the Dutch East Indies, threatened to have much more serious consequences.10 Once more, a cross-cultural trial was held, this time involving a mixture of Dutch, Australian and Indonesian witnesses, with much of the evidence being translated from Dutch and Malay into English. The court appointed the Dutch Administrator, Hartmans, as interpreter. Neither the Dutch nor the Indonesians were accustomed to the practices of Australian justice, though the former could at least look to a common European heritage for some guidance. The Indonesian witnesses walked into an utterly foreign forum, and it was apparent as the trial unfolded that this profound cultural difference created linguistic and legal difficulties. It is quite plain from the verbatim transcript that the evidence of the Indonesian witnesses was filtered first through the Dutch interpreters and then through the Australian stenographer. Even if this process did not lead to outright distortions, and this cannot be discounted, it probably changed the testimony in less obvious ways, removing the rhythms of the original Malay. The doctor who treated Anker, Johan Tielung, was the first prosecution witness. He recalled that Anker had been in shock when he had first examined him on the Nassau at 3am on 21 February, complaining of pains around his liver and breathing with difficulty. The seaman had been pale, with a weak, rapid pulse and marks on his right cheek and at the left corner of his mouth. ‘I could not find any bruises on any other part of his body. My attention was mostly attracted to the liver region … I contemplated the possibility of … an internal haemorrhage.’ However, when Anker’s condition was ‘a little better’ by about 5am, Tielung said he had decided that the injury was not so serious and did not

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require an immediate surgical operation. When he had returned some hours later, Anker’s condition had appeared better still and he had left the ship, telling the nurse to summon him if things took a turn for the worse. Called back about 5.30pm, Tielung had found that Anker’s condition had deteriorated markedly, with his abdomen swollen and painful. He had concluded that the seaman was suffering from paralysis of the intestines, and he injected him with prostigmine, leading to a slight improvement. Tielung told the court that he had stayed with Anker from 7pm until midnight, returning the next morning at 9am ready to transfer the patient to a hospital. Much to his dismay, he found that Anker had slipped into a coma. The nurse told him that Anker had asked to be taken to a hospital only a few minutes earlier. Tielung said he had been unable to find a pulse and had administered coramine to activate the heart. These efforts failed, and Anker died at 9.50am. Tielung testified that he had performed a post-mortem on Anker’s body in the afternoon at Morotai Hospital. Opening up the abdomen, he found the intestines swollen and the liver rosy rather than pale; blue spots on the liver caused by sub-capillary bleeding indicated a haemorrhage. ‘I was convinced that death had been caused by a contusion of the liver which caused sub-capillary bleeding which led to a seizure of the function of the liver.’ There had been no bruising on the outside of the body, and the liver had not appeared torn, unless the tear was very small. Tielung admitted that he had not examined the cranial or thoracic cavities because he had lacked the necessary implements and had to hurry to see other patients. He told the court martial that Anker had been a healthy, sturdy man, recently arrived from Europe, and he concluded that the haemorrhage had been caused by ‘heavy or violent force’, such as a blow by a closed fist to the front of the body. More than two weeks after Anker was buried in Morotai Cemetery, Tielung and the RAAF’s medical expert, Wing Commander Arthur Raymond, had exhumed the corpse on 9 March to conduct a second post-mortem to examine the brain and

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chest. Raymond had conducted this examination, with Tielung observing. ‘The body was in an advanced state of putrefaction and was just one pultaceous mass.’ Although it was impossible to examine the brain or the organs in the thoracic area, it was clear that the skull had not been fractured or injured in any way. Tielung testified that this second post-mortem had not altered his original conclusion — Anker’s death had resulted from the application of severe or violent external force to the abdomen in the liver region.11 Green stepped forward to cross-examine. Tielung repeated his earlier statement that there had been no external bruising on Anker’s body, adding that none of the ribs had been fractured either, evidence that tended to discount the contention that the haemorrhaging around the liver was caused by a punch. He admitted that Anker’s case was uncommon in his 24 years of medical experience: I am often called upon to make post-mortem examinations … I have seen a liver in a similar condition to this one about three times … Once it was a white man and twice it was coloured people; but in the case of the white man the liver had been torn … A stone or beam had [crushed him and] there was a wound on the outside of the body.

Tielung said he had expected to find that Anker’s liver had ruptured, frankly admitting that he had been surprised by the absence of such an injury. Green suggested that another condition could have caused the death. While he again reiterated his contention that external force had damaged the liver, Tielung conceded that various diseases could theoretically have caused the death since he had not examined Anker in the five months before his death. But he dismissed some other possible causes of death such as malaria or cerebral thrombosis. Green shifted tack, suggesting that Anker’s reported dizziness could have suggested

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some kind of brain problem. Tielung firmly rebutted this suggestion, contending that the dizzy spell and fainting on the jetty were caused by the haemorrhage in the liver area.12 The judge advocate, Davoren, asked the next few questions, focusing on the possibility that something else had caused Anker’s death. Tielung testified that he had not observed any sign that Anker had consumed alcohol, but he again admitted that other conditions, ranging from coronary occlusion to syphilis, could have caused such a sudden and untimely death, though not a swollen abdomen or pains around the liver. Anker’s difficulties had not been located in the respiratory, central nervous or circulatory systems. Green asked why Tielung had treated Anker five months earlier. The doctor said the engineer had been suffering from ringworm. ‘I did not know the deceased’s mode of life of my own personal knowledge. I did hear from his fellow officers that he seldom took alcohol.’ Tielung insisted that he had seen no cirrhosis of the liver. Although he had not resiled from his original diagnosis, he had not been prepared to rule out an underlying cause of death.13 Three other witnesses testified on 15 March: Warrant Officer Tiernan, Corporal Henderson, a 29-year-old RAAF mechanic and Newman’s friend, and Cornelis van Dongen, a Dutch soldier. Tiernan’s testimony was undercut when he admitted that he had taken a statement from Newman on 5 March without providing the usual warning that anything he said might be taken down in writing and used in evidence against him. ‘It did not occur to me to warn the accused … that he was not obliged to make any statement.’ Green and Davoren both argued that Newman’s statement should therefore be ruled inadmissible, the latter adding that a confession should not be received in evidence if it was induced by any promise, especially when that promise had been made by someone in authority. Davoren maintained that Tiernan’s assertion that he would not let Newman incriminate himself was just such a promise, and, after consulting the other members of the court, Air

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Commodore Walters concurred. Tiernan had little left to say. He described his own visit to the hilltop house on 5 March, noting that the dwelling had been divided by a wooden partition. So the RAAF’s own investigation into Anker’s death came to little, with its key element, Newman’s statement, thrown out.14 Henderson’s testimony was longer and more important. He said an Indonesian woman called ‘Lena’ had come to the barge about 10am on 21 February to talk to Newman; he confirmed that Lena was Sophia da Costa. ‘I was present during the conversation. It was in the Malayan language. I can understand some Malay. I have known this woman for about 11 months. I know that a lot of airmen of the Royal Australian Air Force were friendly with her. I had previously seen the accused in her company on different occasions.’ When he was unable to follow the conversation, Newman had translated. Da Costa had wanted to know why Newman had been fighting with a Dutchman in her house the previous night. Newman had said nothing to this question. Da Costa had claimed that she had been doing some ironing at the house of another woman called Karmiel on Friday night, returning to her own dwelling about 1am to find the Dutchman there, bleeding and exhausted. She had then told Newman that she had helped the injured man to return to his ship, the Nassau. Henderson said Newman had challenged da Costa, asking her what the Dutchman was doing in her house. ‘The accused told her that she had no right to have the Dutchman in there as she was his woman.’ Da Costa had ignored this point, charging instead that someone had stolen various items from her house on Friday night. Henderson recalled that Newman had responded that he knew nothing about this, stating that nobody had been there when he left the house except the Dutchman. ‘The accused then told her that he did not want to have anything more to do with her, and she left the barge and walked off towards the Nassau.’15 For his part, van Dongen testified that he had been on guard duty on the jetty on the afternoon of 20 February when he had

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seen a white man and a tall slim Indonesian woman swimming from the barge and sunbaking. He knew the woman to be da Costa, but could not identify the man. He had next seen da Costa about 1.30am on Saturday 21 February with a crew member of the Nassau. ‘When I first saw the man and the woman, I noticed that they had hold of each other.’ The man had collapsed on the dock in great pain and van Dongen had fetched help from the ship. Several hours later, about 4am, the first mate of the Nassau had asked van Dongen to accompany a policeman and da Costa back to her house. Da Costa had walked in the front door, turning to the left and lifting up a canvas flap. Van Dongen said he and the policeman had stood in the doorway and flashed their torches into this compartment. ‘A mattress on the floor was disorderly. Two pillows were in front of the bed, and from the condition of the sheet on the bed it looked as though someone had been lying there. The chairs appeared to be in an unusual position, but whether they were always like that on account of the size of the room I don’t know.’ Under cross-examination, van Dongen said he had been unable to see into the house because it had been dark.16 And so the first day of the Newman court martial drew to a close with the strong suspicion hanging in the air that sexual jealousy had caused the fight between the Australian aircraftman and the Dutch engineer. On 16 March, the court reconvened and the cause of this sexual rivalry, Sophia da Costa, took the stand. One of four Indonesians and the only woman to testify in the court martial, da Costa spoke in Malay, but her name suggested an old family connection with the long-departed Portuguese empire. Appearing before an Australian court martial, with its foreign military and judicial trappings, to be questioned and then crossexamined by two white men, must have been daunting for a woman from a deeply patriarchal society. After she was sworn in, Davoren instructed the interpreter to inform da Costa that she was obliged to tell ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’. He asked Hartmans to explain that perjury would incur a tough

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penalty and to reassure her that she need not fear the accused or any other member of the RAAF because Newman would leave Morotai as soon as the trial finished, whatever the result. Hartmans added his own threat that perjury could result in a seven-year prison sentence under the Dutch Penal Code.17 The court martial on Morotai confronted the same vexing legal and cultural questions that troubled the prosecution of the Filipino scouts in Lae and the Chinese labourers on Manus. Again, one has to ask if such admonishments bridged the cultural gap or simply unnerved and puzzled the witnesses in all three proceedings. Affirming through Hartmans that she understood the obligation to tell the truth, da Costa said she was a single woman living in the village of Doroeba. She admitted that she had known the accused for a year and a half, though denied having had ‘intimate relations’ with him. She had approached Newman some time before 20 February to buy canvas for her house, but he had offered her a pillow, a mattress and a mosquito net, refusing to accept payment. At 10.30pm on the night of 20 February, a white man (ie., Anker) had come to her house, asking if he could take a seat to rest. Although she had told Anker that it was late and that he should go home, he had said, ‘I am civilised and I know the black woman, and I do not mean her any harm. I have been to the [Dutch] Naval Base and was not able to get a motor car. I have had to walk back towards my ship and am very much tired and want to have a seat.’ Da Costa said she was ‘ashamed’ and gave Anker ‘a seat about two metres from my room in the anteroom’. After requesting a glass of water, Anker had sat in the chair holding his forehead, either because he was drunk or tired. The door of the house was still open, and at this point she had noticed Newman walking towards her. ‘I was afraid and so shut the door, and sat on a chair in front of the door inside.’ Newman had knocked, but she had refused to open the door. She knew that it was the accused, because she recognised his face and his voice. He had kicked the door once, busting it open. ‘There was a small lamp

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alight in the anteroom and I could see even the golden teeth of the accused.’ Newman had declared, ‘Dutch no good,’ striking Anker twice, once on the right side of the head and once on the left, forcing the Dutchman backwards, who had clasped the woodwork of a labourer’s bed behind him. ‘The accused then dealt the white man a blow in the stomach … After this the Dutchman fell backwards to the ground.’ Da Costa said she had retreated to her own room, covering herself with a blanket because she was afraid. ‘I am only a woman.’ Newman had taken a watch and other items from the prone Dutchman. Da Costa testified that she had at first thought of taking Anker to the military police, but she had been afraid that she would meet Newman again. Sprinkling water on his face, she had managed to revive Anker. After drinking some water, he had asked, ‘Why did you do this when I have done nothing wrong to you?’ Da Costa declared that she had offered to call the military police. Anker had protested that this would shame him, instead asking her to take him to his ship where the captain would reward her. Although she had tried to get away, the engineer had not loosened his grip. She had taken the longer way to the jetty to avoid walking past Newman’s house. ‘The face of the Dutchman was smothered with blood and he asked me to take his handkerchief from his pocket. But I was ashamed to do so and took my own handkerchief and made clean his face from the blood.’ Anker had pointed to a light, saying that this was his ship, and then fainted on the jetty. ‘The policemen asked me what had happened. As I was afraid I told them nonsense,’ stating that ‘I had just found the Dutchman on this spot’. On the ship, she had refused a cup of coffee because she was afraid, and, after some time, the captain had told her to go. ‘Because it was very dark and I was afraid that I might meet the Australian and that he might beat me, I asked the captain of the ship to give me one soldier and one policeman to escort me to my house.’ The next morning, on her way to the Nassau to receive her reward, da Costa had approached Newman at the barge because

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she wanted to know what had happened the previous night. She had asked the Australian why he had beaten Anker given that the Dutchman had done him no harm. Newman had tried to grab her hand ‘but I did not like it and went towards the Nassau’. As she had walked away, he had declared, ‘It’s just a good thing to beat a Dutchman.’ On the ship, the captain had shown her Anker in his bunk and offered her rice and tinned fruit. ‘But I did not like to accept it. Then I went home, and this is all I can tell. No less, no more.’ She did add that she had been swimming and sunbaking with the accused and another Australian near the barge earlier on 20 February.18 Da Costa’s account was apparently straightforward, with two strong emotions, fear and shame, permeating her testimony. Green asked that her evidence be read back to her in Malay so she could confirm that the court’s record was accurate. The afternoon was deepening as da Costa declared that the transcript was accurate. She had been in the witness stand for a day, and the court adjourned at 5pm. But her ordeal was far from over, and the next day, 17 March, Green began his cross-examination. It did not take long for da Costa’s story to fray and then unravel. Da Costa told the court for the first time that she had lived some time ago with an Indonesian soldier, Sergeant Bidjo, and had been planning to marry him. Backtracking on her earlier account, she now asserted that she had gone to the local cinema, not done some ironing at a friend’s house on the night of 20 February. She denied that she had seen the accused on her way to the cinema, again contending that she had only seen Newman the next day on the barge. She stated that Corporal Henderson had said to the accused, ‘It was not nice of you to beat the Dutchman’, but swiftly changed her mind, testifying that Henderson had made the remark to her in Malay. She again maintained that she had gone to the barge to find out what had happened in her house. It was the interpreter, Hartmans, who intervened with an obvious question. If she had seen the whole incident herself, Hartmans asked, why had she

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needed to obtain any information from Newman? Da Costa did not answer, and Hartmans explained to Air Commodore Walters and his colleagues that she was fixated with the night in question. ‘Although she answers the questions as put, she almost invariably attempts … to go back and describe the events again … in the mind of the witness, the only important portion of the proceedings was what occurred on the night of 20th February 1948.’ Hartmans also cautioned that da Costa was imprecise about when particular events occurred. He had to question her at length before he could get a rough idea of the times, and even these times could be out by up to an hour. From his own experience with Indonesian witnesses, Hartmans declared that this was the best result that he could achieve. Green returned to the night of the fight. Da Costa added another new element when she contended that Sergeant Bidjo had come back with her from the cinema to her house about 10pm, staying for a while to drink some water. Shortly after he left, Anker had turned up. ‘He told me that he was dizzy … I gave him a seat about two metres from my own room.’ Da Costa testified that she had fled into her own room when the fight had taken place in the anteroom. Although she had covered her head with a blanket, she had still been able to see the accused. It had been possible to see what was happening because two lamps had been burning, one on the table in the anteroom and another in her own room. Da Costa added, almost as an aside, that she had been wearing a red European dress. Again contradicting her earlier testimony, she now claimed that she had been sitting in a chair outside the house when Newman had appeared. ‘He passed my chair while I was sitting there … I was still sitting on the chair when the first two blows were struck.’ Three labourers had been present when the fight started. Da Costa’s evidence was becoming more and more confused. Yet one thing was quite clear — she was determined to put as much physical distance between herself and Anker, implicitly denying that she had had sexual relations with him.19 Da Costa

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had been in the stand for another three hours, answering Green’s probing questions, changing parts of her testimony and adding new elements. As the court adjourned for lunch, the conflict in the hilltop house had become murkier. It is uncanny how events in the three trials at the heart of this story converged in the middle of March. The Bahinting court martial started in Lae on 9 March and collapsed two days later when the magistrate ruled that crucial evidence against the accused was inadmissible. On Manus, Assistant District Officer White visited the Chinese camp on 14 and 16 March in two futile attempts to arrest Pondranei’s assailants. It was on 16 March that an official in External Affairs, Laurence McIntyre, judged that Australia could not keep pressing its right to try Bahinting, against the wishes of the US Army, when the Dutch authorities had been so amendable in allowing the RAAF to try Newman. But events were about to take another unexpected turn. On 17 March, as the Newman court martial reconvened after lunch, Air Commodore Walters made a dramatic announcement. He said Hartmans had called him only half an hour ago in his capacity as the Dutch Administrator to say that he had just received an urgent cable from the Minister for Justice in the Netherlands East Indies Government. The minister had asked that the Australian trial be adjourned until 19 March to allow a Dutch official, D. van Eck, to come to Morotai to discuss the question of jurisdiction. Walters said he had acceded to this request and adjourned the court martial. Back in Canberra, the Dutch Legation informed External Affairs that ‘the NEI Government wishes to reserve their rights as to juridicial [sic] competence in the case’.20 This sudden Dutch intervention should not have come as a surprise to Walters and his colleagues. The RAAF had convened its court martial with unseemly haste, charging ahead without waiting for the final approval from Batavia, apparently determined to forestall any Dutch attempt to claim jurisdiction. Hartmans had lived with the Australians on Morotai for some time, building up a

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rapport with them, and he was ready to allow them to claim the legal ground. Unaffected by such local bonds, the authorities in Batavia were not prepared to do so, at least not without a fight. Perhaps the Dutch back in the colonial capital realised that the failure to enforce Dutch justice on Morotai was yet another sign that the whole edifice of the Netherlands East Indies was on shaky ground. Again, we encounter a telling parallel, for there is little doubt that the overriding need to re-enforce Australian authority across PNG underpinned the trials of Bahinting and the Chinese labourers. So, it seems that the two colonial administrations were haunted by similar fears of appearing weak and unable to act. Travelling across the Dutch East Indies from Macassar, van Eck arrived in Morotai on 18 March. He asked Walters to suspend the Australian trial because certain questions were still outstanding, not least the vexed jurisdiction issue. On 19 March, the court martial reassembled and Walters announced that he had agreed to van Eck’s request, ‘notwithstanding the fact that this trial has proceeded a long way towards completion’. But he declared that the court would allow the captain and the chief engineer of the Nassau to testify before going into recess. The Dutch authorities had brought the two men to Morotai for the court martial from Sorong, a town in Dutch New Guinea where the Nassau was berthed. The sailors had been on Morotai for two days and were anxious to return to their ship. The Nassau had remained at Morotai for more than two weeks after Anker’s death, leaving for Sorong only on 11 March. Captain Cornelis van der Doorn said Anker had joined his crew in January 1947 as a second engineer. In his early forties, Anker was tall, well-built and sturdy. ‘He was a reserved type of man, who did not speak very much about his own affairs. He was rather sober. He did drink alcoholic liquor but only on occasions.’ Chief engineer Julius Heemstra testified that he had known Anker for many years, sailing with him before the war. He too insisted that Anker had been a quiet man who drank little, no more than

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the occasional beer or gin. Anker had several friends on Morotai, including a married man who had returned to the Netherlands shortly before the Nassau had docked and an army sergeant. Heemstra recalled that he had bumped into Anker about 8pm on 20 February on his way to the cinema, asking his old seafaring companion if he wanted to come. Anker had declined, saying, ‘I’m going to Doroeba. Will you walk with me awhile?’ Walking down the road, Heemstra had asked Anker if he was going to buy anything from the Chinese, and Anker had replied, ‘Perhaps.’ After another five minutes or so, the two sailors had parted company, Anker continuing on the way to Doroeba. Heemstra said he had next seen Anker back on the Nassau about 2.30am on 21 February. Covered in blood, the second engineer had been doubled up in his bunk, groaning and complaining of strong stomach pains. Heemstra had asked Anker who had done this to him, a European or a native. A European, the wounded man had replied. Heemstra said he had not tried to talk any further, leaving Anker to rest, noticing in passing that his watch was missing. Later in the day, he had returned to Anker’s cabin, determined to ascertain who the attacker was. ‘If you say who did it, perhaps we can find the man, and he will get what he deserves.’ Anker had responded, ‘When I was coming [back] to the ship, I met a girl on top of the hill. I went with her to her home. While I was there the door was kicked in. Don’t ask me any more questions. I don’t know anything more. I am in pain.’ Heemstra was ‘nearly sure that Anker said the girl was the one he had seen swimming, but I am not sure of that’. Captain van der Doorn cast more doubt on the veracity of da Costa’s testimony. He said he had met da Costa aboard the Nassau when Anker was taken to his cabin. Later, after Anker had been treated, he and Dr Tielung had questioned da Costa, trying to work out what had happened to the second engineer. Da Costa had told them that she was living with her aunt and that she was married to a sergeant working in the hospital. She claimed that she had found Anker lying on the ground on her way to the toilet with her aunt.

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Her aunt had at first stopped her from approaching the injured man, saying, ‘Don’t touch him. You might get into trouble.’ But she had ignored this warning, instead helping the seaman to walk back to the ship. Van der Doorn said da Costa had come back to the ship on 21 February, declining to take two cans of corned beef as reward. And so the court martial went into a prolonged recess to settle the jurisdictional conflict between the Netherlands East Indies and Australia.21 A day after the Morotai court martial adjourned, the legal stand-off on Manus between the Administration and the Chinese labour contingent hit the press when the roving correspondent Ronald Monson ran a colourful account in the Daily Telegraph on 20 March. The RAAF could count itself lucky that there were no nosy journalists like Monson to cover Newman’s court martial. The facts of the case, especially the midnight brawl over the affections of an Indonesian woman, would have made a racy read. Yet again the Australian authorities were fortunate that this drama was unfolding in an inaccessible part of the world. Captain van der Doorn and his chief engineer would have rejoined the Nassau in Sorong in Dutch New Guinea just as the Filipino Scouts were making their way out of PNG and into Dutch territory after the Scott trial was aborted. Major Merritt and the Scouts reached Hollandia, the capital of Dutch New Guinea, on 22 March and several days later arrived in Manokwari, on the eastern end of the Vogelkop Peninsula, not far from Sorong. It is worth recalling that a white American soldier claimed that the authorities in Dutch New Guinea felt that the Australians were taking the Lae incident ‘too seriously’. Was this attitude in part shaped by the events unfolding on Morotai? Several days later, with the Morotai court martial caught in a legal limbo and the Scouts back in Manila, Superintendent Grimshaw and his troopers arrested the labourers on Manus. The stand-off over who had the right to try Newman came along at a difficult time in the Australian-Dutch relationship, with

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sharp differences over the Indonesian bid for independence generating wider tensions. Trade bans imposed by the Australian labour movement to support the Indonesian nationalists were provoking particular resentment in the Netherlands. A Dutch merchant seaman told the Sydney Morning Herald on 26 August 1947, that ‘most people in Holland are anti-Australian because they think the Australian Government is behind the ban’. On 19 January 1948, only weeks before the events on Morotai unfolded, the Dutch Legation in Canberra wrote to the Minister for External Affairs, Dr Evatt, to stress that ‘the action of certain unions has cast a deep shadow on relations between our countries’. Evatt wrote back four days later, contending that the development of trade, including the lifting of the union bans, depended on ‘the settlement in the Netherlands East Indies’.22 Bearing in mind these differences, one might have expected the Dutch to regard the Australian insistence on jurisdiction in the Newman case with some chagrin, even bitterness. Nevertheless, after deliberating for two and a half weeks, the Netherlands East Indies Government elected to pull back and allow the RAAF court martial to proceed. The Dutch Legation wrote to the Secretary of External Affairs, Burton, on 6 April to say that this decision had been ‘based on considerations of international courtesy’. It is revealing that such considerations had not encouraged the PNG Administration to grant the right of a foreign court to judge either the Manus or Lae cases. The legation stressed that opting to step aside did not imply that ‘jurisdiction in this case could only be exercised by the RAAF’. A misunderstanding had arisen because ‘the local judicial authorities committed themselves without consultation with or authority from Batavia’, though Air Commodore Walters had ‘proceeded very correctly, smoothing out the differences which had arisen’. On the same day that the legation wrote to Burton, AAP-Reuters in Batavia gave a garbled account of this breakthrough, reporting that the Netherlands East Indies had announced that an Australian court martial of a RAAF

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corporal would begin shortly. Printed on an inside page of The Canberra Times, the report erroneously claimed that the victim had been stabbed to death and misspelt his name as Ankera. With the way clear, the court martial resumed on 7 April, and Sophia da Costa was called to the stand for the third time. She was again under considerable pressure as the defence counsel, Green, and the judge advocate, Davoren, honed in on the inconsistencies and outright contradictions in her earlier evidence. She now admitted that she had known Newman for 18 months, occasionally seeing him at the pictures. She claimed at first that the Australian had not visited her house, though she quickly conceded that he had built the partition separating her bedroom from the anteroom. She insisted that she had not asked the accused to build the partition, asserting that she did not know why he had done so. Admission followed admission. She revealed that she had given a sworn statement to a Dutch official on 23 February in which she had stated that she had met Anker on the road, near a restaurant close to her house. Her plea that she had forgotten this detail and originally misunderstood the question was unconvincing. Again changing tack, she claimed there had been five lamps alight inside the house, including three small tin lamps owned by the labourers. Da Costa confessed that much of her earlier evidence had been ‘nonsense’. She had told the Dutch police that she and her aunt had found Anker slumped on the jetty because she had feared that they would shoot her. She also revealed that she had walked down to the RAAF barge on 21 February not to obtain information, but to return the mosquito net, pillow and mattress that Newman had given to her. She admitted that she had also lied to Captain van der Doorn and Dr Tielung because she had been afraid that they would accuse her of killing the seaman. Next she claimed that Newman and her ‘husband’, Sergeant Bidjo, had known each other for a long time and had often spoken. She denied that Newman had ever asked her to live with him or that he had ever suggested that they have sexual intercourse. Green reminded her

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that the Dutch soldier, van Dongen, had accompanied her back to her house in the early hours of 21 February. Had she asked van Dongen to shine his torch into her house because it was dark? No, she replied, because the house was still lit by lamps. Was your compartment in a disorderly state? No, she answered, because the fight had not taken place there. Pressed by Green, she admitted that there had been several pillows in her room, but she still insisted that there had been no mattress. The interrogation was gruelling. Asked to confirm that she had fled into her room when the fight had started and that the white men had remained in the anteroom, the young woman replied that she could not remember. ‘Why did you at first say that the Dutchman had been sitting in your own room?’ Although Green repeated the question three times, da Costa refused to answer. Lastly, Green asked if she had ever visited Newman on the barge. Yes, twice, da Costa replied, but Henderson had been present on both occasions. Da Costa left the stand, having been subjected to another long cross-examination.23 Three young labourers had been staying at da Costa’s house on 20 February. All three swore on the Koran to a mullah that they would tell the truth. Oemar Ben Rebo, 25 years old, testified that he had seen a film on the evening of 20 February at the cinema and returned to da Costa’s house, smoking a cigarette before going to bed. Some time later, he had been roused from his sleep by the sound of someone forcing the door of the house. ‘There may have been someone in the compartment of da Costa.’ Contradicting da Costa’s testimony, he said there had been no chairs in the anteroom and that da Costa had not been in the anteroom when he had awoken. ‘There were only chairs in da Costa’s room.’ Before fleeing from the house with the other labourers, Oemar insisted that he had watched the accused hit the deceased several times, including once in the stomach. Upset by Newman’s actions, he had declared, ‘Hey, Mr Australian, why do you act like this, the other man did no harm to you?’ Under questioning by Davoren, the young labourer admitted that he had not mentioned the blow to

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the stomach at the earlier summary hearing because he had been ‘confused and anxious when questioned’. The other two labourers, Aloes Marwassing, 19, and Octavianus Pasmanjekoe, 20, were able to describe much less of the fight, stating that they had awoken after a loud noise to see one white man standing over another. Both confirmed that only one lamp had been burning in the house. Oddly, Marwassing testified that he had not seen Oemar at da Costa’s house on that night.24 As the trial reconvened after lunch, the prosecution’s case was all but complete. One last witness was recalled to the stand before the defence mounted its case. Corporal Henderson admitted that he and Newman had been under the influence of alcohol on 20 February. Newman had been ‘a bit worse than I was … but not really drunk’. Henderson denied that he had ever told either Newman or da Costa, ‘It was not nice of you to beat the Dutchman.’ Questioned by Green, he shed yet more doubt on da Costa’s credibility, firmly contending that she and Newman had had a sexual relationship. She had been on the barge several times in the company of the accused. On one occasion I came upon them unexpectedly … three or four days before 20 February … and all the lights were out. When I came to the door [of the cabin] the accused came up to me putting a towel around his waist.

Henderson said he had been in bed reading a book when Newman had come back to the barge about 12.45 in the morning on 21 February. Visibly agitated, Newman had stated that he had just returned from da Costa’s house: He [said he] walked in the door and saw this white man standing there in more or less a fighting attitude, and more or less in defence of himself he struck at the man. He said he hit him several blows on the head … He didn’t say anything

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to me about any conversation with this man at the house … he couldn’t remember whether he saw any lights in the room or not.25

It was hardly surprising that Henderson defended his friend, though it was strange that the prosecutor didn’t do much to challenge his evidence. And so the prosecution’s case closed with Henderson’s image of Newman walking into a dark room to confront a man in a fighting attitude. The defence called just one person, the accused. In contrast with the gruelling time that da Costa faced in the stand over several days, Corporal Newman was compelled to testify for only a few hours. True, his evidence was not slowed and complicated by language barriers and by a lack of understanding of the Australian justice system, but it was ironic that the trial was a much more testing experience for a mere bystander. Newman was quick to claim that his sexual relationship with da Costa had started in May 1947, less than six weeks after he had arrived on Morotai. At that time, she had been living with a medical orderly, Sergeant Bidjo. ‘I became intimate with her on a number of occasions. These lasted for a while and then she formed an association with another airman.’ This second relationship had come to an end three months later when the airman had returned to Australia in August 1947 after breaking his arm. Newman said he had then resumed his sexual relationship with da Costa for a few weeks, until another airman had ‘stepped into his shoes’. I was displaced in her affections until some time in December. The woman was more or less common property round the RAAF. In February of this year she left the man she was living with, and I took up with her again. As the woman appeared to be abandoned, I thought I might instal [sic] her and maintain her.

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Given this brutally frank, even contemptuous, account, da Costa’s unwillingness to admit that she had been in a sexual relationship with Newman was hardly surprising. Newman claimed that he had offered to give da Costa 20 guilders a week in return for a promise that ‘she would stick to me alone’. He had not at first moved in with da Costa, holding off in case Bidjo had reasserted his claim. ‘I was prepared to stand down in his favour.’ By now, the sexual and ethnic dynamics behind the fight in the hilltop house should have been clear to the court: da Costa was regarded by the men on the island, white and local, as a piece of transferable sexual property. Newman adopted a deliberately matter-of-fact stance and avoided any discussion of his feelings for da Costa, suggesting that he was relaxed, even indifferent, about her shifting sexual associations. Was this approach designed to dismiss any notion that his actions on the fateful night were motivated by sexual jealousy or revenge? Turning to the night in question, Newman recalled that he had knocked on da Costa’s door several times, but received no response. I kicked and pulled at the door and it suddenly came open … and momentarily off balance, I stepped inside the doorway and I saw a white man in a fighting attitude. I had never seen him before. I thought I had walked into a trap. I struck this man with my left hand and with my right hand. The man fell to the ground. The second blow connected with the man’s jaw on the left-hand side … I looked around to see if there were any further adversaries. I saw nobody. I immediately backed out of the building. I did not see Lena da Costa.

Newman gave a quite different version of his encounter with da Costa on the barge on 21 February. Da Costa had asked him why he had fought with Anker. ‘I said that he made trouble for me and

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she had no right to have a Dutchman in her house.’ Da Costa had claimed that she had not known that the Dutchman was in her house because she had been away at a friend’s doing her ironing. She had asked, ‘Why must you make trouble for me when I am already in trouble with Bidjo?’ Newman said he had replied that he was maintaining her and that she had ‘no right to have a man there at all’. He had told da Costa that he wanted nothing further to do with her. These stronger words belied his earlier matter-of-fact tone, revealing that he had been angered by what he saw as da Costa’s betrayal. The prosecutor asked Newman why he thought he had walked into a trap. Newman said he thought ‘Bidjo might have become jealous’. Although he insisted that he had been able to see Anker’s raised fists, the aircraftman admitted that he had drunk a considerable quantity of beer and gin on the barge: ‘Up here we drink what we can.’ Claiming that Anker had confronted him in a boxing stance, Newman said he was certain that he had hit the Dutchman only twice ‘because I have done a lot of boxing’. I am positive that I did not deliver any blows to the man’s body … It might be the usual thing in the ring to follow up a left to the face and a right to the face with a third blow, but the blows I struck spun the man round and he dropped to the ground after the second one.

Davoren also probed the aircraftman’s story, asking why he had not looked in da Costa’s compartment. Newman could give no reason for this, repeating that he had wanted to get away as quickly as possible without any further trouble. He recalled that there was a box-like object in the room, but no chairs, and could not say if there were any Indonesians sleeping in the house. There were certainly no lights on in the room, though a lamp could have been burning in da Costa’s compartment. At all points Newman had contradicted da Costa’s evidence. He insisted that he had not gone

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to da Costa’s house with the intention of becoming ‘involved in [a] fight over the woman’, adding that he had been in only one other brawl on Morotai. Despite this affirmation, a question from the President of the Court elicited a more ambivalent answer. ‘I knew that she had been distributing her favours generally. [But] it did not occur to me when I knocked on the door that she was again distributing her favours in some other direction.’ And so Newman’s evidence ended.26 On 9 April, Davoren, the judge advocate, rose to sum up the case for the court. Running to 18 closely typed pages, this summing-up was the decisive moment in the trial, guiding the eventual ruling. Davoren stressed that ‘some special features’ gave Newman’s trial ‘a character and significance very different from those with which we are normally required to deal’. The trial concerned the death by alleged violence of a subject of a friendly power on its sovereign territory. The NEI Government had graciously agreed that Australia could hold a court martial: ‘It betokens the regard in which the administration of justice by our Service courts is held by the Netherlands Government, as well as the confidence of both Governments, that you will do justice in this case without fear or favour, affection or ill-will, according to law.’ Davoren was at great pains to underline his neutrality, stressing that the law required him to ‘maintain an entirely impartial position’. ‘No member of the Court should therefore entertain any feeling that I am desirous of foisting my view of the facts upon him.’ Appealing to the principles of ‘British justice’, he emphasised that the court was obliged to weigh the evidence carefully.27 Davoren’s next direction was perhaps unsurprising in the context of his own day, but strikes the modern reader with considerable, even bracing, force. It is worth quoting this facet of his summary at length because it exposes the attitudes underpinning the Australian view of the outside world in such unambiguous terms:

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You have further difficulties in deciding what evidence you can safely accept, because much of the case for the prosecution depends upon the testimony of Indonesian natives. It is not as easy to assess the value of evidence given in another language which has to be interpreted for you; and you are not helped by your necessarily limited knowledge of the character, outlook, habits and inclinations of these people. You must not, of course, reject or discount their evidence merely because of this; but you should endeavour, as far as possible, to understand the ways of these natives, and try to discover their attitude of mind to what they claim to have observed. You must make allowance for intellectual limitations and difficulties which they experience as a result of little or no education, and the very restricted vocabulary afforded by their own language for expression of their meanings. You may think also that in many respects they are no more than children, and that their evidence should be regarded as the evidence of children — with the tendency of children to tell a plain and simple story of what they saw; but nevertheless you must be cautious because children at times do incline to weave fanciful exaggerations and additions around things they have seen. You may think you can obtain some help from what you observed in Mr Hartmans’ handling of these Indonesian witnesses when he was interpreting their evidence. He must have had many years of experience with them, and of necessity knows incomparably more about them than you can hope to learn. You will have observed that at not infrequent intervals they were reminded … of the oath which they had taken to tell the truth … The need for this assurance may have been some habit among themselves to exact retribution from one of their own people who gives evidence to the detriment of another … You will remember that, if their

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evidence be true, they had seen the accused hitting a white Dutchman to whom they must have been used to show a wholesome respect. In their simple minds they may have looked upon him with awe and fear … If there are shortcomings in the evidence against [the accused], they must be faced squarely by you — not just explained away by sympathetic appreciation of the difficulties or peculiarities of the Indonesian natives.28

At first, this direction seems a sensible, indeed insightful, appreciation of the difficulties of a cross-cultural trial in which some of the witnesses did not understand and feared the Australian justice system. But step by step, almost inexorably, Davoren slid from this sensitive understanding of cultural differences into a patronising description of the limitations and failings of the simple, childlike natives. He betrayed the prejudice of a literate Westerner who assumed that other people who depended on an oral culture were necessarily less capable of observing, recalling and understanding what they saw before them. He assumed that the language of the ‘natives’ must be not just primitive but somehow bereft of words to describe some fairly straightforward events. To be sure, the language spoken by da Costa and the labourers could well have lacked the necessary vocabulary to identify the mechanisms and concepts of Western civilisation. However, this limitation surely did not apply to the ability to find the right words to say whether one person had hit another. Davoren’s conviction that the Indonesian witnesses were childlike natives was unleavened by the sense of protectiveness and benevolence that conditioned Monty Phillips’ belief that Melanesians were like children. It is clear from Davoren’s direction, indeed from the whole course of our story, running through Manus, Lae and Morotai, that the ‘native’ was an undifferentiated, portable image that homogenised and distorted a series of different societies. Davoren could have been talking here about Australian Aborigines, Melanesians or most Asians.

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The second half of Davoren’s summation entailed an extended survey of the evidence. He underlined the weaknesses in the prosecution case, perhaps in too great a length to meet his own exhortations to be impartial. First, he highlighted the weak points in Tielung’s testimony. The Dutch doctor had not administered the right injections; he had not conducted a full post-mortem until it was too late; he had admitted that Anker’s death could have been caused by other factors; and he had further conceded that the apparent cause of death — a haemorrhage of the liver caused by the application of external force — was rare. ‘As a result is rare, unusual or unexpected, you will naturally be the more cautious to accept it as having actually occurred.’ The court could not accept Tielung’s ‘bald opinion’ without considering its shortcomings.29 What had happened inside the hilltop house? Emphasising that there was much disagreement about the events in that dark room, Davoren crystallised the divergence between the two versions in a telling phrase: ‘He is a Corporal in the Air Force and she is an Indonesian woman who was living in a house with a number of male coolies.’ This apparently straightforward factual description served to underline the differing positions that Newman and da Costa occupied in the ethnic, gender and class politics of the time. Newman’s evidence was judged as being more reliable because he was a Western male in the air force. It is pertinent that Davoren described da Costa in part by referring to the fact that she lived with male labourers, suggesting an improper or at least unusual connection with men from the lowest class in society. He neglected to mention that some of the labourers were sleeping in the house with their wives. Against this dichotomy, Davoren accentuated the many inconsistencies and conflicting statements in da Costa’s evidence. This was entirely proper, for she had repeatedly changed her evidence or denied things that were well-established, not least her long and tumultuous sexual relationship with the accused. However, as one reads his relentless dissection, it is obvious that

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Davoren did not heed his own admonition that Australians should try to ‘understand the ways of these natives’. The Australian lawyer, so confident of the principles of ‘British’ justice, did not pause to consider why an Indonesian woman might dissemble. His exhortation to come to grips with another culture was shortcircuited by the stereotypes at the heart of his world view. His language became more and more damning. He condemned da Costa’s ‘readiness to tell lies with perfect ease and unconcern when she feels the desirability of doing so for the most minor reasons’. He dismissed her claim that she had stayed with her aunt on the fateful night as a ‘most fantastic story’ told ‘so glibly’. His conclusion was damning. ‘If you feel that she cannot tell the time by a watch, you may feel that her evidence in this respect is a fabrication which will make you cautious about her statements on the matters of importance.’ Davoren was imprisoned in his own belief that ‘natives’ were children who compulsively lied. Not for the first time one could ask who was on trial in the court martial — Newman or an Indonesian woman who lived with male labourers. Davoren treated the evidence of the labourers less harshly, in part one suspects because it cast yet more doubt on da Costa’s testimony. He stressed that the labourers had disputed da Costa’s claims concerning the lamps burning in the house, the positioning of chairs and her own presence in the anteroom. The most telling piece of testimony offered by the labourers, which supported the prosecution’s case — Oemar’s contention that he had seen Newman hit Anker in the stomach — was swiftly pushed to one side when Davoren noted that Oemar had made no such statement at the summary hearing.30 Seven pages of Davoren’s summation were devoted to a scathing interrogation of da Costa’s evidence, leaving little of her character intact. Though he was charged with murder, Newman’s testimony was summarised in little more than one page. At the outset of this friendly summary, Davoren went out of his way to

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stress that the accused had decided to testify. ‘There was no obligation on him to give evidence on oath; but by doing so he subjected himself to the test of cross-examination, and you are in a position to decide how well or how poorly he withstood that test.’ From this implicit endorsement, Davoren emphasised that Newman’s story was internally consistent and corroborated by Henderson. While he noted that this consistency was not ‘proof of what actually occurred’, the suggestion was nonetheless made that Newman was credible. Davoren failed to note that Newman was operating in a familiar cultural context, backed by the clear sympathy of his comrades. Davoren turned to the question of motive. After observing that Anker had never met either Newman or da Costa before 20 February, he moved his summation away from an appraisal of the defendant’s evidence to a speculative aside about the deceased: Anker was apparently married with two children, and is said to have been a quiet, reserved man. However, there is a strange lack of information as to his movements between 8 o’clock in the evening on 20 February and when he is known to have been in the house of da Costa at some time between 11 o’clock and 12 midnight. When he left Chief Engineer Heemstra, he was apparently going to Doroeba, where he possibly intended to make some purchases from Chinese traders … With the lack of knowledge as to where he was, you may feel some doubt as to what might have happened to him during that period. He may or may not have been involved in some brawl, with a consequent injury … You will remember that, according to da Costa, he complained that he was ‘dizzy’ when he arrived at her house, and that he suggested that perhaps he was a little drunk. However, his condition probably has little bearing upon the case, except so far as it may give you some indication of what his probable activities were during the evening.

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This long digression about what might have happened to Anker in the hours between leaving the jetty and reaching da Costa’s house accounted for more than half of the brief summation of Newman’s evidence. Even the qualifying remark that Anker’s condition as he arrived at da Costa’s house had little bearing on the case was itself qualified by the word ‘probably’. Despite the absence of any supporting evidence, medical or otherwise, Davoren insinuated that Anker had been injured in a brawl in Doroeba, perhaps with some shadowy Chinese traders. And he readily accepted da Costa’s testimony on one point at least — Anker’s dizziness — even though he had spent a great deal of time undermining her credibility. What of the possibility ‘that some motive for whatever exchange of blows occurred might have [had] its origins in a dispute over the woman’? Davoren dealt with this question audaciously, stressing that da Costa had denied ‘any familiarity with the deceased … she says that [the fight] was simply an unprovoked attack by the accused on Anker without any words of difference between them’. Da Costa’s previously ridiculed credibility was suddenly invoked to dismiss the highly plausible proposition that Newman was motivated by sexual jealousy. Just as he did not explore this obvious sexual tension, so Davoren did not probe Newman’s admission that he had been involved in another brawl. We are left with no inkling of what that brawl had concerned. Likewise, Davoren did not scrutinise the accused’s assertion that he had feared an ambush. On the contrary, he entertained the possibility that ‘there was some provocation for the accused striking Anker, such as an original attack or threatened attack by Anker’. There was no evidence that Anker had acted aggressively other than Newman’s own untested assertion that the Dutchman had confronted him in a fighting pose. Indeed, no one could have blamed Anker if he had taken up a fighting pose given that he had been suddenly confronted by an angry and drunken man kicking down a door in the middle of the night. Although he allowed the

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possibility that the court could find the accused guilty, Davoren concluded that ‘there is room for grave doubt as to what did actually occur that night’.31 The surviving record does not indicate how long Air Commodore Walters and his colleagues took to reach their verdict. Nor does it outline their reasoning. Suffice to say that they found Newman not guilty on 9 April 1948. It is incontrovertible that the events of the night of 20 February were shrouded in doubt, the more so because the crucial witness, Sophia da Costa, gave such contradictory evidence. But Davoren summed up the case in a manner that took the heat off the accused and turned it on to da Costa. As far as can be discerned, the young prosecutor, Vernon Hubbard, did not play an assertive role in the proceedings. As soon as the trial concluded, the members of the court, Davoren and Newman were flown to Darwin. Like the Americans in the Scott case, the RAAF quickly ensured that the accused was removed from the scene to prevent any attempt by the Dutch to intervene. On 13 April, Melville Langslow, Secretary of the Department of the Air, told his counterpart at External Affairs, John Burton, that Hartmans had ‘raised no objections of any kind either in relation to court proceedings, verdict or to withdrawal of Newman’. Langslow reported that Walters was ‘eulogistic’ about the conduct of the Dutch Administrator. Well he might be because Hartmans had done everything to smooth the way for the Australians, often without consulting his superiors in Batavia. The Australian press did not cover the outcome of the trial; neither the RAAF nor External Affairs had any reason to push the story back into the public realm. A little more than a week later, Burton informed the Dutch Legation in Canberra that Newman had been acquitted. After stressing that Australia had ‘much appreciated’ the courtesy of the NEI Government, Burton told the legation that Newman would be discharged from the RAAF shortly. The response of either the legation or the NEI Government was left unrecorded. A few weeks after Newman had returned to Australia, the last

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10 members of the RAAF’s No. 60 Operational Base Unit also departed from Morotai, bringing to a close Australia’s brief and, in the end, controversial military presence in the Spice Islands.32 So, just like the death of John Scott, the death of Willem Anker was left unexplained and unpunished.

Chapter Ten

Aftermaths

BY THE MIDDLE OF 1948, two of the trials at the heart of this story — the prosecution of Eduardo Bahinting and the court martial of Corporal Alexander Newman — had concluded, at least as far as the Australian legal system was concerned. The third case was far from finished. On 14 August, shortly after Justice Monty Phillips had handed down his verdict in Rabaul, Adrian Jones applied for leave to appeal in R v Hsueh and Chou to the High Court of Australia. He submitted that the convictions against the two Chinese labourers for assaulting Pondranei and depriving him of his liberty were against the weight of evidence and contrary to law. He also submitted that the PNG Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to try the case against the accused and appealed against the severity of the sentences.

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Whereas they had been defended in Inrim and Rabaul by a nervous junior legal officer of the Administration, the Chinese labourers were now represented by a legal team spearheaded by Thomas Smith KC and Francis Galbally, the leading Melbourne solicitor. Judging by the Crown’s costs, launching a High Court appeal was no less expensive than today. The Crown Counsel, M. V. McInerney, charged a sizeable fee of £101, while the Crown Solicitor lodged a bill for nearly £115 pounds. The labourers could not have funded their appeal from their own humble means. In contrast with its apparent indifference or at least studied detachment earlier in the trial, the Chinese Nationalist Government had now apparently taken up the cause of the labourers with unexpected seriousness, presumably paying for the defence’s bevy of lawyers. So, while Hsueh and Chou languished in a Rabaul prison, their lowly case moved to the highest court in the land far to the south in Melbourne. They were not the only party to have a great deal at stake. From the beginning, the Administration had seen the case as a test of its legitimacy and authority. More than that, the case had become a question of honour, and the Administration was determined that the charges would stick. In mid-September, the Crown Law Officer, Esme Bignold, noted that the prosecutor from the original case, Cyril McCubbery, would be on leave in Australia during the hearing. He recommended that McCubbery should assist the Crown, refuting any incorrect allegations. Several days later, External Territories tracked McCubbery down to Wollongong, firing off a telegram asking him to be in Melbourne on 6 October, a day before the appeal hearing would start.1 But he was unable to reach Sydney until 6 October, throwing a small spanner into the Crown’s preparations. The bid to get McCubbery to Melbourne indicated that the Australian authorities were grimly set on keeping the two Chinese in prison. Reports of continuing unrest among the Chinese on Manus made the Administration even more determined. About two weeks

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before the High Court convened to consider the appeal, a member of Colonel Murray’s personal staff, J. G. Pearsall, reported a worrisome conversation with Theodore Braun, the American doctor based at the Lutheran Mission Hospital in Finschhafen who had performed the post-mortem on John Scott in Lae. During a long conversation with Pearsall in late September, Braun said he had just returned from Manus where he had been testifying in the Tittle assault case. During his brief stay, he had been told by Vinnell representatives that the Chinese contingent contained communists who were committing sabotage. One barge, in perfectly good working order, had been sunk; fully functioning motor vehicles had been stripped down for spares; worn-out vehicles had been dispatched as in good running order and engines had been vandalised. Braun had claimed the communists were striving to prevent useable materials reaching Nationalist China. The Chinese camp seemed to be teetering again on the edge of armed conflict. ‘Certain nonCommunist Chinese were afraid of violence and slept with revolvers under their pillows.’ Vinnell employees ‘had said they would not be surprised to see faction fights break out or violence done to non-Communists’.2 From the Administration’s point of view, the Chinese contingent had brought nothing but trouble to Manus. Five judges of the High Court sat in Melbourne for five days in October 1948 to hear Hsueh and Chou’s application; Chief Justice Sir John Latham was joined by justices Sir Hayden Starke, Sir Owen Dixon, Edward McTiernan and Dudley Williams. The first four judges had been on the court for at least 13 years, while Williams was the most recent appointment in 1940. The transcript, running to more than 160 pages, records a long and at times convoluted debate about the workings of Australian jurisdiction in PNG and the nature of any immunity from civil prosecution that might be granted to the military forces of a friendly foreign power. As one turns over the pages of the transcript, tracing the legal cut and thrust over the finer points of international law, one senses

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that the Chinese labourers had become even more remote from their own trial, even more anonymous and unknown to the Australian participants in the proceedings. It soon became starkly apparent that Smith was not even faintly acquainted with his clients. What little he knew of Hsueh and Chou had been gleaned from the transcript of the original trial. Whenever one of the judges questioned a point of fact about either the defendants or the Chinese labour contingent as a whole, Smith admitted that he could not provide any further detail. We can safely conclude that Smith and Galbally oddly had little or no contact with any Chinese diplomatic or military representatives. ‘It is reasonably apparent,’ Smith contended, ‘that these two Chinese would not be represented before this Court if the [Chinese] Government were not interested in their fate.’3 Yet, this interest seemingly did not extend beyond putting up the money to pay the lawyers’ bills. The hearing underscored yet again the geographic, psychological and legal remoteness of PNG. This remoteness was exacerbated by the apparently poor preparation of the appellants and the Crown, making the first day of the hearing almost farcical. Only minutes into Smith’s opening gambit in support of the application, Justice Starke interrupted: ‘You need not do it now, but will you at some time or other refer me to the instrument that gives a territorial jurisdiction to Australia over Manus Island?’ Smith replied that he was not disputing Australia’s general jurisdiction over Manus, simply its jurisdiction over this class of case. It was hardly surprising that this answer did not satisfy Starke. The Crown Counsel, McInerney, chimed in, saying he had hoped that McCubbery would have been able to help answer such questions, but he had failed to arrive at Essendon Airport that morning as planned. This admission only increased the irritation of the Bench, and Latham abruptly closed the day’s hearing, grumpily noting that he expected counsel to be much better prepared. The next day, Smith moved through the facts of the case swiftly. This summary was unremarkable, save for one strong point.

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‘The evidence suggests that shortly before 25th January this year there was an incident at or near Lugos, some natives holding up a Chinese, threatening him with an axe and stealing some of what I might call his trading stock, his cigarettes.’ There had been no such evidence during the original trial, merely an entirely unsubstantiated allegation by Hsueh just before Phillips had passed sentence. Smith moved quickly to the nub of his defence plea. First, he argued that the purpose of the Chinese contingent — locating and shipping out the military material — was not confined to the encampment, but rather extended over a large area of the island. Far from being ‘some distant locality’, the hut where the assault allegedly took place lay inside the contingent’s area of operations. The defendants were ‘not civilians outside the Army’. As a military force of a friendly foreign power, the contingent had been given an immunity from Australian civil jurisdiction. Smith admitted, however, that he did not know the exact nature of the Chinese force. The defendants ‘were enrolled in some manner; they had to sign papers; they were issued with military uniform and given military training — how extensive we do not know … They were under the command of … a hierarchy of military officers’. It did not matter that the contingent was not engaged in a warlike purpose. In a telling admission, Smith conceded that Phillips had been unable to determine if the Chinese were on Manus with the Administration’s consent.4 Smith drew his submission to a close. The forces of a friendly state enjoyed an immunity from Australian jurisdiction ‘in the absence of an express stipulation that they are to be subject to the ordinary jurisdiction of our courts’. It would be ‘a breach of faith to exercise jurisdiction so waived’. This immunity did not apply solely to the area of the Chinese camp at Lorengau. ‘If permission is given to maintain a force on a particular island for the purpose of collecting and guarding war material which is scattered over different parts of the island, the immunity cannot be limited to those personnel who are from time to time on duty or to the area of

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the camp.’ It was not to the point that the accused ‘were not on duty, but engaged on an enterprise of their own, at the relevant time’. If the convictions were upheld, Smith submitted that the sentences were ‘excessive’, contending that Phillips ‘took a much more serious view of the offences than is warranted by the evidence’.5 Assisted by the experienced Crown Solicitor, Harry Whitlam, father of the future Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, McInerney addressed the court for the Crown. He readily conceded that a visiting foreign military force might be granted immunity from local jurisdiction, but insisted that this principle did not apply in this case. Above all, he stressed that ‘the host nation’s duty to its own subjects requires that public order and good government within the host State remain unimpaired’. Smith’s propositions favoured the visiting nation and ignored the interests of the host nation. Further, the host nation ‘must necessarily have agreed to waive jurisdiction in respect of matters expressly permitted’. McInerney contended that the appellants had failed to establish the plea of immunity. And if they were not merely labourers, the defence had not made it clear that they were members of a military force. ‘Moreover, whatever the position of their “force”, they were not engaged on any of its duties … at the time of the offences.’ He concluded that ‘the circumstances themselves are sufficient to show that the sentences were not unduly severe’.6 While the High Court retired to consider its verdict, the case fell into another lull for some weeks. The Chinese Embassy broke the calm by delivering another note verbale to External Affairs in late November, pointedly describing Chou and Hsueh for the first time as ‘military employees’ who had received ‘proper military training’. Somewhat belatedly, the embassy was trying to buttress the defence’s argument that the labourers were exempt from Australian civil jurisdiction. ‘Under these circumstances, the Embassy feels necessity to request the immediate release of the persons Hsueh and Chou, who are still in custody pending court

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decision.’ There was still no case to answer as far as the Chinese were concerned. The embassy also reiterated its request that the Australian authorities accord ‘adequate protection’ to the members of the Marianas Service who were engaged in the Manus operation.7 After an adjournment lasting nearly two months, the High Court dismissed the appeal on 6 December. The Chinese Embassy’s belated attempt to influence the appeal predictably failed. Chief Justice Latham, former Deputy Prime Minister and AttorneyGeneral in the Lyons Government, 1932–34, wrote the longest judgment. He accepted the defence’s contention that the Chinese contingent was on Manus with the implied consent of the Australian authorities, but rejected any notion that Australian law did not apply to the Chinese. The accused were ordinary workmen, not soldiers. Moreover, the executive government could not determine that ‘certain persons are members of a foreign army and by such a determination deprive the Australian people of resort to their own tribunals for the purpose of enforcing their claims or protecting their rights’. After rejecting the application on the question of international law, Latham ruled that the sentences were appropriate. ‘The maltreatment of the native Pondranei continued over a considerable period: there was an unjustifiable assault as well as a grave interference with his personal liberty.’8 In his concurring judgment, Starke, at 78 the oldest justice, who was appointed back in 1920, contended that there was no evidence that Australia had expressly waived its territorial jurisdiction over the Chinese. He was much less sure than Latham that the Australian Government knew what was happening on Manus. ‘It is possible that the Executive Government had no knowledge of their presence on the Island at any time material to this case, for it was an allied base of operations against Japan, established in the main by the United States.’ 9 Dixon reached a similar conclusion, arguing that the Chinese ‘came by American invitation and without any antecedent permission from [the Australian Government]’.

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Although its consent to the presence of the Chinese could be presumed, Australia had neither invited nor accepted the Chinese as a unit of the armed forces of China.10 Far removed from the difficult task of running PNG, the judges of the High Court regarded the case with much more detachment than Phillips, formulating their arguments in less passionate terms. Nevertheless, Starke and Dixon were equally intent on protecting Australian jurisdiction against encroachments, concluding that the Chinese operation had been arranged and approved without the knowledge and consent of Australia. In contrast with the welter of press items back in March and April, the High Court appeal was given scant coverage in the daily newspapers in October and December. Under the awkward headline, ‘Attack on Native Chinese Fail in Appeal’, the Sydney Morning Herald stated on 7 December that the High Court had held that the Chinese were ‘simply members of a body of labourers’ and were therefore not entitled to any immunity from prosecution in Australian courts. After so much heat and light, this report was skimpy, providing no real analysis. The accused and the victim alike remained no more than three exotic names on the page. The press had not picked up the wider issues at stake and remained unaware of how intent the authorities in Port Moresby and Canberra had been to defeat the appeal. Feeling more magnanimous in victory, the Attorney-General’s Department suggested to External Affairs that ‘representations might be made to have any part of sentence remaining revoked’.11 Not without a little satisfaction and perhaps even more relief, Bob Melrose was still keen to underline the fact that the Administration had acted in a correct manner. In a memo to Halligan on 18 December, he stated rather bluntly: ‘It is recalled that the Appeal has been determined and the conviction upheld.’12 An expensive appeal over moderate prison sentences for two labourers would seem to indicate an unexpected level of anger. One cannot ascribe, however, this concerted legal effort to the

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actions of a regime that cared greatly about its ordinary soldiers. The Nationalist Army was deeply corrupt and well-known for its cruel or indifferent attitude towards its troops. Grossly underpaid and ill-housed, many Nationalist soldiers died during the civil war from starvation or various diseases.13 This was not the kind of government that would spend a great deal of money fighting an appeal in the courts of a distant country to free mere labourers. This was especially so given the course of the civil war by late 1948. While the High Court was sitting in Melbourne in October, the People’s Liberation Army was waging a major offensive in northern China, capturing a string of major cities. For the Nationalist regime, the High Court appeal had become a matter of honour and political interest; the labourers were incidental. On 21 December, Murray informed Canberra that the Chinese labourers would be released from Rabaul’s gaol on Christmas Eve 1948 and he declared that he wanted to deport them to China.14 The Manus case had been difficult and time-consuming from the outset, and so it remained. Fate had conspired to make sure that nothing in this affair would be simple or straightforward. It would take many weeks for the Australian Government to work out how the labourers could be returned to China. At first, Canberra appeared indifferent and Murray had to send several testy reminders that the Administration wanted to remove the labourers as quickly as possible. Two practical problems immediately became apparent. Given Rabaul’s remoteness, how would the hapless labourers get back to China? And who would pay their fares? The Chinese Government certainly rejected any notion that it would pay and nothing had been heard from Vinnell Corporation for some time. The Administration considered sending the labourers to Guam, but soon realised that this would be impractical. After running through several other options, it eventually decided that Hsueh and Chou would have to travel to Sydney before moving on to China. Irritated by the apparently interminable delay, the Chinese Embassy asked the Australian Government brusquely on 21

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January 1949, when the labourers would be repatriated. By now External Affairs was even more anxious not to antagonise the Chinese Government any further. John Burton, the young Secretary of External Affairs, had maintained a close interest in the case for some time and he wrote to Reg Halligan on 10 February to stress that External Territories should assume full responsibility for the labourers once they arrived in Sydney. He argued that it was neither ‘logical [nor] desirable’ to deport the Chinese. Removing the Chinese from Rabaul was a matter of repatriation, especially given that they had no objection to their voluntary return. ‘Deportation proceedings might, in fact, produce resentment, which could otherwise be avoided, on the part of the Chinese authorities.’ Burton emphasised that he wanted to keep the Chinese Embassy fully informed. Although it was perhaps too late to worry about arousing resentment, Burton’s advice was prudent and humane.15 External Affairs was naturally more concerned that dragging out the repatriation in a messy fashion would damage Australia’s already poor relationship with Nanking. By this point, five departments of the Federal Government had become entangled with the fate of the labourers: External Territories, External Affairs, Attorney-General’s, Health and Immigration. Had they known about all the activity back in Canberra, would Hsueh and Chou have been impressed or simply bemused that their simple case was preoccupying some of Australia’s most senior bureaucrats? Ever-vigilant in its task of patrolling the white walls of exclusion, the Immigration Department decided in February that it would temporarily lift the ban on ‘coloured entry’ as long as External Territories assumed full responsibility for the Chinese while they were in Sydney. It stipulated that the labourers should remain in Australia for as little time as possible. If they failed to proceed to China, they would be sent back to PNG.16 The Chinese Embassy had still not lost interest in the matter, asking again on 8 March about the present conditions of the labourers.17 Finally, after some delay caused by adverse weather, Hsueh and Chou flew

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out of Rabaul on 11 March 1949, as repatriates, not deportees. They arrived in Sydney two days later, not long before midnight, almost a year after their arrest on Manus. An official of External Territories was waiting to meet them as their minder for the duration of their stay on Australian soil. Hsueh and Chou had spent nearly three months in Rabaul after their release waiting to be repatriated. Again, the paucity of the official record means it is impossible to know what they did during this protracted interval. The Manus operation had ended months before and the rest of the labour contingent had left the region. Although Rabaul had its own Chinese community, the two labourers were still far from their kin, stranded against their will in a foreign land. They must have found these weeks strange. External Territories billeted Hsueh and Chou in India House on Harris Street in Pyrmont for 15 days. The department’s Sydney representative, C. E. Leake, stressed that arranging their departure remained problematic. ‘Some difficulty was experienced in getting the travel documents and the other papers completed, especially as the men could not speak English or even “pidgin”.’ The labourers were questioned at the Chinese Consulate, pleading that they had no money and simply wanted to return to their homes near Shanghai. ‘They feared being left destitute at Hong Kong some 600 or 800 sea miles from Shanghai.’ Two steerage-class passages were booked on an Australian & Oriental vessel, the Shansi, leaving for Hong Kong at the end of the month. Leake was unsure if the labourers were bound to complete their contracts with Vinnell. But Hsueh and Chou did not want to return to Vinnell, and it would seem the American company had no interest in seeing them again.18 By this stage, some of the Australian officials were anxious to help the luckless Chinese. Underneath the desire to get them out of the country, one senses a certain amount of sympathy, even in the stilted, formal prose of the bureaucratic records. Hsueh and Chou travelled by train from Sydney to Newcastle. No doubt, the Australian countryside, with its wide-

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open spaces and unfamiliar vegetation, must have made this unusual odyssey even odder. Anxious about the long and uncertain journey ahead, Hsueh and Chou asked External Territories to provide an extra form of identification. Leake gave them an open letter: To whom it may concern The bearer, CHOW HUNG CHIN, was an employee of the Fennell [sic] Corp. (U.S.A.) Guam, who is being returned to Hong Kong for repatriation to his home at Shanghai, or to his former employers. All information concerning Chow Hung Chin is known to the Australian Government Authorities at Hong Kong.

Leake told the labourers that ‘they would be met, or further advised regarding their movements upon their arrival in Hong Kong’. This assurance was worryingly vague. After a delay caused by labour troubles, Hsueh and Chou sailed out of Newcastle on 29 March, arriving in Hong Kong via Manila three weeks later, much to the surprise of the Australian Trade Commission, which had not been told that two ex-prisoners were coming its way. The commission was exceedingly anxious to get these unexpected charges off its hands, telling Canberra that the Chinese authorities had refused to accept responsibility for the labourers. It decided to send the two men to Shanghai as soon as possible. ‘Presume they will be met in Shanghai.’19 It is noteworthy that the Australian officials used language that cast the two Chinese as some kind of consignment. They invariably said Hsueh and Chou were being ‘sent’, ‘dispatched’ or ‘shipped’ from Sydney, adding that they could be ‘offloaded’ at either Manila or Hong Kong. That the case had been one big headache from the beginning encouraged this tendency to see the Chinese as a form of cargo that had to be ‘shipped’ from one port to

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another. It is common for people in positions of authority to talk about prisoners in such a fashion. Although the constricted vocabulary of the bureaucracy played a part as well, this language underlined the gap that separated the two Chinese and their Australian ‘handlers’. So, after a brief stay in the British colony, Hsueh and Chou boarded the President Wilson on 23 April as third-class passengers bound for Shanghai. After a long and twisting journey on plane, train and ship, they were finally on their way home. But what awaited them? On the day that the two labourers landed in Hong Kong, the People’s Liberation Army crossed the Yangtze River at several points, bringing the communist troops within striking distance of Nanking and Shanghai. On the day that Hsueh and Chou departed from Hong Kong on the President Wilson, the Nationalist regime declared martial law in Shanghai, dispatching armoured vehicles to strategic points. Hours later, on 24 April, PLA soldiers marched into Nanking without bloodshed. Hsueh and Chou were returning to a beleaguered city, crammed with thousands of refugees. ‘Roads leading to Shanghai were jammed with families,’ writes historian Noel Barber, ‘carrying everything they owned on rickshaws, pedicabs or wheelbarrows.’20 There was perhaps something almost inevitable that a case that had often risen to the level of grand drama should peter out in a rather farcical, even slightly grubby, monetary tussle. Australian officials were determined that they would not pay for repatriating the labourers. Through April and May, they tried to nail down Vinnell, reminding the corporation that it had pledged in 1947 that it would be responsible for the Chinese labourers. But Vinnell was more preoccupied by this point with the impending communist victory in the civil war. Shanghai was a city swept by rumours. Westerners generally regarded the approaching communist forces with a mixture of uncertainty and fear, though some Shanghailanders, as the Western residents of the city were called, found it hard to believe that their unique way of life would soon end. As the primary backers

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of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, the Americans had greatest reason to be uneasy about a communist takeover. The Vinnell people clearly felt that they had more important things to contend with than attending to a batch of bills from Canberra for repatriating two labourers. In one of those coldly ironic twists of fate, the labourers returned to Shanghai in mid-May just as Vinnell was hurriedly arranging its own evacuation to Taiwan. Hsueh and Chou were moving against the tide. After a strange hiatus, foreigners were now streaming out of Shanghai. Apparently bracing themselves for a major battle, the Nationalists imposed even tighter censorship on the press and moved thousands of troops into the city. Shops were boarded up. We do not know what happened to Chou and Hsueh once they reached Shanghai. Australia and Vinnell lost any interest in their wellbeing. There were dangers aplenty. By the second week of May, communist guerillas had infiltrated the porous city, preparing the way for the PLA’s regular troops, who were only a few miles away. The Sydney Sun painted a dire picture for its readers: ‘Inside the city of 6,000,000 there is indescribable panic with business at a standstill, food scarce, and traffic hopelessly at a standstill.’21 One fate for Hsueh and Chou would have been cruel: preparing for the onslaught, the Nationalist commander, General Tang En-po, sent his troops out into the city to press-gang unemployed labourers into building defence works. Tang backed off only when the Taipans, the leading foreign businessmen, complained and demanded payment.22 Despite some characteristic posturing, Nationalist troops did not stage a grim last defence of Shanghai, choosing instead to either flee to Taiwan or to desert. On 27 May, less than a month after Hsueh and Chou’s return, the PLA assumed full control of the city after some desultory shooting. Six months before, Hsueh and Chou had been in a prison on a Pacific island; two months prior, they had been staying at India House in Sydney; and now they were in a city run by the Chinese Communist Party.

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Away from the fall of Shanghai, Vinnell finally agreed to pay the travel costs. In August, the Australian Government presented the American corporation with a bill for £256/6/11, carefully itemising all the costs involved in the repatriation, right down to a small charge for passport photographs. Reflecting this mild obsession with making sure that the American company paid in full, the files in the National Archives are jammed with innumerable copies of invoices and receipts. One little tale remains. In submitting his account for Hsueh and Chou, the manager of India House informed External Territories that he would soon be instituting a new policy. ‘Please note as from 7/6/49 I will not be accommodating Indian or Coloured Seamen.’ He offered no explanation but thanked the department for ‘past favours’.23 What of our other dramatis personae? William Tittle, the American imprisoned for bashing a fellow Vinnell employee, was still incarcerated in Lae prison when Hsueh and Chou were released. He presented the Administration with a similar dilemma: what should be done with this unwanted burden? On 8 January 1949, Bob Melrose, the Government Secretary, noted that Vinnell had ceased its operations in PNG and announced that the Administration proposed to deport Tittle under the Expulsion of Undesirables Ordinance of 1936. Halligan canvassed three options for getting rid of Tittle. If the American was deported, the Administration would have to pay the costs, including his passage to the United States (an airfare would cost £200). Should he not be in possession of the necessary funds, Tittle could apply for assistance from the nearest US consular representative, probably in Australia. Lastly, Vinnell could perhaps be persuaded to assume responsibility for its former employee, though External Affairs had approached the company in Shanghai ‘without success so far’. Vinnell’s 1947 promise that its employees would not trouble the Administration had worn very thin. In early March, the Administration considered using the US Air Force to fly Tittle from Port Moresby to Guam.24

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When Tittle was released on 8 March 1949, the means of his passage back to the United States was still unclear, and he lived on the charity of the Lutheran Church in Lae for some weeks. By early April, the last American military forces had left PNG, meaning that the US Air Force could not be used to move Tittle directly from Lae to either Guam or Manila. As with Hsueh and Chou, Tittle’s repatriation became a minor saga. On 5 April, the Vinnell office in Los Angeles wrote to the Crown Law Office in Port Moresby offering a deal. As a basic principle, the company denied that it was legally or morally obliged to act. ‘In as much as Mr Tittle had broken contract with us prior to his troubles and sentence, we do not owe him the said transportation.’ However, perhaps because it felt a residual responsibility or was simply embarrassed, Vinnell said it would pay Tittle’s transport costs if he signed a release agreement and agreed to repay the sum of money involved within three months. The Secretary of External Affairs, Burton, felt it would be inappropriate to approach US consular representatives unless Tittle was destitute and opined that repatriation was the most suitable option, with the expenses being reimbursed later by Vinnell.25 While the authorities were deliberating, Tittle departed Lae on 14 April on a Qantas flight bound for Sydney. Given that he paid his own fare, it seems likely that he had accepted Vinnell’s offer. At this point, the Australian authorities lost track of Tittle and did not provide any assistance, nor attempt to monitor his movements in Sydney. Finally, in June, External Territories learnt that Tittle had made his way back to America, presumably with Vinnell’s money. So, after so much trouble, endless negotiations and two criminal trials, the Administration finally disentangled itself from the BOSEY operation on Manus. And what of Private Eduardo Bahinting, the Filipino Scout who had been accused of killing John Scott in January 1948? The US Army whisked Bahinting out of PNG in late March, away from Australia’s jurisdiction, back to Manila. External Affairs asked the US Embassy on 22 April and again on 23 July what had happened

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to Bahinting, on each occasion receiving a blank response. On 29 July, the embassy again regretted that it did not know what had transpired. However, unbeknown to the embassy, the US Army had arraigned Bahinting on a manslaughter charge before a general court martial in Manila on 26 April. Lieutenant Milton Case acted as judge advocate and Lieutenant Morris Goldfarb as defence counsel. After so much conflict, Bahinting’s court martial took less than four hours to complete, a short time, one would have thought, to test adequately such a serious charge. Goldfarb immediately made a plea on the ground of double jeopardy that the charge be dismissed because Bahinting had already been tried and discharged by a competent court in PNG for the identical crime. Case opposed this plea in strong terms, contending that ‘the United States has never given up to Australian officials its jurisdiction over this case’. He pointed out that Bahinting had been charged under the Queensland Criminal Code and now faced a charge under the US Articles of War. Goldfarb replied that the jurisdictional conflict had been decided at a higher diplomatic level. This was not the case; Australia and the United States had pressed their rival claims until the very end. The law member of the court denied the defence plea and ordered that the trial should proceed.26 The Scouts testified for the third time. The Chief of Staff of the US Army in the Philippines had granted the Scouts, bar Bahinting, immunity from prosecution. Case called Salvador Andico, Benedicto Dacillo and Ramon Paton-og. Speaking through a Tagalog interpreter, they broadly repeated their early testimony, painting themselves and Bahinting as victims rather than aggressors. Andico spoke for his comrades when he stated that the Australians at the Hotel Cecil had called them ‘bloody dogs’ and ‘cocksuckers’ and then attacked them. Only one new element emerged. Andico and Paton-og admitted for the first time that they had been present when Bahinting had told Captain

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Maule in Lae that he was the Scout who had thrown the bottle that had hit Scott. Both added, however, that they had not seen Bahinting throw the bottle. Somewhat oddly, although Tagalog interpreters were present, the Scouts professed to not understand many of the questions that were directed towards them, leading to some comical, almost surreal, exchanges about quite mundane matters.27 The President of the Court, Colonel Charles Amazeen, allowed a large slab of the transcript of the Lae trial to be read into the record of the court martial. This evidence confirmed that none of the Australian witnesses at the original trial had been able to identify Scott’s assailant. Once this was done, Case elected not to call Bahinting or Major Merritt, the US Army’s investigating officer in Lae, and promptly closed the case for the prosecution. Goldfarb pounced and asked for a directed verdict of acquittal on the ground that the prosecution had not established a prima-facie case. The court’s law member accepted Goldfarb’s motion, and Amazeen dismissed the prosecution’s case.28 After so much fuss, Bahinting was a free man. Given that he had faced a general court martial, he could perhaps count himself a lucky man. In the first six months of 1948, the Philippines-Ryukyus Command of the US Army convened 145 general court martials — 92.4 per cent resulted in convictions.29 Uncomfortable about the long silence from Manila, the US Embassy in Canberra again asked Washington for an update on 3 August. ‘The fact that the accused was removed from New Guinea by the United States Army has caused unfavourable comment in Australia, and the Government has been asked several questions in Parliament.’ A month later, on 3 September, the State Department at last informed the embassy that Bahinting had been acquitted. But it took the embassy almost three weeks to pass this news on to the Australian Government. After stressing at some length that the American party in Lae had not breached any deal with the Australian authorities, having behaved honourably and properly

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throughout, the embassy’s note verbale revealed that a court martial in Manila had acquitted Bahinting of manslaughter. ‘All of the evidence introduced before the Australian magistrate at Lae was introduced in evidence at the court martial as well as the testimony of several Filipino Scouts who were present at the scene of the homicide.’ The US Government believed that the actions of the US Army were justified. Given that he had been acquitted, the accused would not be returned to PNG for another trial.30 The documents at hand do not indicate how the Australians responded, but it is hard to imagine that they were not disappointed, even angry, at such a cursory response. Like the earlier trial in Lae, the court martial in Manila had left the death of John Scott unexplained and unpunished. The defendant in the Morotai court martial, Corporal Alexander Newman, returned to Australia in early April 1948. He was discharged from the RAAF on 8 June. Twenty-five years later, he wrote to the Repatriation Department in June 1973 to apply for a pension on the grounds of nervous disorders resulting from his court martial on Morotai.31 The surviving record does not indicate how the authorities responded to this plea. Little is left for us to follow the life histories of our nonAustralian protagonists. Nothing is known about the Melanesians. The last remnants of the Chinese contingent finally left Manus in early November 1948 aboard the Lakeland Victory after yet more delays that had tried the patience of the Administration to breaking point. Before they left, the Chinese took everything that could be dismantled quickly for shipment and destroyed much that remained. ‘There were tales of malicious damage,’ writes historian Eric Andrews, ‘the gashing open of tins of paint and drums of oil, the smashing of toilet-bowls and washing-basins, the driving of trucks into the jungle, the wrecking of cranes.’ It would seem that this wanton demolition was motivated by several impulses. Peter Burn, a chief petty officer who served with the RAN at Lombrum on Los Negros in 1955–56, contends that the Chinese destroyed

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much of the remaining stores, pouring acid into engine blocks and ramming bulldozers into stacks of equipment, because they had purchased the entire consignment and therefore believed that no one else was entitled to claim anything. This seems highly likely. However, it is hard not to conclude that the destruction was also in large measure revenge for the imprisonment of Hsueh and Chou.32 We know that Hsueh and Chou returned to Shanghai as the communists were taking the city, but we know no more about their lives. We similarly know nothing about Eduardo Bahinting’s life after he was acquitted of manslaughter. Only one member of the two Asian contingents left a faint after-image of his life. Captain Kuo, the officer who had testified in the trial of Hsueh and Chou, became embroiled in a small scandal after the departure of the BOSEY contingent. In December 1948, the Australian Government concluded that the captain of a local vessel had illegally acquired surplus material left on Manus by the Chinese. The sailor counterclaimed that Kuo had allowed him to take some brass in return for services rendered. Tracked down in Shanghai, Kuo told the Australian Consulate General that he had not made any such offer. But the Australian authorities were not satisfied by this response, and they instructed the Consulate General in January 1949 to ask Kuo if he would be willing to return to Australia at the Commonwealth’s expense to testify in any legal proceedings that might follow. By late February, Kuo had moved to Chungking, the old Chinese wartime capital. He told the Consulate General that he had been discharged from the Nationalist Army for health reasons and that he would be unable to return to Australia.33 With this message, Kuo also leaves our story. His fate is unknown. Chungking fell to the PLA some time after the declaration of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949; the new communist regime treated former Nationalist Army officers there as roughly as it did elsewhere. What about the Australian protagonists in our story? The four most senior figures in the Australian Administration were all nearing the ends of their careers in 1948. The Administrator,

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Colonel Murray, continued to push for a new deal in PNG, striving to invest the indigenous people with more power and responsibility. Dubbed ‘Kanaka Jack’ by many of the local whites, Murray was gradually worn down, Brian Jinks contends, by the lack of support and understanding in Australia and Port Moresby. He survived the fall of the Chifley Government, but not for long. He clashed with the Minister for External Territories, Percy Spender, in 1950 when he disagreed with an injunction from Canberra that Papua New Guineans should not speak directly to a visiting UN mission. In May 1952, Spender’s successor, Paul Hasluck, dismissed Murray ‘without offering him the opportunity to retire or resign’. The Government contended in a press release that Murray’s administrative capabilities were ‘not adequate’, a criticism he dismissed as ‘absurd and a gross impertinence’. He had not taken well to Hasluck’s more interventionist and hands-on style as the minister and his departure was not altogether unexpected. He was no doubt gratified that the Christian missions spoke out against his dismissal. Murray joined the University of Queensland, becoming an emeritus professor in 1975 and receiving a knighthood in 1977. He died two years later. Reg Halligan remained as Secretary of External Territories until May 1951 when he was eased out by Hasluck because ‘he would not help me to break new ground’. Even though he retained Halligan as a special adviser until 1959, Hasluck saw the former secretary as ‘a dutiful man for pushing the files around’ and no more. Halligan was appointed an OBE in 1960 and died in 1968 at the age of 76.34 By the middle of 1949, Bob Melrose, the Government Secretary, had entered his 60th year and was tiring rapidly. He had been working in PNG since 1916, and the long years of service had taken their toll. He suffered a massive heart attack in April 1949 and left for Australia shortly afterwards on extended sick leave. At first, Melrose wanted to return to duty, but his cardiovascular degeneration was too severe and he reluctantly resigned in December. Given his meritorious service, the Administration

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allowed his retirement to take effect on 6 May 1951, when he had reached 30 years of service. Back in Australia, Melrose served for some years on the committee that interviewed applicants for jobs in PNG. He remained the secretary and treasurer of the retired officers association of PNG until shortly before his death on 18 September 1959, aged 69. In a press release, Hasluck recalled Melrose’s great part in developing ‘the Australian tradition in New Guinea’. He sent a note to Mattie Melrose to honour her husband. ‘I deeply value the memory of the personal friendship we formed in Canberra during the war years.’ 35 Justice Phillips had a more gradual and stately exit from the stage. In 1953, he was appointed PNG’s first chief justice, before retiring gracefully in January 1957 with a knighthood at the age of 67. He died five months later. The police played a pivotal role in our story. John Grimshaw stayed at the peak of the Royal Papuan Constabulary and New Guinea Police Force for some years, a well-respected and effective chief, taking the title of Commissioner in 1949. His fine career was, however, brought to a premature and humiliating end. As the head of the PNG police, Grimshaw believed that he was entitled to attend the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953 and accordingly ordered a new dress uniform, using funds from the Coronation Fund to pay the £25 cost. But the Administrator, (Brigadier) Donald Cleland, ordered him not to go to London. Outraged by what he took as an affront, Grimshaw refused to repay the money and an inquiry found him guilty of improper conduct in September 1954. From the surviving official records, it would seem that Grimshaw had displayed a small but fatal lapse of judgment, becoming yet another person in a high position to be brought down by a comparatively petty infringement. Maxwell Hayes, a police officer who served in PNG from 1959 until 1974, believes that the inquiry in 1954 was, on the contrary, simply a matter of payback. As a military policeman during the war, Grimshaw had raided a brothel in Cairo and arrested a number of Australian personnel, including one Captain

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Donald Cleland.36 Whatever old tensions were lurking in the background, the Administration first suspended Grimshaw and then reinstated him on a reduced salary. A proud police officer, he did not appeal against his punishment and resigned from the service in October 1954, having served as superintendent and commissioner for more than seven years. He was replaced some months later by Christopher Normoyle, one of the short-listed candidates he had beaten to the job back in 1947. Hayes for one contends that Grimshaw was an excellent police commissioner who travelled widely, knew all of his white officers and many of his Melanesian constables personally, and was ‘not under anyone’s thumb’, maintaining an executive role and making all decisions about policy. After his retirement, Grimshaw returned to Australia, running hotels in Victor Harbour and later Adelaide. He died in August 1985 at the age of 77. Police work in PNG was often hard and thankless. Grimshaw took two sub-inspectors with him to Manus in March 1948, Peter Day and Charles Carr. The former did not stay in the force for long. Five weeks after he had participated in the police operation on Manus, Day returned to Brisbane. On 17 May, Colonel Murray sent an urgent cable to Canberra: ‘P J Day police escorted mental patient Brisbane. Please arrange priority for earliest return.’ The hard-pressed Administration needed every police officer that it could lay its hands on, and External Territories organised Day’s return flight for 24 May. But two days later, Day resigned: ‘I find that the climatic conditions do not agree with my health and consequently my efficiency is impaired. I do not feel inclined to further my duties in the employment of the Administration as my family affairs are unsettled and it would be some considerable time before a home could be made for them.’ Day’s stint in the PNG Police Force had lasted less than three months. Given that his probation period was still running, the Administration asked him to repay his original fare from Brisbane to Port Moresby, £246/0/2d. Despite his claim that the climate was disagreeable, Day applied for

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an entry permit to return to PNG in late 1949 as a salesman. External Territories issued a permit, but Day failed to collect it from the department’s Brisbane office. Charles Carr’s career was not nearly so brief and troubled. He remained with the PNG police for some years, serving at the Japanese war criminals’ compound on Manus in 1950 and being promoted to Sub-Inspector. He resigned on 1 June 1952, with five years’ service under his belt, perhaps because he had had a falling out with Grimshaw. He rejoined the South Australian Police Force a month later, retiring as a constable in May 1960. He died in Adelaide in 1997 at the age of 78.37 For Percy Moncur, the inspector who had carried out the difficult task of trying to identify John Scott’s assailant in Lae, the draining impact of the job was exacerbated by the stinging conviction that his prewar experience was not adequately appreciated by the new regime. When he had rejoined the Administration after the war, he strongly believed that he should have been accorded a higher rank in recognition of his long service dating back to 1930. But this was not to be, and he was returned to duty at the Lae police station with his prewar rank. This was clearly too much to bear. In September 1948, less than five months after the abortive attempt to prosecute Bahinting, Moncur left Lae to begin eight months of long service leave and furlough in Sydney. After buying a house in Marrickville with his second wife, Evelyn, he resigned in April 1949, just shy of 20 years’ service and not long before his 60th birthday. He died in Sydney in July 1982, less than five months before his 93rd birthday. The district and patrol officers were the backbone of the Administration, and they inevitably played a leading role in the criminal cases at the heart of this story. Allan Roberts, the District Officer in Lae, had a tough job. Less than a month after the Filipino Scouts had hurriedly departed from the area on a US military vessel, he had the grim task of handling a plane crash. On 18 April, a Lockheed Hudson aircraft owned by Air Traders crashed in

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the jungle behind Lae, killing all 37 people aboard. Roberts and three of his staff spent hours pulling charred corpses from the wreckage. The horrendous loss of life was quite unnecessary, for Air Traders had illegally crammed 33 Melanesian employees of Bulolo Gold Dredging into the cargo hold. Roberts stayed in the Administration for many years, being appointed Director of District Services and Native Affairs in 1953. But his career was not all plain sailing, and he missed out on several appointments in other parts of the Administration. In 1956, he applied unsuccessfully for the position of Assistant Administrator. By the late 1950s, Roberts had seen the best of his career and he retired prematurely at the age of 55 in May 1960 after the death of his second wife, Dorothy. By this time, he was rated unfit for service, and he returned to his home town, Melbourne, where he married Alice Thorburn, a retired nurse from PNG, in 1961. Bill Bloxham did not stay in the Administration’s service for long after the dramatic events on Manus in early 1948. In August 1949, he went to Surrey in the UK with his wife, Theresa, for 10 months of hard-earned long service leave and furlough. After his leave was extended through to September 1950, he returned to PNG to replace Roberts as the District Officer at Lae. By this time, Bloxham was an experienced and respected officer, having joined the Administration way back in 1929. Aside from his time with the Army during the war, the majority of his working life had been spent with the Administration. But he had turned 54 during his leave in the UK and he had probably had enough of the demanding and lonely work of a District Officer. His wife and young son had been unable to join him on Manus; and the living conditions for women and children were still tough in Lae in 1950. Bloxham’s old calling as a schoolteacher beckoned, and in December 1950 he resigned to become headmaster of the Preparatory School at Trinity Grammar in Strathfield, Sydney. Bloxham’s offsider during the Pondranei case, Dick White, stayed on in PNG, becoming a District Commissioner in 1957. He

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died on 6 September 1974, at the age of 58. Jack Costelloe was the Assistant District Officer in Lae who acted as the magistrate in the Bahinting trial. A month later, he helped Roberts pull the dead bodies out of the crashed Lockheed Hudson. Two months later, he left Lae for some recreational leave and did not return to duty, resigning on 25 October 1948, at the age of 42. He died in 1983. Life for John Rigby, the Assistant District Officer in Lae, who conducted the coronial inquest into Scott’s death, was complicated by an unhappy married life. He used a purported lack of suitable accommodation to prevent his wife, Winifred, from joining him for several years after the war. With the marriage on the verge of breakdown, Winifred insisted, however, on joining her husband, reaching Lae in December 1948. She was quite sure that she would be able to bring him round once she was on the spot. Rigby was later promoted, serving as District Officer and magistrate in Rabaul before retiring on 12 October 1955, at the age of 62. Not all District Officers retired honourably from the service. Assistant District Officer Harry Hamilton and Patrol Officer Jeffrey Gill fell dramatically from grace when they received substantial prison terms in March 1948 for serious offences against villagers — Hamilton a three-year sentence for indecent assault and Gill a five-year sentence for procurement. The two men started serving their sentences in Lae prison at Malahang. Hamilton found his downfall stinging. One Lae resident, Adrian Leyden, an employee of Bulolo Gold Dredging, had known Hamilton when the two were working together as kiaps on New Ireland immediately after the war. As a young patrol officer, Leyden had relied in many ways on his older and more senior colleague, who had once intervened on his behalf in a conflict with a local Anglican missionary. He had had less to do with Hamilton after leaving the Administration to join Bulolo Gold, though he had come across his old boss around Lae in late 1947. One night, some time after Hamilton’s trial, Leyden took a Melanesian labourer to the Native Hospital at Malahang, which

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was located close to the gaol. Walking back from the hospital to his jeep, he heard someone calling out his name. Peering through the darkness, he was surprised to see a European, Hamilton, standing behind the gaol’s barbed wire. The two had ‘got on pretty well on New Ireland’ and they had conversed for a while, but Hamilton would not discuss why he had been imprisoned.38 Although they had been shamed in the eyes of their own community, Hamilton and Gill were not left to fend for themselves like Hsueh and Chou. Hamilton came from a substantial West Australian family, and his brother, Leonard, was the Member for Swan in the Commonwealth Parliament. Leonard wrote to Halligan shortly after Harry’s conviction, asking for details of the sentence. He followed up with a telephone call several weeks later. Meanwhile, Gill’s wife, Nereda, and his mother, Dorothy, lobbied External Territories intensively. Two members of the Commonwealth Parliament, William Hutchinson (Deakin in Victoria) and Howard Beale (Parramatta in NSW), took up Gill’s cause, though their reasons for doing so are less clear than Leonard Hamilton’s obvious interest in helping his brother. Hutchinson wrote to Halligan on 13 March 1948, barely a week after Phillips had handed down the sentence in Lae, asking for some consideration. He stressed that Gill was ‘an ex-serviceman with six years service to his credit … All I know is to his and his family’s advantage’. Noting that he had received a visit in his rooms by Dorothy, he contended that everything that she had told him ‘doesn’t seem to me to merit a charge at all. Certainly nothing to merit a 5-year sentence.’ 39 Whether this lobbying had any effect, the Administration decided swiftly that no prison in PNG was suitable for the incarceration of two white men. Colonel Murray wrote to the Premier of NSW asking if Hamilton and Gill could be transferred to a NSW gaol. The NSW Government agreed to this request, and Hamilton and Gill left PNG for Long Bay Gaol in June 1948. After seeing both men at Long Bay for several hours, Murray concluded in September 1948 that neither the interests of the Territory nor the

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Commonwealth were served by forcing Hamilton and Gill to complete their sentences. In a letter to Eddie Ward, Minister for External Territories, he enumerated several reasons for granting a remission: dismissal had already had a substantial retributive effect, as well as a significant financial penalty; new information had come to light concerning Gill’s case, especially concerning an apparent misapplication of the charge of procurement; and the convictions themselves had already served the interests of justice in the Territory, acting as a warning to other Europeans that such behaviour was intolerable and as a powerful signal to the ‘natives’ that they would be protected. Murray also advanced some psychiatric grounds for remission; his description of Hamilton was unsparing: The career of Hamilton in the Service, both Army and Civil, has been one that indicates he is not whatever we may mean by ‘a normal individual’. Hamilton appears to be definitely abnormal and his actions to be something indicative of a ‘diseased mind’. Hamilton appears to require whatever may be done by specialists in psychiatry in an endeavour to render him a useful member of society at the time of his discharge.

In contrast, Murray saw Gill as a young and impressionable individual who had been in part led astray by Hamilton’s bad example: ‘He would not be of much subsequent use as a citizen after imprisonment over a period of five years.’ He judged that Gill would have a better chance of securing a job if he were released while full employment continued to prevail. It was painfully obvious to anyone involved in the governance of PNG that the Administration was often stretched too thinly to discharge its duties properly. On this score, Murray was uncompromising: Neither of these offences should have occurred. It was, I believe, an error to continue Hamilton post-war in the

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Directorate of District Services and Native Affairs. His record in the pre-war Administration and in the Army indicates that this was so … Were the Administration not so pressed by rehabilitation and reconstruction, as well as by the ordinary peacetime requirements of the administration of the native people, a person of Gill’s make-up and education would not have been accepted as a member of the Administration.40

Murray reduced Gill’s sentence to only one year and Hamilton’s to 18 months. Halligan wrote to Leonard Hamilton, MP, and Howard Beale, MP, a month later with news of the remissions. It was Ward himself who informed Dorothy Gill that her son’s sentence had been cut by four years. The two men were moved to Goulburn Gaol in November 1948, away from the much harder surroundings at Long Bay. In that same month, Gill’s wife and mother asked if his shortened sentence could be cut even further. Nereda informed Halligan that she was anxious to be reunited with her husband, especially given the recent death of her father. Dorothy was more forceful about her son’s fate in her own letter to Halligan. ‘If there is any British justice in this country, Jeffrey should be released now.’ She contended that her son had already paid dearly for his error and stressed that her ‘own health has failed through the shock and worry of it all’.41 These pleas were rejected, and Gill was released on 27 February 1949. Hamilton’s family does not appear to have lobbied the authorities so intently. On a trip through New York in mid-1949, Halligan stumbled across Hamilton’s sister, Jean Hubener, who had not heard about her brother’s fate. In July, she asked Halligan to pass on a letter to her brother in Goulburn Gaol. ‘I now realise how embarrassing it must have been for you to tell me the bitter truth and can only say that I am truly grateful for your gentlemanly consideration.’ 42 Harry Hamilton was freed shortly afterwards in August 1949.

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The Crown Law Office was the third pillar of the forces of law and order in PNG. Adrian Jones defended the Chinese labourers in the Pondranei trial. He joined the Administration after the war in part to retreat from an unhappy marriage. He had been permanently scarred, like so many other veterans, by his wartime experiences, finding the return to normality in a quiet country town too difficult. He had spent many years in Japanese POW camps, suffering numerous health problems and seeing his weight fall to just 38 kilograms. When he joined the Crown Law Office in June 1948, Jones left his wife, Roma, and two young children in Wangaratta. He might have taken flight from an unhappy marriage, hoping to find some kind of release or solace in PNG’s isolation, but his already battered body soon felt the strain of the tough living conditions. Not long after the Pondranei trial, he was diagnosed with scotomata of both eyes, a condition flowing from the vitamin deficiency suffered during his POW days. By mid-1949, he was plagued by blackouts and failing vision, and he took long blocks of sick leave, spending more time away from than at work. Heavy drinking added to this decline. In October 1949, Jones left for Melbourne on extended sick leave — he was never to return to the Crown Law Office. About this time, Roma filed a maintenance order against him in the Wangaratta Court. In February 1950, Jones was rated unfit for work in the Territory, and his services were terminated effective at the close of 1 June 1950. He was not yet 43. He died prematurely at the age of 52 in December 1959, years before his contemporaries in the Crown Law Office.43 The other members of the Crown Law Office did not fare so badly. At the end of 1948, Esme Bignold, the Crown Law Officer, was appointed as PNG’s third judge to help cope with the mounting judicial workload. Shortly before his appointment, Monty Phillips and Reg Halligan agreed that Bignold knew the Territory and its people well, though he was given to a ‘leisurely tempo’.44 Justice Bignold retired in July 1962. A former kiap, James Sinclair, contends that he was ‘the weakest of the old Supreme Court judges’.45 Wally

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Watkins, the Deputy Crown Law Officer, went on to work at or near the top of the Administration for several decades. But his rise was not entirely smooth. After Bignold’s move to the Bench, he took over as the Crown Law Officer, even though some of his colleagues harboured strong reservations about him. In 1954, the Department of Law replaced the Crown Law Office, and Watkins was installed as the acting Secretary for Law. However, at the end of the year, a selection committee decided that all of the applicants for the permanent position, including Watkins, were inadequate. The PNG Public Service Commissioner, Thomas Huxley, judged that Watkins’ deficiencies were ‘very real’. The Administration was keen nonetheless to fill the position permanently, and Huxley dropped his damning assessment a year later, affirming that Watkin’s demeanour and work habits had improved. Noting that discontent was growing about the appointment of outsiders, he said Watkins had shown ‘a more positive attitude to the many complex problems of his office’. But Hasluck vetoed the appointment, recalling that he had appointed ‘two duds’ under similar pressures to fill permanent positions quickly when he became the minister in 1951. Huxley now recanted and claimed he had rated Watkins positively some months earlier when he was ill and under pressure from the Administration. When a suitable candidate from Australia could not be found in 1956, Watkins was left in the job in an acting capacity. His transgressions, real or imagined, were never spelt out in the official documents. Whatever their origin or truthfulness, the allegations dogged him for some time, and it took a meeting in Hasluck’s office in Canberra in May 1957 to break the log-jam. After some discussion, Watkins managed to convince his political master that he was up to the job, and he was finally appointed as the permanent Secretary for Law on 13 May.46 The rest of Watkins’ career was not so controversial, and he served as the Secretary for Law until 1969, retiring as a grandee of the community. He died 15 years later in March 1984 at the age of 71.

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Cyril McCubbery, the prosecutor in the Scott and Pondranei trials, remained with the Crown Law Office until 1951. In early January of the next year, he was appointed as the Territory’s Commissioner of Titles, an independent judicial officer charged with the task of determining and protecting rights to lands, especially native lands. This was an important post, but McCubbery had further ambitions and he applied for the position of Secretary for Law in 1954. Rejected, like Watkins, as unsuitable, he remained as the Commissioner for Titles until January 1965, when he retired from the Administration at the age of 55 to go into private practice in Port Moresby. He remained in PNG until shortly before independence in 1975. He died on 25 September 1983, six months before his old boss, Watkins. The doctors in our story often confronted a daunting task, grappling with the medical needs of a large population scattered across a rugged country. Roy Scragg, the young and overworked doctor who tried to save John Scott’s life in Lae, remained in PNG for many years, marrying in 1949 and having four children. He became a senior figure in the Administration, replacing John Gunther as Director of Health in 1956. He served on the Legislative Council (1957–63), the Executive Council (1957–61) and finally the House of Assembly (in the late 1960s). Carl Gunther, the company doctor at Bulolo Gold Dredging who assisted in the post-mortem examination of John Scott, retired in 1955 and returned to Australia. He had worked in PNG for more than two decades, carving out an impressive reputation in tropical medicine, especially in the treatment of malaria and scrub typhus.47 ‘Ma’ Stewart was the owner of the Cecil, the hotel where Scott was assaulted on 31 December 1947. With characteristic determination and adaptability, she pressed ahead with her plan to rebuild her business. Built at a cost of £100,000, the new hotel was opened on 27 June 1951. Sinclair recalls that the rebuilt Cecil was ‘the talk of the town, providing comforts superior to anything residents had known’. He admits, however, that the new structure was

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‘hardly an example of architectural excellence’; it was ‘shoddily built’, often with makeshift and second-hand materials. But even this rather ramshackle establishment was a big improvement on the rotting army huts that Stewart had been forced to make do with after the war. By the early 1960s, ‘Ma’ Stewart was approaching the age of 80 and she went into semi-retirement, leaving her sister-in-law, Dorothy Stewart, to run the pub. She died in 1979 at the age of 92.48 It would be remiss to neglect a postscript on Harry Fletcher, the owner of Salami, the plantation on Manus that had been partially incorporated into one of the US airstrips during the war. When we left him, Fletcher had abruptly departed Manus in July 1948 after bringing his confrontation with the Chinese to the brink of violence. Back in Australia, he continued his campaign to claim rent and compensation for the Chinese ‘depredations’ and ‘despoliations’ on Salami, bombarding External Territories with letters from his lawyers and applying for an entry permit to return to Manus in mid-1949. His life had always been tumultuous and this application proved no different. Elizabeth Fletcher wrote to Reg Halligan in April asking for his help to prevent the departure for PNG of her husband, accompanied by Pansy Christie and child. Elizabeth portrayed Harry as an inveterate rogue, itemising his conniving behaviour at length. ‘When applying for the woman’s permit, he probably represented her as his widowed daughter — this is not correct. She was employed by me as a domestic.’ It would seem, then, that Harry had run off with one of his wife’s domestic servants. Elizabeth contradicted her husband’s pleas that he was destitute, asserting that he had purchased three properties in NSW after his discharge from the Army in May 1942 — a poultry and fruit property and two pubs. More recently, he had bought a Fairchild cruiser, the Los Negros, from the War Disposals Commission. Elizabeth said she had failed to secure financial support from Harry through the courts, in part because he had transferred money to Rabaul and placed assets under Christie’s

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name ‘so as to avoid his obligations to his family’. Elizabeth feared that she would have no chance of gaining justice if Harry was allowed to leave Australia.49 ‘Even if Mrs Fletcher’s statement is true,’ an official in External Territories concluded, ‘no reason appears why a permit should not be granted to P Christie and child as accommodation and support is available.’ The official was firm: ‘We are not in a position to control the domestic arrangements and morals of persons who apply for permits, except in the latter case if they are undesirables.’ He could see nothing to indicate that Patricia Christie fell into ‘this class’, though he gave no idea of what he classified as ‘an undesirable’. Did he mean a prostitute? Australian society in the 1940s was deeply patriarchal, dividing the public and the private into separate spheres, and women were usually accorded secondary or inferior roles. Most Australians still regarded domestic violence as a matter that should be settled privately between husband and wife. We cannot discount the possibility as well that External Territories dreaded becoming embroiled in another messy aspect of Fletcher’s life. And it must be said that policing the financial responsibilities of unworthy fathers was not the function of External Territories. So, Elizabeth Fletcher was rebuffed, and External Territories issued entry permits on 30 June 1949.50 After many delays and hitches, not least a conviction for breaching the Customs Act because he had left a port without receiving a certificate of clearance, Fletcher eventually departed from Australia on the Los Negros on 30 March 1950. Patricia Christie, aged 27, and Richard Christie, aged 4, were on board. Fletcher reached Port Moresby in late April, where he paused for some weeks, preparing for his final leg home. This long and frustrating journey had given the cranky planter plenty of time to think about his future, and he wasted no time in acquainting a new generation of politicians in Canberra with his passion for writing letters that were at once petitions and threats. The defeat of the Chifley Government on 10 December 1949, meant that these

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communications were now directed at Liberal ministers; there is little doubt that they found the planter as troublesome as their Labor predecessors had. On 1 May, he wrote to Percy Spender, Minister for External Affairs and External Territories, to make ‘a plea for a little consideration and fair treatment’. The Department of Works and Housing had established ‘hundreds of Natives and Europeans’ on Salami without his permission to remove the remaining surplus American equipment. Fletcher accused the department of ‘what would appear to be a frenzied effort to get what they can out of the place before I get back … tearing the intestinal fortitude out of the place regardless of the mess that is being left for me’. The forcible removal of his ‘few pitiful belongings’ had left him with ‘a keen feeling of disappointment’.51 Fletcher was back on Manus by late May 1950, but the Department of Works crisply rejected his claims, noting that much valuable US material was hidden in the vegetation on Salami. Fletcher’s beseeching letter was left unanswered for nine months. Finally, in February 1951, Spender wrote back promising that the Administration would return all items considered essential for Salami’s rehabilitation.52 This promise was not enough and Fletcher spent the early 1950s demanding compensation and ever higher rent. At various points, he offered to sell Salami to the Government, but his entreaties were rebuffed. The Department of Air decided in mid-1952 to rent some of Fletcher’s land to build a transmitting station for the local RAAF base, but the negotiations dragged on into 1954. Finally, when the Government was ready to close a rental contract, Fletcher could not be located. At last, he was found in Wau, not far from Lae, in January 1955. Three months later, just as the Government was preparing to hand over its first rent payment, it became apparent that Fletcher’s company, Los Negros Industries Limited, was being wound up and another company, Salami Estates Limited, now claimed the plantation. By this time, the Chinese labourers were a fading memory on Manus, and it would seem that Fletcher’s long battle for financial

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restitution had petered out in another typical legal mess. Postwar PNG was a restless and testing place, the kind of frontier zone that attracted unconventional characters. Fletcher was very much a part of this fluid time and his antics challenged the Administration’s authority in those early years after the war. He made a difficult job just that little more difficult, and we can safely assume that Canberra and Port Moresby were glad that his stream of letters finally stopped. Fletcher was dead by 1960. Suggesting that he had left his affairs in a sorry state, his then wife, Joyce, wrote to the Army on 25 December 1960, requesting details of Fletcher’s war service so she could apply for welfare assistance.53

Epilogue

FOUR REMOTE PLACES — Manus, Lae, Kaiapit and Morotai — were unexpectedly connected by a series of violent crimes in the last two months of 1947 and the first six weeks of 1948. In one case, three Melanesians in Kaiapit, a village in the upper Markham Valley west of Lae, deep in the rugged interior, were maltreated by two kiaps, the very men charged with the Administration’s solemn duty of enforcing law and order and governing in the interests of the indigenous population. The maltreatment was premeditated, prolonged and humiliating, inflicting considerable pain and deep social shame. It is highly likely that this degrading experience left lasting psychological scars, but Tuwara, Porpua and Iatsa survived their horrible encounters with Assistant District Officer Hamilton and Patrol Officer Gill. Given that Hamilton and Gill had apparently lost almost all self-control, surrendering to base impulses, the outcome could have been much worse. The line separating life from death was far more cruelly and arbitrarily fine in the three crimes at the heart of this story.

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Survival can be so fluky. Three men were bashed, two died and one lived. John Scott, a mining manager in Lae, was the first man to be assaulted. In the midnight dark, as the clock rolled over into the new year, some Filipino Scouts in the US Army tried to gatecrash a whites-only dance at the Hotel Cecil and one struck Scott on the head with a bottle during the drunken brawl that followed. The blow caused a wound, which, while not inconsequential, hardly appeared life-threatening. Yet the fracture was much more serious than a young doctor, overworked and under pressure, could detect and Scott died after slipping into a coma. Three weeks later, Pondranei, a young Melanesian, was the second man to be assaulted. Strung up with wire from the ceiling of a quonset hut on Manus Island on 25 January, Pondranei was punched and struck with various implements, including a plank, by four Chinese labourers, as rough and ready punishment for stealing cigarettes. The bashing was sustained, but Pondranei, perhaps protected by his youth and sheer good luck, sustained relatively minor wounds — a black eye, a few bruises, some swelling, no more. He survived, but it could have been so different. High rates of malaria meant that many Melanesians had swollen spleens that were liable to rupture much more easily than would normally be the case. One of the blows delivered to Pondranei’s body could have had much more dire consequences. None did. He was also fortunate that his assailants stopped their attack before they had inflicted much more serious damage, leaving him slumped in a heap on the floor of the hut. Had the labourers had a darker intent, Pondranei would not have left the hut alive. Less than a month later, Willem Anker, a Dutch maritime engineer on Morotai, was the third man to be assaulted. On 21 February, again in the midnight dark, Anker had a brief fist fight with an Australian airman over the sexual favours of an Indonesian woman. On the face of it, he suffered the least severe bashing of the three men, perhaps only two punches to the head and another to the body. It was terribly ironic that, unlike Pondranei, not one

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bruise was left on Anker’s body. Yet he died, perhaps because he was suffering from an unknown underlying medical condition. The line between life and death was even finer still. Scott would not have died had he not succumbed to a burst of anger and charged off into the night to chase one of the Filipino Scouts. And Anker would not have died had he returned to his ship from a local village along the normal route instead of diverting along another, less direct, track and calling at the house of Sophia da Costa. The line between justice and injustice, between punishment and freedom, is also fine. Eduardo Bahinting, a private in the US Army, was charged with the manslaughter of John Scott, while Corporal Alexander Newman was charged with the murder of Willem Anker. Both men were acquitted. Only two of the four Chinese who had kidnapped and beaten Pondranei could be identified. Hsueh and Chou were duly charged with deprivation of liberty and assault. Both men were convicted. Perhaps Bahinting and Newman were innocent, but it is hard not to conclude that they were somewhat lucky. A privilege plea excluded vital damning evidence in Bahinting’s trial, while Newman benefited from a tendency to dismiss the evidence of non-Europeans. The families of Scott and Anker had cause then to feel cheated, to believe that the justice system had left the deaths of their loved ones unexplained and unpunished. These three crimes, committed in an arc running north from Lae on the coast of New Guinea through Manus in the Bismarck Sea and then west to Morotai in the old Spice Islands, were connected by more than the coincidence that they were committed in the first six weeks of 1948. All three became more significant and protracted than a normal criminal prosecution because they were entangled with much wider questions of national sovereignty and national self-image. They revealed tensions running through Australia’s relations with the outside world at a time when a new order was taking shape after the defeat of Japan. In the confusing backwash of World War II, most

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Australians regarded the region to their north with trepidation as old verities collapsed and new apparently threatening structures took shape. It was telling that the same set of officials in PNG handled the Scott and Pondranei cases, determined to enforce Australian jurisdiction when foreigners committed offences on Australia’s territory. It was at this point that the two PNG cases became entwined unexpectedly with the Morotai case. This time, however, the RAAF insisted that Australian jurisdiction should hold sway when one of its own committed an offence on foreign territory. Officials in Canberra and PNG knew the RAAF’s insistence on enforcing Australian jurisdiction on Dutch soil was hypocritical and threatened to undermine their insistence that the US and China should agree to stand aside and allow Australian justice to run its course. These wider issues of national sovereignty and independence ensured that these crimes could not remain mere local affairs. On the contrary, the bigger questions at stake suddenly joined events in three obscure locales with a string of cities across the world: Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Port Moresby, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Shanghai, Nanking, Manila, Batavia and The Hague. There is no doubt that the Australian officials in PNG were motivated in part by a need to preserve Australian independence and national credibility. Applying the law served some eminently pragmatic purposes by underpinning social stability and bolstering Australian rule in a time of considerable flux. And the Americans and the Chinese were equally determined to enforce their own jurisdiction, to thwart Australia’s claims. In this way, three ordinary crimes created an arena for clashing national interests and conflicting conceptions of national identity. Certainly, the Pondranei affair served only to exacerbate the friction that had been building between Canberra and Nanking for some years. Washington’s Cold War imperative of helping Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists to defeat the Chinese communists was not enough to sidetrack the Australian officials in their quest to

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enforce Australian justice. At the same time, the Chinese Nationalists first asked and then repeatedly demanded that the Australian authorities release Hsueh and Chou; they took Canberra’s firm refusal as another sign of Australia’s unfriendliness. All the warm sentiments of shared struggle against the common Japanese foe were quite cold by the time the two labourers were convicted by the Supreme Court of PNG. Australia’s preoccupation had shifted from fighting a formidable invader to patrolling and reinforcing the outer boundaries of its sovereignty in PNG. The Chinese were outraged by Australia’s obstinacy and they took their claims all the way to Australia’s highest court when Hsueh and Chou were convicted in Rabaul. The Scott case revealed a similar downward curve in our relations with the Philippines. Australian contact with the Philippines had been limited for a long time to a few fairly desultory trading links, especially during the years of American overlordship. Nonetheless, some Australians saw the Filipinos as allies in the war against Japan, and Prime Minister Chifley welcomed Filipino independence in 1946 in glowing terms. But the relationship remained thin and brittle. All the fine wartime rhetorical declarations were much harder to sustain under the pressure of everyday events. The carapace of shared wartime struggle was cracked open, first, by the animosities engendered by the abortive Australian attempt to prosecute Bahinting and then by the bitter and drawn-out Gamboa affair. Like many Chinese, most Filipinos came to see Australia as an arrogant and racist country that regarded its Asian neighbours as inferior. Much as they exposed the tensions and recriminations in our relations with two Asian countries, the Pondranei and Scott affairs revealed that Australia’s relationship with its great white ally, the US, was shot through with ambivalence. Here, the shared struggle against Japan would be translated into firm postwar arrangements, but interaction between the two countries on the ground was far from easy. On Manus, contact between the Administration and the

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remaining American military forces was often testy, at times openly hostile, in the first three years after Japan’s defeat. Even after Australian civilian control had apparently been restored on the island, the US continued to make unilateral decisions, feeling no need to consult Australia. It was this kind of high-handedness that led to the unannounced arrival of the Chinese labour contingent. Then, throughout the Pondranei affair, the Americans adopted a strange, ambiguous stance as the Australians struggled to enforce their jurisdiction. Sure, they were rather uncomfortably caught between two allies, unlikely to gain anything by intervening, but the Americans were rather too ready to allow the Chinese to evade Australian justice. The Scott case was even more troubling for the Australians. By whisking Bahinting away to Manila, the Americans yet again emphasised their pre-eminent power, and short-circuited the Australian attempt to see that justice was done. It is hard not to conclude that the Americans used the privilege plea in a quite cynical fashion to subvert the Australian trial. More than this, they appeared to side with the Filipinos against a fellow white race, touching that deeply ingrained Australian fear of being left alone on the edge of Asia as an isolated white outpost. The US Army regarded the Scott case as a matter of military honour and prestige and it was ready to appeal to the High Court of Australia to win the day. The US Embassy exacerbated the Australian sense of betrayal by closing out the Scott case in one belated, spare message, offering no detail about the court martial that eventually took place in Manila. The so-called brown-out murders in wartime Melbourne offer a pertinent contrast. Under the hot pressure of the war, the need to maintain good relations with a powerful ally encouraged Australia to adopt a much more accommodating stance towards the question of criminal jurisdiction. In May 1942, an American soldier, Private Edward Leonski, was arrested for murdering three women in Melbourne. Reversing the normal pattern, Prime Minister Curtin announced that Leonski could face an American military trial,

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even though he had committed his crimes outside the boundaries of his base. A court martial swiftly pronounced Leonski guilty, handing down a death sentence despite evidence that suggested that he was psychologically disturbed. General MacArthur was ready to return Curtin’s gesture. ‘The incident demonstrates MacArthur’s willingness to forgo a fair trial,’ writes historian Kate Darian-Smith, ‘in order to pacify growing anti-American sentiment among Australians.’ He went further by allowing Leonski to be hanged in Pentridge Gaol on 9 November. ‘Leonski’s prompt and public death was thus an example for both US troops and Australians that American crimes against civilians would not be tolerated.’1 The situation could not have been more different in PNG in 1948. Without the compelling need to bolster good relations at a desperate time, the Australians and the Americans were unwilling to cede the field to the other in the Scott case. If Bahinting was lucky to be acquitted so swiftly by the court martial in Manila, American military justice treated other nonwhite offenders severely and at times unjustly. In May 1944, a US court martial in PNG convicted six black American soldiers of raping two white American Army nurses less than two months earlier, handing out the death penalty. Walter Luszki, the commandant of the detention and rehabilitation centre at Oro Bay in Northern District, which held the six condemned men until their execution in October, contends that the court martial was deeply flawed. The investigation into the incident at Milne Bay in March was inadequate; physical evidence was not collected and the defendants’ statements were not given voluntarily. The defence lawyers were given only 34 days to prepare a complicated joint case and performed poorly during the proceedings, failing, for instance, to exploit clear weaknesses in the testimony of some of the prosecution’s witnesses. Despite the seriousness of the charges, the court martial took less than three days to deal with six defendants. Luszki argues persuasively that evidence existed that not all of the six soldiers had participated in the rapes and he concludes that the

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defendants were judged harshly in large part because they were black. Wartime exigencies seemingly played a strong role again. Luszki believes that General MacArthur was perhaps worried that tensions between white and black soldiers about sex and rape allegations would affect fighting readiness.2 Would Bahinting have been acquitted in such a cursory fashion if he had committed his offence during the war or against a white American victim? It is ironic that it was only the court martial of Corporal Newman on the Indonesian island of Morotai that did not create a rift in our relations with another country. On the contrary, after an initial hesitation, the Dutch allowed the RAAF to try Newman in an Australian court martial with good grace, even though the deceased was one of their own. The proceedings of the court martial might have exposed some demeaning Australian attitudes about the alleged mental faculties of Indonesians, but they did not generate animosities between the Dutch and Australian authorities. None of the surviving documents in the National Archives indicate why the Dutch decided to cede the legal ground to Australia. Batavia and The Hague did so quite possibly because the Netherlands and Australia were two Western nations of roughly equal standing whose relations were not complicated by the kind of unequal but close relationship that bound Australia to the US. It is also conceivable that the Dutch were prepared to trust another Western nation to conduct a trial in an acceptable manner. The Australian court martial did not impinge on the wider question of Dutch sovereignty in the same way that the Pondranei and Scott cases appeared to compromise Australian authority in PNG. Perhaps the Netherlands also decided that it did not need to prove a point to Australia, at least not through a criminal prosecution on a remote island. Indeed, it had good reason to avoid picking another fight with Canberra. Relations had been strained almost to breaking point in 1947.3 Perhaps The Hague hoped its willingness to relent in the Newman case would be repaid by a more supportive Australian position in the independence struggle in the

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Netherlands East Indies. If so, it was to be disappointed because the Chifley Government did not step back from its belief that the Indonesians should be granted independence. In the three criminal cases at the heart of this book, the particular question of guilt and innocence and the wider issue of national sovereignty were played out in the rules and rituals of a courtroom trial. The pursuit of justice is never straightforward, with the attempt to ascertain the truth caught from the start, often impossibly so, in evidentiary difficulties and the vagaries of human memory and perception. In addition to these troubling intrinsic features of any criminal proceeding, the cross-cultural dimension ensured that our three trials were even more problematic, demonstrating the inherent difficulty of applying one culture’s sense of justice to another. The protagonists in these events were not operating within the same set of cultural and moral beliefs, and often they seemed to be simply talking past each other. The Australian and Chinese conceptions of justice differed most markedly. The Chinese contingent on Manus felt that it had been victimised by the Australian authorities, and believed the Pondranei problem should have been settled quietly, perhaps by meting out some quick, rough retribution. Instead, the Australian authorities insisted on pursuing the matter in a very public and formal fashion through the courts. For their part, the Australian District Officers and police felt they could do no other. The two cultures did not share the same conceptions of guilt and responsibility and regarded the crucial question of punishment in sharply different ways. Could an encounter between two such different ways of seeing and judging the world achieve a mutually acceptable outcome? More prosaic issues intensified this cultural or conceptual difference. The non-European participants in these trials did not understand the essential elements of Australian justice, and this lack of understanding compromised to varying degrees all three trials. The Melanesian, Chinese, Indonesian and Filipino witnesses and defendants were taken into an alien arena — the modern

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Western courtroom — and were asked to ‘testify’ according to the precepts of the Australian legal system. Fear and uncertainty militated against frankness and clarity, while the need to interpret the evidence of many witnesses, sometimes through three different languages, compounded these cross-cultural difficulties and magnified the chance of misunderstanding. There was no deliberate attempt to impose knowingly and unfairly a foreign belief system, but it was inevitable that the fog of mutual incomprehension, when people see the world and articulate their thoughts in different ways, at times obscured the proceedings. Here one inevitably turns to another and more fundamental question: did racism precipitate these events? White Australia was still very much the undisputed cornerstone of the national outlook in the late 1940s, and the Australians in our story, unsurprisingly, revealed many of the common stereotypical attitudes of their day. They continued to see the world through a racial prism, locating everyone in a hierarchy of superior and inferior races. These racialist assumptions were so deeply embedded in the everyday structures of life and the prevailing language of the day that they were usually taken for granted, their patina of commonsense and obviousness undercutting challenges and resisting change. True, some of these attitudes were coming under greater pressure by the mid-20th century as more people resisted the strong pull of simplistic images and gut-level reactions. But these challenges were still quite new and comparatively weak, especially in Australia’s colonial possessions where interracial relations continued to have an often raw and uncompromising edge. Of course, racial attitudes still underpinned Western culture in general and the overwhelming majority of the Dutch and the Americans in this story also believed in colour lines and regarded non-Europeans as intrinsically inferior. Australian perceptions of Melanesians were by no means uniform or wholly negative. During World War II, Melanesians had played an important part in the Australian war effort against

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the Japanese forces in PNG. The bravery and endurance of the Melanesian was immortalised in photographs of the ‘fuzzy-wuzzy angels’ carrying wounded diggers from the front back to safety. Although these wartime experiences did shift some boundaries, the lines of the old order were still indelible and a deep everyday racism is all too evident in the Australian and American documents that have survived from the period. The transcripts of the court cases are studded with racialist assumptions and terms. During the trial of Hsueh and Chou, Justice Monty Phillips declared that the Melanesian witnesses had given ‘their evidence with a restraint not always encountered in natives’. Phillips made this comment quite unselfconsciously; he was merely articulating one of the myriad commonsensical assumptions of his caste, the white colonial elite, about the behaviour of ‘natives’. His tone was benevolent and fatherly, exemplifying the tendency of many of the Australian actors in this story to regard Melanesians in a protective manner. This sentiment could be deeply patronising. Like children, Melanesians were mentally immature and had faulty memories, they needed to be guided and instructed, protected from their enemies and the outside world, even saved from their own shortcomings. An ANGAU booklet from the war stated that it was ‘impossible to regard the natives as being generally more intelligent than white children at about the age of eight or nine’.4 Europeans believed that Melanesians were prone to being naughty like children, to yielding to the temptation of changing their story to fit the occasion. It is unquestionable that Melanesians did at times say what they assumed their European masters wanted to hear or what would serve their own interests best. But this did not make them childlike. Throughout the proceedings, the Europeans automatically and unselfconsciously referred to Melanesians as ‘natives’ and ‘boys’. These terms did not necessarily imply a hard-headed racism; on the contrary, many Australians in PNG regarded their natives — for this was a possessive relationship — with affection. And Melanesians routinely used the word ‘boy’ to refer to themselves.

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Nonetheless, much like the term ‘coolie’ in Asia, the name ‘native’ embodied the whole power relationship between Europeans and non-Europeans. ‘Natives’ and ‘coolies’ were the allegedly natural and eternal subordinates in the European colonial order. So much was wrapped up in those names. The Australians who handled the Pondranei case were motivated by that mixture of protectiveness and superiority, which underpinned the whole structure of Australian colonialism in PNG. They were frequently propelled by a sense of mission, a need to do good and protect what they saw as childlike and hence vulnerable ‘natives’. Even this benevolence rarely altered the fundamental inequality between Europeans and the indigenous population. The Chinese labourers and Filipino Scouts walked into this world, a society in which Asians occupied an uncertain middle ground, fully accepted neither by the whites nor the indigenes, tolerated perhaps by both because they performed useful economic functions. There is no doubt that the Australians saw the Chinese labourers on Manus and the Filipino Scouts in Lae as inferior outsiders and unwelcome temporary residents. Given the grim, shared struggle against the ‘Asiatic’ invader, the Australian officials in the Pondranei affair naturally identified with and defended the Melanesians, rather than the Chinese. The Chinese were clearly outsiders and newcomers on Manus, but they were also ‘Asiatics’ like the Japanese, and few Australians had fought alongside the Chinese during the war. Indeed, the ‘outsider’ status of the two Chinese was reinforced throughout the affair by the way in which their names were constantly misspelt. Transliterating Chinese names is notoriously difficult, and some variation in the rendering of any given name is to be expected, but this constant confusion underscored the unfamiliarity of the Chinese. This mutual cultural and linguistic incomprehension ensured that the two groups were separated by a gulf that was hard to bridge. There can be little dispute that racism led the Australian residents of Lae to regard the Filipino members of the search team

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with at best incomprehension and at worst contempt. The Scouts were anomalous figures who didn’t readily fit into PNG’s established categories; they were perceived by the Australians as racially inferior Asians, yet they were also members of the militarily superior US Army. This ambiguity was unsettling, even galling, for the Australians. In contrast, the Chinese labourers were much more easily seen as outsiders who did not belong; they would have been even more readily rejected had they fronted up at the door of the Cecil on New Year’s Eve. The Australians did not want their authority to be challenged in the eyes of the Melanesians and Chinese — their honour and self-respect were at stake. The brawl that resulted in John Scott’s death would almost certainly not have happened had a majority of the township’s white population been able to see past the racialist assumptions of the day and had treated the Filipinos as guests and allies. Looking back, the fight at the Hotel Cecil has a horrible inevitability about it, a suffocating sense that it was impossible to stop the build-up of tension and the eventual explosion. Given the deeply entrenched mores of the time, the Filipinos were simply not welcome at the Cecil, regardless of whether they paid, because they were Asian. But we should not conclude that the Filipino unit and the Chinese labour contingent were passive objects, merely reacting to events. Nor should we conclude that they were entirely blameless in the accumulation of tension in Lae and on Manus. Aware of their unusual position, the Filipinos tried to use their American uniforms to get a drink at the Cecil, to make a point of their military status as quasi-Americans, to push the exclusionary boundaries and confront the Australian racism. The local whites were affronted by this behaviour, accusing the Filipinos of ‘fomenting racial ill-feeling’, perhaps fearing that they would incite the town’s Chinese community to challenge the established racial order. The Scouts can hardly be held to account for objecting to unthinking discrimination, but it would seem that they went further than this. If the Australian reports can be believed, the Filipino Scouts in Lae had acted at

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times in an antagonistic manner, instigating, not simply responding, to trouble. Did one of the Filipinos offer to pay at the dance if he was provided with a woman? Was he suggesting that the local white women were rentable, even that they were prostitutes? If so, he was going out of his way to be provocative and confrontational. Even if they had good reasons for feeling excluded, at least some of the Scouts might well have come to the Cecil looking for a fight, possibly coming with various weapons, including metal pipes. Sequestered in their own camp under the command of Chinese Army officers, the Chinese labourers on Manus regarded the Australian authorities and the local Melanesian population with a mixture of wariness and incomprehension. Although the evidence at hand is limited, it seems certain that they regarded the islanders as primitives. The commanders of the Chinese camp certainly regarded the Australian Administration with great dismissiveness. They cleverly played the Australians off against the Americans for months, outflanking the Administration and tapping into the ambivalence that ran through Australia’s relationship with the US. Once the incident started to assume larger dimensions, they acted in a highly abrasive manner and certainly did nothing to stop the cycle of escalation. While we can discount the more lurid press claims of a full-scale armed rebellion, the Chinese unquestionably resisted the imposition of Australian jurisdiction for some months, at times with actual or implied threats of violence. They wantonly destroyed much of the remaining US stores just before they finally left the island, in large measure as revenge for the imprisonment of Hsueh and Chou. It is incontrovertible then that a great deal of mutual racial intolerance and incomprehension played a decisive part in creating the confrontations on Manus and in Lae. A more troubling question arises. Did racism, even in its more benign manifestations, affect, even at times pervert, the search for justice in the trials at the heart of this story? The racialist assumptions of the day were so widespread and deeply rooted that they inevitably encompassed and at times

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mutated the administration of justice in PNG, affecting its ability to weigh evidence impartially and to determine innocence and guilt dispassionately. The Australians in our story tended to regard the motives and actions of non-Europeans with great suspicion, often assuming the worst and at times reaching harsh prejudgments. They were prone to undervaluing, even dismissing, the evidence of Melanesians, Chinese, Filipinos and Indonesians alike as unreliable or tainted. This tendency was most evident in the court martial of Alexander Newman. One can only gasp as one reads the transcript of that trial and sees how brazenly the court rejected the testimony of a non-European woman, often over the much shakier testimony of European men. I believe it is plausible to argue that racism did undercut justice in the Newman court martial. Although the aircraftman might well have been innocent as charged, I cannot avoid the conclusion that he was not properly tested. Hsueh and Chou were rightly held to account for their actions, receiving fair sentences for treating a young islander roughly. It is not so much that they were treated badly, but that other defendants, accused of far worse crimes, were treated leniently. Some European defendants received much lighter sentences even though they were convicted of more serious offences. On this score, it is startling that an American employee of the Vinnell Corporation, Tittle, was given a much lighter sentence than the Chinese labourers even though he had kicked a man nearly to death. Would Hsueh and Chou have been given a mere three months if they had nearly kicked Pondranei, let alone a European, to death? One is forced to conclude that the PNG legal system could be erratic, its mission to judge fairly and consistently undermined at times by deeply embedded structures and mores. The ethnic background of the defendant in a criminal case still seemed to count. Two questions remained material. Who did the bashing? Who was the victim? We should not fall into the trap, however, of believing that the justice system was irretrievably biased. Many of the Australians

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in PNG were deeply committed to upholding the rule of law, and their determination to enforce due process cannot be written off as some kind of instrumentalist project disguised in the trappings of justice. On the contrary, once they became convinced that they had identified the culprits, there was no question for the Australians of railroading the accused, of placing them in arbitrary detention or organising kangaroo courts. They were determined to try Bahinting and, in turn, Hsueh and Chou before properly constituted courts under the same rules of evidence and standards of proof that would have applied in Australia. Indeed, the Australian lawyers and judges went to some lengths to ensure that the trials were fair and followed due process. In Lae, cooler and wiser heads, not least District Officer Roberts and the redoubtable owner of the Hotel Cecil, Flora Stewart, forestalled moves by some of the European townsfolk to lynch the Filipino Scouts. Though we cannot make any definitive statement, there is nothing on the record to indicate that either the Chinese labourers or the Filipino Scouts were maltreated while they were in Australian custody. After their release, Hsueh and Chou were well treated by the Australian authorities, who ensured that they were able to return safely to China. One might well ask what kind of justice two Australian labourers might have been able to find had they been arrested for assault in Nationalist China, where the justice system was corrupt and arbitrary. It is doubtful that they would have encountered a group of officials so intent on following due process and trying to weigh the evidence as impartially as possible. The rulings of the magistrate in the Bahinting trial, Jack Costelloe, underscored this commitment to due process and fairness. When he upheld the defence’s privilege plea, ensuring that Major Merritt would not have to take the stand and give evidence that would almost certainly damn Bahinting, Costelloe knew he was sinking the prosecution’s case and quite probably allowing Scott’s assailant to go free. A less scrupulous or conscientious magistrate might have been tempted to bend the rules and press

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ahead with the trial, but Costelloe did not allow any consideration other than what the law said to guide his actions. This determination to enforce justice without fear or favour was powerfully evident in the prosecution of Hamilton and Gill. The kiaps were insiders and the Administration could have turned a blind eye to their offences or, even worse, engaged in a cover-up. But it did not. On the contrary, it was determined to bring the full force of the law down on their heads. Justice Phillips was moved to hand out tough sentences in part by a deep moral repugnance, for the two men had committed such bizarre and cruel offences. It is also clear that he believed that it was particularly important to punish men who had been entrusted with the task of maintaining law and order in PNG. Like Colonel Murray, he knew that the very foundations of Australian authority and legitimacy would be eroded if he did not act forthrightly. The Administration did not always punish offenders within its own ranks with such conviction and clarity,5 but in this instance Phillips was unswerving. In judging how well and how fairly officials such as Murray, Phillips, Costelloe and Roberts ruled PNG, we cannot forget that they confronted a daunting situation. In the messy and uncertain aftermath of a terrible world war, they were charged with the task of governing a sprawling and chaotic country as well as they could. They faced many challenges: too few staff, limited financial resources and often patchy interest from the distant Australian capital. These administrative difficulties were compounded by testing physical conditions, poor housing and inadequate food, remoteness and loneliness, relentless rain and often searing heat. And PNG’s needs were great, even overwhelming, after the war. It is hardly surprising that some of the officials in the Administration did not rise to this challenge and made mistakes, the more so when they were young and inexperienced, or old and tired, or damaged in some way by the war. It is striking that so many of the men in this story went to PNG after the war to seek refuge from internal demons, marital difficulties or professional setbacks. It is also

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notable that many, like the colourful planter Harry Fletcher, travelled to PNG in the old frontier tradition to make a fortune or find adventure. This was an intensely masculine world where white women were rare and ostensibly masculine values such as toughness, aggression and self-reliance prevailed and were valorised. In this often raw and challenging environment, the full gamut of human behaviour was exhibited, at times in particularly stark ways. The Administration vested considerable power in the hands of a few. Much that was good was done in the name of the Australian Administration, but the actions of Hamilton and Gill demonstrated how things could go horribly wrong if too much power was placed in the hands of individuals who were ill equipped, psychologically and morally, to cope with the often testing challenges before them. Far from the constraints of home, PNG became a place where terrible inner impulses were unleashed. Hamilton and Gill were thankfully not the norm, however. In recognising the mistakes and the failings of the Administration, we also see individuals who struggled against the odds to do a good job, often improvising impressively with paltry resources and holding things together when events appeared to be on the verge of spinning out of control. If men such as Hamilton and Gill abused their power, others stayed true to the intentions of Australia’s mandate and often ruled with skill and some wisdom. As historian Clive Moore writes in his fine history of New Guinea, the Administration had officers who ‘tried hard to understand the many different cultures they encountered’ in PNG.6 Decades later, almost any remnant of the events at the heart of our story has vanished from Manus Island, Lae, Kaiapit and Morotai. Although some of the old Japanese bunkers and parts of the Lugos wharf remain on Manus, the quonset huts have disappeared, reclaimed by the voracious jungle. Some faint memories linger. One former official of the Administration, Paul Quinlivan, wrote indignantly in 1998 that the Pondranei case was ‘a monumental sell-out’, with Canberra burying its head in the sand and

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surrendering de facto sovereignty over Manus to Nationalist China. Stephen Pokawin, Governor of Manus Province in the late 1990s, recalls that the deal between Nationalist China and the US became part of the local folklore. Sure, people remembered that there was some friction between the Chinese and the Australians, ‘but not as much as there was between the Australians and the Americans’.7 Over the years the grave of John Scott in the civilian cemetery at Lae gradually fell into disrepair. In June 1965, more than 17 years after the events at the Hotel Cecil, the Lae branch of the Returned Services League wrote to the Northern Command of the Australian Military Forces in Brisbane inquiring about Scott’s war record so ‘something’ could be done about his grave, which was ‘somewhat neglected’. A member of the branch, R. G. Morgan, noted that Scott had no known relatives in PNG and that his widow was residing somewhere in Australia. ‘Mr Scott was a well known and respected Citizen of New Guinea for many years, both before and after the war and in that regard his standing is not in doubt.’8 The Army’s Central Records Office duly supplied the details of Scott’s war record, but it is not known if the local RSL did something to restore the grave. The Cecil remains in Lae, much rebuilt over the years, but any memory of that fateful night in 1948, when the European community gathered to dance and sing, has long since dissipated. The RAAF’s transitory presence on Morotai in the Moluccas has faded even more completely from the record, leaving essentially no trace.

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Endnotes

Prologue 1 Although the official name for the country was ‘Papua and New Guinea’ until 1949, I have used the modern name, Papua New Guinea, throughout the text.

Chapter one 1 Clive Moore, New Guinea: Crossing Borders and History, University of Hawai’i Press, Hawai’i, 2003, pp. 10–11, 23. 2 Peter Ryan (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Papua and New Guinea, Vol. 2, MUP in association with the University of Papua and New Guinea, Melbourne, 1972, p. 697. Henceforth noted as Encyclopaedia. 3 Margaret Mead, Growing Up in New Guinea: A Study of Adolescence and Sex in Primitive Societies, Penguin, 1968 (1930), p. 11. Mead’s credibility has come under often fierce attack (see Derek Freeman, The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: An historical analysis of her Samoan research, Westview Press, 1999; and Sean Dorney, PNG: People, Politics and History Since 1975, ABC Books, Sydney, 2000, p. 24). 4 Hank Nelson to the author, 19 October 2004. 5 David Dexter, The New Guinea Offensives, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1961, p. 795. 6 Established in April 1942 with a headquarters in Port Moresby, ANGAU recruited officials of the prewar civil authorities to perform operational and administrative functions, including collecting intelligence and distributing propaganda.

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7 John Béchervaise, ‘Operation Pacific Outpost’, Walkabout, 1 March 1952, p. 14. 8 Osmar White, Parliament of a Thousand Tribes: A study of Papua New Guinea, Wren, Melbourne, 1965, p. 139. 9 Nelson to the author, 19 October 2004. 10 The budget for 1949–50 was £16 million, 40 times what was spent in the five years leading up to the war (Dorney, PNG, p. 30). 11 Ross McMullin, The Light on the Hill: The Australian Labor Party 1891–1991, OUP, Melbourne, 1992, p. 228. 12 Elwyn Spratt, Eddie Ward: Firebrand of East Sydney, Rigby, Adelaide, 1965. 13 Jinks, unpublished entry for Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), pp. 2–3; and Sinclair to the author, 5 March 2005. Hank Nelson reaches a similar assessment, describing Murray as ‘a gentle, aloof idealist’ with impeccable manners (Nelson, Taim Bilong Masta, ABC Books, Sydney, 1982, p. 176; and Nelson to the author). 14 Ian Downs, The Last Mountain: A Life in Papua New Guinea, UQP, St Lucia, 1986, p. 155. 15 Roger Thompson, ADB: Vol. 14 — 1940–1980, p. 359. 16 Downs, Last Mountain, pp. 155–6, 164–5. 17 Jinks to the author, 15 April 1998; and Downs, The Australian Trusteeship: Papua New Guinea 1945–1975, AGPS, Canberra, 1980, pp. 59–60. 18 Pat Murray, quoted in Chilla Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea: Colonial Passages 1920–1960, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p. 148. 19 List of applicants, in NAA A518/1 A852/6/1; Jinks to the author; Downs, Last Mountain, pp. 48–9; and Geoff Melrose, unpublished memoir, no date, p. 7. 20 Jinks to the author; Sinclair to the author; and Downs, Last Mountain, pp. 52–3. 21 Downs, Australian Trusteeship, p. xvi. 22 Nelson, Taim Bilong, pp. 39, 94. 23 Ibid., p. 165. 24 Trevor Shearston, ‘Memory Stone’, Meanjin, Vol. 62, No. 3, 2003, pp. 110–11. 25 Before the war, half of the white population in New Guinea came from NSW, and ‘Victorians were as numerous as Queenslanders’ (Hank Nelson, ‘Masters in the Tropics’, in Bill Gammage and Peter Spearritt (eds), Australians: 1938, Fairfax, Syme and Weldon, Sydney, 1987, p. 431).

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26 Australian Book Review, April 2005, p. 54. 27 Jinks to the author; Encyclopaedia, pp. 979–80; and Nelson, ‘Masters’, p. 428. 28 Downs, Last Mountain, p. 166, and Australian Trusteeship, p. 25. 29 Encyclopaedia, p. 978; Jinks to the author, 15 April 1998; and Lucy Mair, quoted in Donald Denoon (ed,), The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders, Cambridge, Melbourne, 1997, p. 266. 30 Downs, Australian Trusteeship, p. 24. 31 Christopher Thorne, The Far Eastern War: States and Societies 1941–45, Unwin, London, 1986, p. 224. 32 Geoffrey Bolton, The Oxford History of Australia. Vol. 5: 1942–1988: The Middle Way, OUP, Melbourne, 1990, pp. 47–8; and memo, 7 August 1947, in NAA MP1049/5 1824/2/234. 33 Downs, Australian Trusteeship, p. 24. 34 HMAS Tarangau contained a compound holding Japanese POWs awaiting trial for war crimes. 35 Phillips, memo, 26 August 1947, in NAA A518/1 X118/2. 36 Memos, 21 August and 2 October; letter, 26 November, and cable, 28 November 1947, in ibid. 37 Cable, 23 January 1948, in ibid. 38 Application, 19 December 1928, in NAA A452/1 1959/6150. 40 Terry White to the author, 3 September 1998; and Harry West to the author, 24 March 2005. 41 W. J. Hudson, Australia and the Colonial Question at the United Nations, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1970, p. 163. 42 J. McAuley, Quadrant, Vol. 5, No. 3, 1961, pp. 21–4; and report, 9 April 1947, in NAA A518/1 X118/2. 43 White, Parliament, p. 153. 44 Theodore Schwartz, The Paliau Movement in the Admiralty Islands 1946–1954, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. Pt 2, New York, 1962, pp. 227–8. 45 Nelson to the author. 46 Washington Post, 1 September 1946. 47 White, Parliament, p. 140; and Chicago Tribune, 7 August 1946. 48 DeWolf, ‘History of Surplus Property Disposal in the MarianasMicronesia Area’, 18 November 1948, p. 3, in USNA, US Army Records, Marianas-Bonins Command, 1945–50, group 338, entry 11015, box 82.

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49 ‘Foreign Operations’, Vinnell Quarterly, Fall 1960, No. 3, Vol. 2, pp. 3–4, Vinnell Corporation, California. 50 Memo, 11 June 1947, in NAA A1838/2 308/1/2/2 part 1. 51 Cable, 17 June 1947, in ibid. 52 Cable, 1 July, and memo, 7 July 1947, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 53 Memo, 16 July 1947, in NAA A1838/2 308/1/2/2 part 1; and Haylen quoted in Antonia Finnane, Far from Where? Jewish Journeys from Shanghai to Australia, MUP, 1999, p. 191. 54 Letter, 20 September 1947, in AA NA518/1 CO840/1/3. 55 DeWolf, ‘Narrative History’, pp. 4, 6, 7. 56 Judy Taylor quoted in B. Jinks, P. Bishop and H. Nelson (eds), Readings in New Guinea History, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1973, p. 291. 57 Nicholas Jose, Chinese Whispers: Cultural Essays, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 1995, pp. 38–9.

Chapter Two 1 White’s statement, attached to Bloxham’s report, 13 April 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 2 Cable, 8 December 1947, USNA, ONI POA Monograph Files, Admiralties [Manus] — Current, box 14, 370/15/24/4. 3 Cable, 22 January 1948, in ibid. 4 Cables, 29 and 30 January 1948, in ibid. 5 White’s statement. 6 W. J. F. Jenner, The Tyranny of History: The Roots of China’s Crisis, Allen Lane, London, 1992, pp. 139, 143. 7 Bulbeck, Australian Women, p. 138. 8 See Lachlan Strahan, Australia’s China: Changing Perceptions from the 1930s to the 1990s, CUP, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 55–7. 9 Cable and handwritten note, 28 January; and handwritten note dated 30 January on cable from Canberra, 29 January 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 10 Cable, 29 January 1948, in NAA A1838/278 301/3/1. 11 Cable, 10 February 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 12 Progress Report: Philippines and the South Pacific, February–May 1948, OFLC, p. 13, USNA, ONI POA Monograph Files, Manus — Current, box 14, 370/15/24/4. 13 Cable, 16 February 1948, in NAA A518/1 S826/1/1. 14 Pacific Islands Monthly, March 1948, p. 9. 15 Letter, 13 March 1948, in NAA A518/1 S826/1/1.

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16 Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty. From the Crimea to the Falklands: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker, Pan, London, 1989, p. 305; and Bridget Griffen-Foley, ADB, Vol. 15, MUP, 2000, pp. 394–5. 17 Cable and handwritten note, 20 March 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 18 Maxwell Hayes to the author, 11 April 2005. 19 J. S. Grimshaw, application, 21 November 1946, in NAA A518/3 280/3/735; and summary of applicants and draft press release, in A518/1 E852/6/1. 20 Memo from Melrose to Murray, 12 January; and memo from Murray to Halligan, in ibid. 21 Hayes to the author. 22 Application, 20 October 1947, in NAA A518/3 280/3/1350; and list of applicants, late 1947, in A518/1 D852/6/1 part 1. 23 Jinks to the author. 24 Cable, 20 March 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 25 Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 1948. 26 Cable, 21 March 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 27 Handwritten note on a copy of Phillips’ cable, sent on 21 March in ibid. 28 Cable, 22 March 1948, in ibid. 29 Sydney Mirror, 23 March 1948. 30 Cable, 22 January 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 31 Cable, 25 March 1948, in ibid. 32 W. J. Hudson, Australia and the Colonial Question, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1970, p. 161. 33 Robert J. Gilmore and Denis Warner, Near North: Australia and a Thousand Million Neighbours, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1948, p. xii; and Brisbane Courier Mail, 20 December 1948. 34 Grimshaw’s report, p. 1; and cable, 24 March 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 35 Sydney Morning Herald, 26 March 1948. 36 Encyclopaedia, p. 919. 37 Grimshaw, Report, pp. 1–3, 5 April 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 38 Sydney Sun, 27 March 1948. 39 Cable, 30 March 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 40 Memo, 6 May 1948, in ibid. 41 Grimshaw, Report, p. 3; and Bloxham, Report, 13 April 1948, p. 2, in ibid. 42 DeWolf, Report, p. 4.

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43 Memo to Minister, 31 March; handwritten note on the memo, dated 7 April; cable to Administration, 31 March; and cable from Grimshaw, 2 April 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 44 Cable, 8 April; and memo, 17 April 1948, in ibid. 45 DeWolf, Report, 24 April 1948, USNA, OFLC Historical Files, box 81. 46 Report, April–June 1948, OFLC Commissioner for China, Japan and the North Pacific, p. 3, in ibid. 47 Memo, 23 April 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 48 Cable, 19 April 1948, in ibid. 49 Hansard, HR, Answers to Questions, 22 April, p. 1089; and Hobart Mercury and Sydney Morning Herald, 23 April 1948. 50 Memo, 6 May 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 51 Handwritten note, 12 May; cable, 18 May; and handwritten annotation on latter, 20 May 1948, in ibid. 52 Downs, Australian Trusteeship, p. 5. 53 Leslie Haylen, Chinese Journey: The Republic Revisited, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1959, pp. 57, 63; and L. G. Crisp, Ben Chifley: A Political Biography, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1963, p. 294.

Chapter Three 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11

Ian Willis, Lae: Village and City, MUP, 1974. Ibid., pp. 84–102. Ibid., p. 132. Report, circa October 1948, in NAA A518/1 W800/1/7. Letter to Ward, 1 May 1947, in NAA A518/1 M241/3/16 part 1. Pacific Islands Monthly, February 1948, p. 53. Report, 18th annual general meeting, New Guinea Goldfields Limited, 23 January 1948, p. 4, in Australian Stock Exchange Collection, MUA, box 2; and James Sinclair, Golden Gateway: Lae and the Province of Morobe, Crawford House Publishing, Bathurst, 1998, p. 259. In contrast, New Guinea Goldfields produced gold and silver worth £309,148 in 1938–39 (Sinclair, p. 153). Report by District Officer A. A. Roberts, 10 January 1948, p. 2, in A518/1 M241/3/16 part 1. Pacific Islands Monthly, March 1948, p. 78. Ibid., February 1948, p. 53. Ibid., February 1948, p. 53; External Territories report quoting a letter to the Post, 19 February 1948, in NAA A518/1 R800/1/7.

368

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21 22 23

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Bulbeck, Australian Women, p. 53. Sinclair, Gateway, p. 82. Quoted in Willis, Lae, p. 86. Sinclair, Gateway, p. 235. Quoted in ibid., p. 134. Murphy, quoted in Bulbeck, Australian Women, p. 93. Murray to Halligan, 4 May 1948, in NAA A518/1 M241/3/16 part 1. Pacific Islands Monthly, February 1948, p. 53. Report, 17th annual general meeting, New Guinea Goldfields Limited, 17 January 1947, pp. 2–4, in Australian Stock Exchange Collection, MUA. Adrian Leyden to the author, 21 April 2005. Ibid. Refugio Ordonez, Report, 5 January 1948, p. 4, Exhibit II, in US v Eduardo Bahinting, US Army Court of Criminal Appeals, Cm330665, Falls Church, Virginia (henceforth noted as US v Bahinting). Pacific Islands Monthly, July 1948, p. 13. Medal citation, 19 July 1945, in NAA B883 PX170. Sinclair, Gateway, p. 228; and Sinclair to the author. Maxwell Hayes to the author, 13 April 2005. Moncur to Halligan, 3 September 1945, in NAA A452/1 65/791. Australian War Memorial negatives 099138 and 099141; and Downs, Last Mountain, p. 194. Army Historical Foundation, The Philippine Scouts, www.armyhistoryfnd.org. Michelle Malkin, ‘FDR’s Forgotten Promise to Filipino War Veterans’, Seattle Times, 22 April 1997, emphasis added. Mike Houlahan, Public Relations Officer, Philippine Scouts Heritage Society, to the author, 12 May 2005. Aniceto Bagley to the author, 22 and 24 April 2005. Sinclair, Gateway, p. 269. Special Orders, 3 January 1948, p. 3, Exhibit KK, in US v Eduardo Bahinting. Leyden to the author. Special Orders, 3 January 1948, p. 4. Cables, 28 January and 3 February 1947; and transcript, District Court, 19–20 March 1948, in NAA A518/1 AD840/1/1. Merritt, ‘Narrative Report, Incident at Lae, 31 December 1947’, inclusion 1, US v Bahinting, pp. 1–2.

Endnotes

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

369

Sinclair, Gateway, p. 250; and Leyden to the author. Pacific Islands Monthly, February 1948, p. 34. Merritt, ‘Report’, p. 2. Radiogram, 5 January, in ibid. Cable, 7 January 1948, and annotation by Halligan, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. The Canberra Times, 6 January 1948. Statements taken by Lieutenant Ordonez, p. 9, Exhibit II, US v Bahinting, pp. 7–13. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 5–7. Ibid., pp. 1–5. Various statements, exhibits N to U, in ibid. Ibid., exhibits O, R and U. Ibid., statements N to U. Quoted in Willis, Lae, p. 134. Ibid., p. 135. Pacific Islands Monthly, February 1948, pp. 53–4. Statements, MM, pp. 2–4, US v Bahinting. Ibid., pp. 3–6. Ibid., pp. 2–3. Ibid., pp. 1–2. Ibid., p. 3.

Chapter Four 1 Bill Gammage, The Sky Travellers: Journeys in New Guinea, 1938-1939, MUP, 1998, p. 227. 2 Memo, 7 November 1947, in NAA A518/1 A852/6/1B part 1. 3 John McCubbery to the author, 20 February 1998. 4 Sinclair to the author, 5 March 2005. 5 Application, October 1926, in NAA A452/1 59/6094. 6 Sinclair to the author; and Downs, Last Mountain, p. 167. 7 Harry West to the author, 24 March 2005. 8 Coronial inquest, transcript, 5 January 1948, p. 3, Exhibit GG in US v Bahinting. 9 Maxwell Hayes to the author, 13 April 2005. 10 Account of the identification parade, 6 January, Exhibit V, in US v Bahinting. 11 Merritt, Diary of Events, Court Martial, pp. 1–2, in ibid.

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12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Coronial inquest, transcript, p. 4. Trial transcript, p. 9, in NAA A518/1 AD840/1/1. Leyden to the author, 21 April 2005. Willis, Lae, p. 108. Bulbeck, Australian Women, p. 203. Walter A. Luszki, A Rape of Justice: MacArthur and the New Guinea Hangings, Madison Books, Lanham, 1991, p. 95. Coronial inquest, transcript, pp. 5–6. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., pp. 8–9. The Tok Pisin term boi was used to describe a New Guinean labourer, as in kagoboi (carrier) or bosboi (overseer). Ibid., pp. 8–9. Scott’s war service record, in NAA B883 NGX376. Ibid., pp. 12–13, 34. Phillips to Halligan, 12 August 1947, in NAA A518/1 C852/6/3 part 1. Report of a visit to PNG by Acting External Territories Minister Cyril Chambers, January 1949, pp. 48–9, in NAA AA A518/1 C241/3/5. Gunther to Murray, 28 November 1947, in ibid. Coronial inquest, transcript, pp. 14–15. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., pp. 17–18. Cable, 7 January 1948, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. Cable, 8 January 1948, in ibid. Coronial inquest, transcript, pp. 20–6. Ibid., pp. 27–9. Ibid., pp. 30–1. Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 32. Ibid., pp. 35–6. Ibid., p. 37.

Chapter Five 1 Jinks to the author, 15 April 1998; Sinclair to the author, 5 March 2005. 2 Merritt’s diary of events, undated, p. 2–3, in US v Bahinting. 3 Merritt, diary, p. 3. 4 Cables, 14 and 15 January, in USNA, ‘Correction and Punishment’, Philrycom Adjutant General Files, decimal file 250.3, box 206.

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5 Note verbale and handwritten note, 16 January, in NAA A1838/1 301/6/1; and memo, US Embassy, 16 January, in USNA, State Department Post Files, Canberra, 1948, military affairs, general records, box 74. 6 Radiogram, 16 January, in US v Bahinting. 7 Pacific Islands Monthly, February 1948, p. 53. 8 Letter, 16 January, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. 9 Merritt, diary, p. 4; cable from Watkins, 22 January, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1; and cable from Wurfel, 22 January 1948, USNA, ‘Correction and Punishment’, Philrycom Adjutant General Files, decimal file 250.3, box 206. 10 Cable, 25 January, in A518/1 CP840/1/3. 11 Memo from Bailey, 23 January, NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. 12 Watkins, minute, 2 April, in ibid. 13 Cable from Wurfel, 25 January, and reply from Philrycom, 28 January 1948, in USNA, ‘Correction and Punishment’, Philrycom Adjutant General Files, decimal file 250.3, box 206. 14 Statement, Mrs L. M. Heath, in US v Bahinting. 15 Statement, Mrs J. Phillips-Veirke, in ibid. 16 Statement, ‘Ma’ Stewart, in ibid. 17 Statement, Peter Anton Ahtun, in ibid. On Ahtun’s activities in the war, see Peter Ryan, Fear Drive My Feet, Penguin, Ringwood, 1992, pp. 143–4. 18 War service record sheet, in NAA B883 NGX395. 19 Harry West to the author, 24 March 2005. 20 Merritt, diary, p. 4. 21 Note verbale, 30 January, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. 22 Alison Broinowski, The Yellow Lady: Australian Impressions of Asia, OUP, Melbourne, 1992, p. 29. 23 Radio transcript, 5 October 1946; and dispatch, Australian Consulate General, Manila, 21 June 1948, in NAA A1067/1 A46/2/3/12. 24 Dispatch, 29 October 1946, in ibid. 25 Dispatch, 17 March 1949, in ibid. 26 Rodney Sullivan, ‘“It had to happen”: the Gamboas and AustralianPhilippine interactions’, in R. C. Ileto and Sullivan (eds), Discovering Australia: Essays on Philippine-Australian Interactions, James Cook University, Townsville, 1993, pp. 110, 114. See also Denis Warner, Wake Me if There’s Trouble, Penguin, 1995, pp. 113–14. 27 Cable, 6 February 1948, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1.

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28 Memo from McIntyre, 5 February in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1; and Shantz to Sauer, USNA, State Department Post Files, Canberra, 1948, military affairs. 29 Cable, 5 February 1948, in NAA A1838/1 301/6/1. 30 Memo, 10 February 1948, in ibid. 31 Memo, 7 February 1948, in ibid. 32 Cable from Wurfel, 5 February 1948, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. 33 Cable from Canberra, 12 February 1948, in ibid.

Chapter Six 1 Application letter, 19 November 1932, in NAA A518/1 852/1/445. 2 This system of informal courts was designed to deliver simple, cheap and quick justice to the indigenous population (Nelson, Taim, p. 38). 3 Transcript, District Court, 12–13 February 1948, in NAA A518/1 852/1/445. 4 Transcript, R v Gill, in NAA A518/3 280/3/17. ‘Push-push’ was Tok Pisin for copulate. 5 Transcript, in NAA A518/1 852/1/445. 6 Maule to Wurfel, 16 February 1948, in USNA, ‘Correction and Punishment’, Philrycom Adjutant General Files, decimal file 250.3, box 206. 7 Philrycom to Maule, 17 February 1948, in ibid. 8 Question of the Day, Notice Paper No. 109, 18 February 1948, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. 9 Ibid. 10 Maule to Philrycom, 24 February 1948, in USNA, ‘Correction and Punishment’, Philrycom Adjutant General Files, decimal file 250.3, box 206. 11 Second radiogram from Maule to Philrycom, 24 February 1948, in ibid. 12 Wurfel to Maule, 24 February 1948, in ibid. 13 War service record, in NAA B884 V500028. 14 Transcript, Supreme Court trial, pp. 2–9, in NAA A518/1 852/1/445. 15 Transcript, R v Gill, pp. 19, 25, in NAA A518/3 280/3/17. 16 Ibid., pp. 25–8. 17 Ibid., p. 28. 18 Judgment, R v Hamilton, pp. 11–14, in NAA A518/1 852/1/445. 19 Judgment, R v Gill, pp. 29, 31, in NAA A518/3 280/3/17. 20 Wurfel to Maule, 7 March 1948, in USNA, ‘Correction and Punishment’, Philrycom Adjutant General Files, decimal file 250.3, box 206.

Endnotes

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

373

Transcript of Crown v Bahinting, pp. 6, 9, in US v Bahinting. Ibid., pp. 1–2. Ibid., pp. 3–4, 6–8. Ibid., pp. 1, 9–10, 16. Ibid., pp. 3, 7, 17, 20. Ibid., pp. 11–14. Cables, 9 and 12 March 1948, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. Maule to Wurfel, 9 March 1948, in USNA, ‘Correction and Punishment’, Philrycom Adjutant General Files, decimal file 250.3, box 206. Cables, 11 and 13 March 1948, in ibid. Cable, 15 March 1948, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. Cable, 16 March 1948, in USNA, ‘Correction and Punishment’, Philrycom Adjutant General Files, decimal file 250.3, box 206. Handwritten note and minute, 16 March 1948, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. Cable, 16 March; and Minute, Watkins, 2 April 1948, in ibid. Memo and cable, 17 March 1948, in ibid. Minute, 2 April 1948 in ibid. Ibid. Merritt, narrative summary, p. 3, in US v Bahinting. Minute, 10 April, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. Notes verbales, 22 and 28 April 1948, in ibid. Paul Hasluck, The Chance of Politics, edited by Nicholas Hasluck, Text, Melbourne, 1997, p. 69. Handwritten note, 18 March, in A518/3 280/3/17. Hansard extract, 2 June, in NAA A518/1 BJ836/1. Handwritten note, 10 June 1948, in ibid. Bignold to Phillips, 9 June 1948, in ibid. Extract from Hansard, 17 June 1948; and undated draft reply, in ibid. Pacific Islands Monthly, July 1948, p. 13.

Chapter Seven 1 DeWolf, ‘Narrative History’, pp. 8–10. 2 Handwritten note, 15 June; and cables 15 and 17 June 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 3 Bailey to Halligan, 15 June 1948, in ibid. 4 Demarche, 18 June 1948, in ibid.

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5 Burton to Halligan, 22 June 1948, in ibid. 6 DeWolf, ‘Narrative History’, pp. 8–10. 7 Phillips to Murray, 6 December 1948, in NAA A518/1 B852/6/1B part one. 8 Jones, job application, 4 June 1947, in NAA A518/1 P852/6/3. 9 Letter to Halligan, 14 May 1947, in ibid. 10 The King v Chow Hung Ching and Si Pao Kung, PNG Supreme Court, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3, part 1. The court rendered the names of the accused as Chow Hung Ching (Chou) and Si Pao Kung (Hsueh). 11 The Japanese war crimes trials in PNG between 1945 and 1951, 26 of which were held on Manus, presented similar legal challenges, including questions about the testimony by Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Indian witnesses (see George Dickinson, ‘Manus Island Trials: Japanese War Criminals Arraigned’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. XXXVIII, Pt II, 1952, pp. 67–77. 12 King v Chow Hung Ching and Si Pao Kung, pp. 2–3; and Encyclopaedia, p. 619. 13 Mead, New Lives for Old, pp. 386–7. 14 Gammage, Sky Travellers, p. 220. 15 Hapkas also referred to someone who had moved from one cultural or clan group to another. 16 King v Chow Hung Ching and Si Pao Kung, pp. 6–7. 17 Ibid., pp. 8–14. 18 Ibid., p. 14. 19 Ibid., p. 15. 20 Ibid., pp. 16–19. 21 Ibid., pp. 20–4. 22 Ibid., p. 25. 23 In this case, Phillips sat as the jury. 24 King v Chow Hung Ching and Si Pao Kung, p. 31. 25 Ibid., pp. 32–3. 26 Ibid., pp. 33–4. 27 Cable, 5 July 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3.

Chapter Eight 1 Letter, 25 June 1960, to the Central Records Office of the Army, in NAA B884 N213764. 2 Aide-mémoire, 23 June 1948, in NAA A1838/2 308/1/2/2 part 1.

Endnotes

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

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Letter, 1 July 1948, in ibid. Cables, 5, 6, 7 and 8 July 1948, in ibid. UP report, 9 July 1948, in ibid. Burton to External Territories, 12 July 1948, in NAA A518/1 AH118/2. Melrose to Halligan, 13 July 1948, in ibid. Memo, 20 July 1948, in NAA A518/1 X118/2. Cable, 21 July 1948, in NAA A518/1 AH118/2. Report, 24 July 1948, in NAA A518/1 X118/2; and Binns quoted in Department of Works, memo, 11 May 1950, in NAA A518/1 JY 813/1/12. Murray to Ward, 30 July 1946, and Halligan to Burton, undated memo, in NAA A518/1 BC822/1. ‘General notes on sale’, 27 September 1946, USNA, US Army Records, box 82. Colonel W. Smith, memo, 4 November 1946; and ‘Regulations for Administration of Guam — Bosey’, late 1946, p. 5, in ibid. King v Chow Hung Ching and Si Pao Kung, pp. 36, 38. Ibid., pp. 38–42. Ibid., pp. 40–1. Ibid., pp. 43–6. Ibid., pp. 46–7. Ibid., pp. 54, 57, 59. Ibid., pp. 79–81. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., pp. 83–4, 86. Ibid., pp. 99, 103, 104, 105–6. Ibid., pp. 95, 96, 101, 102, 105. Ibid., pp. 97–9, 103, 105. Quoted in Nelson, Taim, p. 320. King v Chow Hung Ching and Si Pao Kung, p. 107. Ibid., pp. 108–9. Nelson, ‘Masters in the Tropics’, pp. 424–5. Ibid., p.429. Bloxham, report on Carr v Tittle, 22 October 1948, in NAA A518/1 BY836/1. Murray to Halligan, 28 August, in NAA A518/1 P809/1/1 part 2; and cable, 2 September1948, in NAA A518/1 BY836/1.

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33 Cable, 2 September; and Report, Carr v Tittle, in NAA A518/1 BY836/1. 34 Radio message from Bloxham, 4 September, in ibid. 35 Radio message, 5 September, and letter from Bignold, 6 September in ibid. 36 Cable, 22 December 1948, in NAA A518/1 BY836/1.

Chapter Nine 1 RAAF Director of Intelligence, assessment, 11 March 1947, in NAA A1196/6 36/501/638. 2 This background information can be found in NAA A705/1 91/1/228 and A1196/6 36/501/638. 3 Court martial transcript, p. C14, NAA A1838/1 401/3/3/3/2. Unless otherwise indicated, all the official documents cited in this chapter are drawn from this file. 4 Minute, 28 February 1948. 5 Notes verbales, 28 February and 1 March 1948. 6 Undated handwritten note, probably 3 or 4 March 1948. 7 Burton to Langslow, 4 March, and Langslow’s reply, 8 March 1948. 8 Transcript, pp. C18, C21. 9 Langslow to Burton, 11 March; and note verbale, 12 March 1948. 10 The information about Newman’s background is drawn from his war service record, in NAA A9301 166006. 11 Transcript, pp. C3–7. 12 Ibid., pp. C8–10. 13 Ibid., pp. C11–12. 14 Ibid. pp. C14–25. 15 Ibid., pp. 22–3. 16 Ibid., pp. C25–6. 17 Ibid., pp. C27–8. 18 Ibid., pp. C27–35. 19 Ibid., pp. C36–41. 20 Ibid., pp. C41–2; and note verbale, 18 March 1948. 21 Transcript, pp. C44–51. 22 Letters, 19 and 23 January 1948, in NAA A1838/2 401/3/1/1 part 5. 23 Transcript, pp. C52–61. 24 Ibid., pp. C64–5. 25 Ibid., pp. C73–4.

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Ibid., pp. D1–8. Transcript, summing up, pp. 1–4. Ibid., pp. 4–5. Ibid., pp. 10–12. Ibid., pp. 12–19. Ibid., pp. 19–21. Langslow to Burton, 13 April; and letter from Burton, 21 April 1948.

Chapter Ten 1 Memo, 14 September 1948, in NAA A518/1 C840/1/3. 2 Memo, 12 October, 1948, in NAA A1838/2 308/1/2/2 part 1. 3 Transcript, Chow Hung Ching v the King, High Court of Australia Registry, M26/1948, full court, p. 19. 4 Ibid., pp .22, 25–6, 39, 45 and 50. 5 Chow Hung Ching v the King, Commonwealth Law Reports, 77, 1949, pp. 451–3. 6 Ibid., pp. 456–8. 7 Note verbale, 23 November 1948, in AA A1838/2 308/1/2/2 part one. 8 Chow Hung Ching v the King, CLR, 77, 1949, pp. 461, 465–6, 468. 9 Ibid., pp. 473, 474. 10 Ibid., pp. 485–6. 11 Handwritten note, 10 December 1948, in AA A1838/2 308/1/2/2 part 1. 12 Memo, 18 December 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 13 Lucien Bianco, Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915–1949, Stanford, 1991, pp. 155–6. 14 Cable, 21 December 1948, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 15 Memo, 10 February 1949, in ibid. 16 Memos from Halligan 15 and 21 February 1949, in ibid. 17 Note verbale, 8 March 1949, in AA A1838 308/1/2/2 part 1. 18 Memo, 31 March 1949, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3. 19 Cables from Canberra, 13 and 23 April; and cables from Hong Kong, 25 April 1949, in ibid. 20 Noel Barber, The Fall of Shanghai: The Communist Take-Over in 1949, Macmillan, London, 1979, p. 101. 21 Ibid., p. 138. 22 Ibid., p. 123. 23 Letter, 1 June 1949, in NAA A518/1 CO840/1/3.

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33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50

Day of Reckoning

Memos, 8 January and 18 February 1949, in NAA A518/1 BY836/1. Letter and memo, 5 and 13 April 1949, in ibid. Court martial transcript, pp. 10–13, in US v Bahinting. Ibid., pp. 16, 23. Ibid., pp. 34–5. Memo, 9 July 1948, USNA, Philrycom Adjutant General, ‘Discipline 1947-8’, file 250, box 205. Memos, 3 August and 3 September, and note verbale, 22 September 1948, USNA, State Department Post Files, Canberra 1948, military affairs, box 74, general records. G. T. Miller, A/g Secretary, Repatriation Commission, to Department of Air, 28 June 1973, in NAA A9301 166006. E. M. Andrews, Australia and China: The Ambiguous Relationship, MUP, Carlton, 1985, p. 128; and author’s conversation with Burn, 21 April 2005. Cables, 11 December 1948 and 25 January and 21 February 1949, in NAA A1838/2 308/1/2/2 part 1. Jinks, draft Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on Murray, pp. 3–4; Downs, Australian Trusteeship, pp. 110–11; and Roger Thompson, entry on Halligan, ADB: Vol. 14 — 1940–1980, p. 359. Press release and letter to Mattie Melrose, in NAA A452/1 59/6149. Grimshaw’s son to Hayes, 18 April 1999. Papers in NAA A518/3 280/3/1350; and Hayes to the author. Leyden to the author, 21 April 2005. Letter, 13 March 1948, in NAA A518/3 280/3/17. Letter, 21 September 1948, in NAA A518/1 852/1/445. Letters, 11 and 22 November 1948, in NAA A518/3 280/3/17. Letter, 17 July 1949, in NAA A518/1 852/1/445. Papers in NAA A518/3 280/3/287. Memo, 6 October 1948, in NAA A518/1 B118/6 part 2. Sinclair to the author, 5 March 2005. Memos from Huxley, 18 November 1954 and 5 October 1955; Hasluck’s handwritten comment on a memo, 3 November 1955; and memo from Huxley, January 1956, in NAA A518/1 P852/6/1B. Sinclair, Golden Gateway, p. 96. Ibid., pp. 273, 296. Letter, early April 1949, in NAA AA518/1 JY813/1/12. Handwritten note, 29 June; and entry permits, dated 30 June 1949, in ibid.

Endnotes

379

51 Letter, 1 May 1950, in ibid. 52 Letter, 7 February 1951, in ibid. 53 Letter, 25 December 1960, in NAA B884 N213764.

Epilogue 1 Kate Darian-Smith, On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime 19391945, OUP, Melbourne, 1990, p. 217. 2 Luszki, Rape of Justice, pp. 75–93. 3 David Lee, ‘Indonesia’s Independence’, in David Goldsworthy (ed.), Facing North: A Century of Australian Engagement in Asia, DFAT and MUP, Vol. 1, 1901 to the 1970s, Melbourne, 2001, p. 157. 4 Quote in Bulbeck, Australian Women, p. 160. 5 See, for instance, August Kituai, My Gun, My Brother: The World of the Papua New Guinea Colonial Police, 1920–60, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 1998, pp. 144–55. 6 Moore, New Guinea, p. 184. 7 Paul Quinlivan, ‘Sell-out in Manus, 1946–48’, Una Voce, Newsletter of the Retired Officers Association of Papua New Guinea, 1998; and conversation between Paul Davies and Stephen Pokawin, May 1997. 8 Letter, 15 June 1965, in NAA B883 NGX376.

380

Abbreviations

ABC

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

AIF

Australian Imperial Force

ANGAU

Australian New Guinea Administration Unit

AWAS

Australian Women’s Army Service

BOSEY

Board of Supplies of the Executive Yuan

CINCPAC

Commander in Chief, Pacific Command

NAA

National Archives of Australia

NEI

Netherlands East Indies

OFLC

Office of the Foreign Liquidation Commissioner

PLA

People’s Liberation Army

RAF

Royal Air Force

RAAF

Royal Australian Air Force

RAN

Royal Australian Navy

RSL

Returned Services League

RSSAILA

Returned Sailors’, Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Imperial League of Australia

SMP UNRRA

Shanghai Municipal Police United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration

USNA

United States National Archives

381

Index

AAP 65, 76, 79, 286 ABC 67 Aborigines 19, 51, 295 Admiralty Islands 23 Agbanawag, Master Yeoman Teo 102, 116, 121, 164 Age 67 Ahtun, Peter 116, 164 Amalgamated Wireless 92 Amazeen, Colonel Charles 319 Andico, Salvador 111, 112, 113, 114, 118, 129, 147, 151, 318 Andrews, Eric 320 ANGAU 10, 23, 25, 26, 97, 99, 165, 176, 246, 348 Anker, Willem 262, 266–7, 269, 270, 272–6, 278–81, 283–4, 287, 291–2, 296, 297–99, 301, 339–40 Argus 56, 67 Asians in PNG 29, 38, 90, 93, 100, 110, 111, 121–2, 132, 134, 143, 164, 255, 349, 350

Attorney-General’s Department 52, 54, 99, 204, 271, 309, 311 Australian Administration in PNG 11–30, 40, 49, 51, 54, 57, 63–4, 65, 66, 67–8, 73, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 89, 99, 100, 110, 119, 126, 128, 131, 141, 153, 157, 171, 175–6, 179–80, 181, 182, 183, 186, 185, 189, 190, 192, 199, 203, 205, 209, 211, 213, 216, 229, 236, 237, 238, 241, 244, 246, 247, 248, 251, 253, 254–8, 268, 283, 285, 286, 303, 308, 317, 321–2, 324, 325, 328, 329–30, 332, 336, 337, 338, 341, 342–3, 345, 351, 354, 355 Australian and Chinese conceptions of justice 49–52 Australian and Melanesian conceptions of justice 50–2 Australian authority 17–18, 20, 22, 27–30, 54, 57, 65, 72–3, 81, 82, 110, 119–20, 131, 182, 189, 203, 205, 209, 224, 230, 237, 247,

382

249, 250–1, 253, 283, 340, 341, 342, 345, 346, 354, 355–6 Australian immigration law and practice 33, 38, 85, 170, 311, 347 Australian Labor Party 12, 13, 15, 21, 22, 72, 83, 84, 86, 92, 202, 336 Australian military policy 11, 21–22, 245–6, 70–73, 249–50 Australian relations with China 31, 54, 81, 84–6, 238, 240, 243, 247, 341–3, 356 Australian relations with Indonesia 71, 272, 285–6, 346 Australian relations with the Netherlands 207, 265–70, 282–83, 285–6, 293, 300, 341, 345–6 Australian relations with the Philippines 110, 169–70, 342–3 Australian relations with the United Sates 21–2, 23–5, 28, 30, 31, 35, 52–3, 54, 66, 110, 154, 157, 158, 166–7, 172, 185, 199–200, 203, 205, 207, 209, 234, 237, 240, 247–8, 249–51, 318, 319, 320, 343–4, 345 Australian retreat from PNG 9, 233 Australian School of Pacific Administration 27 Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) 95, 97

Day of Reckoning

Bagley, Aniceto ix, 101–2 Bahinting, Eduardo 111, 112, 118, 122–3, 129–30, 147, 151, 166, 168, 180, 181, 184, 185, 192, 306–7, 208–9, 259, 260, 317–18, 321, 340, 343; court martial 159, 282, 318–20, 344, 345; trial 171–2, 174, 181–3, 184–5, 187, 192–201, 202, 204–5, 206–7, 214, 258, 259, 270, 282, 283, 302, 325, 327, 340, 342, 353 Bailey, Kenneth 160, 199, 211, 364, 367 Bantilan, Pacifico 111, 117, 118, 123, 129, 130, 151, 155 Barber, Noel 314 Barbonga, Marianito 111, 112, 113, 114, 118, 122–3, 124–5, 129, 147 Beale, Howard 202–4, 205, 328, 330 Bidjo, Sergeant 280, 281, 287, 290, 291, 292 Bignold, Esme 54, 70, 126–7, 204, 259, 303, 331–2 Binns, Brigadier Leslie 239, 257–8 Bismarck Archipelago 11 Bismarck Sea 1, 5, 86, 89, 340 Blamey, General Thomas 263 Bloxham, A. A. ‘Bill’ 24–5, 26–7, 30, 44–5, 48–9, 51, 52, 53, 54–6, 57–8, 59, 60–1, 64–5, 67, 69–70, 74, 76, 77–9, 80–1, 82, 159–60, 172, 182, 213, 234, 235–6, 239, 258–9, 326 Bloxham, Theresa 25, 326

Index

Board of Supplies of the Executive Yuan (BOSEY) 32, 35–6, 37, 45, 47, 74, 79, 81, 82, 210, 230, 234, 236–7, 239, 241, 245, 317, 321 Boasing 216 Boba 178 Bolton, Geoffrey 22, 358 Braun, Dr Theodore 107, 108, 139, 192, 257, 258, 259, 304 Broinowski, Alison 166 Brown, Squadron Leader K. S. 266–7, 269 ‘brown–out murders’ 343–4 Buckley, Mary 143 Bulletin, 71–2 Bulolo 91, 139, 176 Bulolo Gold Dredging 91, 92, 97, 98, 105, 108, 133, 137, 139, 161, 194, 326, 327, 333 Bulolo Guesthouse 94 Bulolo River 97 Bulolo Valley 11, 88, 91 Buna 16 Burn, Peter 320 Burns Philp 91, 106, 134 Burt, Richard 105–6, 132 Burton, John, 15, 212, 237, 268–9, 270, 286, 300, 311, 317 Byers, Major 47, 48, 55, 74–5, 77, 153

Cabello, Moises 122–3 Caluya, Lieutenant Colonel 107, 109 Canberra Times, 110, 270 Caroline Islands 8

383

Carr, Charles ‘Kedger’ 62–3, 73, 227, 238, 239, 257, 324–5 Case, Lieutenant Milton 318–9 Celebes Islands 263, 264 Chan, Bruno 216 Changsu 216, 217 Chen, Dr 210, 235, 239 Cheng, Kang-chi 68, 79, 84 Chiang, Kai-shek 30, 85, 86, 315, 341 Chicago Tribune 31 Chifley, John 15, 24, 59, 69, 70, 71, 86, 202, 233, 322, 335, 342, 346 Chinatown 38–9, 94, 111, 122, 124, 230–1 China Press 65 Chinese Army’s Marianas Command 32, 53, 212, 308 Chinese civil war 3, 30, 32, 33, 71, 85, 310, 314–16, 321 Chinese Communist Party 30, 32, 71, 85, 304, 314–15, 321, 341 Chinese Embassy in Canberra 68, 79–80, 84, 210–12, 230–31, 238, 307–8, 310–11 Chinese in PNG 23, 30, 32–4, 35–6, 38–41, 42–3, 57, 72, 83, 88, 93–4, 100, 110, 116, 121–2, 133–4, 349–51 Chinese in South-East Asia 40 Chinese Nationalist labour contingent on Manus 2, 30, 33–4, 36–8, 40–1, 42–3, 45, 46, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55–6, 57, 67, 70, 72–3, 74–6, 82, 98, 100, 172, 209–10, 216, 220, 222, 224, 226, 228,

384

229–30, 231, 234, 235, 236–7, 240, 241, 242, 243, 245, 248–9, 254, 255, 282, 285, 305, 309, 312, 343, 349, 350, 351; internal conflict 209–11, 212–13, 304 Chinese Nationalist Party/Kuomintang 30–2, 45, 49–50, 71, 74–6, 100, 102, 153, 158, 229–30, 303, 310, 314–15, 321, 341–2 Chinese purchase of US surplus stores 30–4, Chinese state 30, 32, 34, 49–50, 84–6, 244, 303, 304, 310, 314–15, 353, 356 Chou Hung-shao 75–6, 79, 81, 82, 84, 128, 200, 208–9, 210–11, 212, 215, 218, 231, 255, 256, 260, 303, 307–8, 310–17, 321, 328, 340, 342, 351, 352–3; trial of Chou and Hsueh Pao-keng 81, 82, 209, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 221–2, 233–231, 240–55, 260, 348, 353; High Court appeal of Chou and Hsueh 302–10, 311 Christie, Patricia ‘Pansy’ 334–5 Christie, Richard 335 Cleland, Brigadier Donald 323–4 cocoa plantations 11 see Salami Plantation cold war 30, 71–2, 169, 341 colonialism 6–10, 14, 17–20, 25, 166–7, 253, 263, 283, 349; Australian 7–8, 17, 18–19, 20, 25, 80, 216–17, 253, 347–9, 359; British 7, 19, 154, 167, 314; decolonisation in Asia 71

Day of Reckoning

‘colour line’ 119, 130–1, 161–2, 168, 174, 347 compensation for war damage 233–4, 334, 336 Connelly, Sergeant Waldo 114, 118, 120 Copland, Ambassador Douglas 34 Corbe, Vincent 111–12, 118, 129, 147 Costelloe, John Amery ‘Jack’ 165, 174, 180–1, 184, 187, 192, 193, 197, 204, 327, 353–4 court martials 48, 52, 70, 157, 158, 159, 160, 165, 166, 171, 174, 211, 243, 268–9, 270, 272–82, 283–5, 286–97, 303, 318–20, 343–5, 352 Crown Law Office 126–7, 128, 140, 154, 159, 161, 165, 214, 214, 235, 317, 331–3 Curtin, John, Prime Minister 12, 58, 343–4

da Costa, Sophia 262, 266, 269, 276–82, 284–5, 287–93, 295, 296–7, 298–9, 300, 340 Dacillo, Benedicto 318, 111–12, 113, 118, 122, 129–30, 147, 151 Daily Telegraph 56, 58, 59, 65, 67, 69, 72, 73, 76, 77, 192, 270, 285 Darian-Smith, Kate 344 Davenport, Gordon 148–9 Davoren, Wing Commander John 269, 271, 275, 277, 287, 288, 292, 293–9, 300 Day, Peter 62, 63, 324–5

Index

de la Cruz, Augustine 111, 112, 113, 118, 122, 123, 129, 130, 147, 151, 155 de Ranitz, Jonkheer 267 Dedman, John 22, 215 Department of Air 336 Department of Defence 21, 241 Department of District and Native Affairs 16, 17, 78, 326, 330 Department of External Affairs 15, 84, 109, 121, 156–7, 159, 172, 199–200, 202, 204, 210, 211, 212, 230, 231, 237, 241, 267, 268, 269, 270, 282, 286, 300, 307, 309, 311, 316, 317, 336 Department of External Territories 12, 13, 1416, 33–4, 52, 58–9, 60, 68–9, 79, 83, 84, 100, 109, 172, 174, 199, 200, 203, 210, 211, 212, 217, 231, 237, 238, 303, 311, 312, 313, 316, 322, 324, 325, 328, 329, 334, 335, 336 Department of Immigration 311 Department of Works and Housing 90, 93, 121, 130, 148, 149, 193, 336 DeWolf, Captain Marcus 37, 82–3, 209 Didi 178–179 Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs 27 District Court 52, 74, 80, 81, 106, 131, 165, 171, 172, 174, 180, 184, 188, 192, 258 District Officers 17–20, 50–1, 54–5, 78, 92, 93, 176, 179, 180, 182, 326, 346; divisions among kiaps 18–19

385

Dixon, Sir Owen 304, 308–9 Doroeba 278, 284, 298, 299 Dorsey, Mr 45, 257 Downs, Ian 14, 15, 16, 20–1, 22, 129 Dunn, Hector 149–50, 151 Dutch East Indies see Netherlands East Indies Dutch Legation in Canberra 267, 270, 282, 286, 300 Dutch New Guinea 109, 156, 173–4, 206, 207, 264, 283, 285

Earhart, Amelia 88, 95 Edie Creek 97 Eekhoff, Henry G 90, 92 comparisons with Egypt 25, 128 Ela Beach 173 English, James 257–60 European residents of PNG 38, 88, 92–3; European women 39, 92–3, 95, 116, 117, 123, 132–4, 143, 182–3, 326, 335, 351, 355 Evatt, H. V. 15, 22, 24, 121, 159, 199, 202, 204, 205–6, 286

Ferraro, Chief Petty Officer B. D. 46–7, 48, 80–1 Field, Kenneth 142–3 Filipino Government 101, 166–7, 168, 169–70, 181, 342 Filipino labourers and stevedores 33, 241 Filipino Scouts, 96, 98, 100–3, 105, 107, 122, 125, 130–1, 151, 154, 167, 173, 194, 198–9, 200, 203,

386

206–7, 285, 325, 349–51; 557th Quartermaster Service Company 102 Filipino soldiers 168, 101 Finschhafen 33, 34, 35, 53, 89, 102, 107, 109, 156, 184, 200, 203, 240, 245, 257, 258, 304 First Independent Company 9 Fletcher, Harry 232–40, 334–7, 355 Francis, Josiah 83, 182 French, Lieutenant V. U. 81–2, 154, 210, 212, 235, 239, 244 Fuhrman, Osmond 24–5, 68 Fujian 40

Galbally, Francis 303, 305 Gamboa, Sergeant Lorenzo 170, 342 Gammage, Bill 127, 220 Gat Sing Kui 216 Gazelle Peninsula 17 gender relations 39, 57, 65–7, 92–3, 109, 117, 129, 132–4, 143, 145, 161–3, 177–80, 186–91 215, 256, 276–7, 280–1, 284, 287–96, 299, 327, 331, 334–5, 343–5, 355 German occupation of New Guinea 7–8, 10, 18, 28, 33; German colonial period 7–8, 10, 18, 28 Gill, Dorothy 328, 330 Gill, Jeffrey 175, 178–81, 182, 184, 186, 187–92, 203, 327–30, 338, 354, 355; trial 175, 180, 184, 186, 187–92 Gill, Nereda 180, 189, 191, 192, 328, 330

Day of Reckoning

Gilmore, Robert 71 gold mining 11, 38, 63, 88, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 176 Goldfarb, Lieutenant Morris 318, 319 Gore, Justice Ralph 213 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 145–6 Green, Lieutenant 48 Green, F. D. 271, 274–5, 280, 281–2, 287–8, 289 Grimshaw, Superintendent John 61–2, 63, 64, 68–9, 70, 73–6, 77–9, 127–8, 130–1, 146, 155, 165, 200, 222, 226, 227, 252, 285, 323–4, 325 Gross, Kelm 98, 129 Guam 8, 21, 32, 33, 35, 36, 45, 46, 47, 53, 74, 79, 80, 80, 82, 102, 209, 210, 212, 224, 225, 231, 235, 240, 242, 257, 259, 310, 313, 316, 317 Guinea Airways 89 Gunther, Dr Carl 108, 139–40, 196, 333 Gunther, Dr John 17, 140, 141, 333

Halligan, James Reginald ‘Reg’ 13, 14–15, 60, 70, 79, 100, 109, 174, 199, 203, 204, 205, 210–11, 215, 237, 241, 309, 311, 316, 322, 328, 330, 331, 334 Hamilton, Harry 175, 176–81, 182, 186–7, 189–91, 327, 328–30, 338, 355; trial 175, 180–1, 182, 186–7, 189–91, 192, 327, 354 Hamilton, Leonard 328, 330

Index

Hapkas 221, 223, 253 Harengan Island 225 Hartmans, G. W. 266–7, 270, 272, 277–8, 280–1, 282–3, 294, 300 Hasluck, Paul, 322, 323, 332 Hayes, Maxwell 323–4, Haylen, Leslie, 35, 85 Heath, Bertram ‘Bertie’ 98, 139, 161 Heath, Mrs L. M. 161 Heemstra, Julius 283–4, 298 Henderson, Corporal Colin 288, 289–90, 298, 269, 75, 276, 280 Henlen, Sister Mary Veronica ‘Ronny’ 138, 141 High Court of Australia 42, 184–5, 192, 197, 199, 201, 302, 303, 304, 307, 308, 309, 310, 343 Hinckley, Captain 81 HMAS Tarangau 23 Hollandia 200, 285 Hong Kong 40, 62, 312, 313, 314 Hotel Cecil 87, 92, 93, 94–6, 98, 102, 103, 109, 110, 111, 114–16, 117, 120, 121, 122–25, 127, 129, 130, 131, 134, 142, 143–4, 147, 151–2, 155–7, 158, 164, 168, 178, 201, 318, 333–4, 339, 350–1, 353, 356 House of Representatives 12, 83, 182, 202, 205 Hsueh, Pao-keng 75–6, 79, 84, 128, 200, 208–9, 210, 212, 311, 312–16, 317, 321, 328, 340, 342, 351, 352, 353; trial see Chou; High Court appeal see Chou Hubbard, Flight Lieutenant Vernon 271, 300

387

Hubener, Jean 300 Huon Peninsula/Gulf 86, 87, 89 Hutchinson, William 328 Huxley, Thomas 332

Iatsa 178–9, 180, 338 India House 312, 315, 316 Indochina 7 Indonesia 6, 71, 263–4, 286, 345–6; see Netherlands East Indies Inrim 23, 24, 25, 41, 44, 46, 48, 53, 55, 56, 74, 76, 80, 209, 213, 215, 216, 217, 225, 228, 230, 231, 234, 238, 245, 248, 258, 303 Iwo Jima 33

Japan 9, 33, 56, 62, 63, 85; Japanese occupation of PNG 39–40, 89, 95, 99 Jenner, Bill 49–50 Jinks, Brian 13–14, 322 Jones, Adrian 127, 214–16, 218, 222–5, 226–7, 228, 229, 231, 240, 243–5, 250, 253–4, 302, 331 Jones, Roma 215, 331 Jose, Nicholas 40–1 Jurisdiction 155, 157, 158, 161, 165, 171, 174, 175, 184, 200, 201, 202, 204, 211, 225, 240, 244–6, 248, 249, 267–8, 282, 283, 285, 286; Australian 26–7, 49, 52, 53, 54, 61, 67–8, 78, 82–3, 107, 110, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 166, 172, 181–2, 184,

388

192–3, 199, 202, 206, 224, 230, 240, 243, 244, 247, 258, 267, 268–9, 386, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 317, 318, 341, 343, 351; Chinese 82, 269, 341; Dutch 268, 269, 270, 282; Filipino 167; US 154, 1579, 202, 205, 250–1, 269, 341

Kaiapit 176, 178, 179, 184, 186, 189, 338, 355 Kiang, General 32, 230 Kiaps see District Officers Kiley, Gregory 111, 131, 135, 136–7, 142, 155, 165, 195, 198 Kipau, Sergeant Major 26, 46 Kokoda 16, 70 Kuo, Captain Ke-cha 45, 46, 48–50, 74, 75–6, 212, 228–30, 235, 236, 239, 252, 321 Labor Government 12, 13, 15, 21, 22, 35, 83, 84, 85, 86, 92, 202, 336, 357; New Deal 12, 13, 16, 17, 21 Lae 38, 41, 53, 86, 87–96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 119, 120–22, 125, 127–29, 130, 131, 132, 133, 152, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 163, 164, 165, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 192, 193, 195, 196, 198, 199, 200, 203, 206, 207, 213, 224, 250, 256, 257, 260, 267, 268, 270, 278, 282, 285, 286, 295, 304, 316, 317, 319, 320, 325,

Day of Reckoning

326, 327, 328, 333, 336, 338, 339, 340, 349, 350, 351, 353, 355, 356; Lae Hospital 38, 93, 97, 98, 106, 108, 116, 137, 138, 140, 141, 144, 152, 196; Lae Theatre 120–1, 124 Lambert, Cyril 26, 216, 218, 257 Langslow, Melville 268–9, 270, 300 Larkin, Patrick 107, 129–30, 151 Latham, John 176, 304, 305, 308 law enforcement 17–18, 19, 49, 51, 128, 171 le Maire, Jacob 6 League of Nations 8, 18, 21, 181, 184 Leake, C. E. 312–13 Legal representation/lawyers 81, 155, 156, 157, 165, 180, 214, 215–16, 271, 303, 353 Lemons, Sergeant Harold 113–14, 119, 123–5, 130 Leonski, Private Edward 343–4 Leyden, Adrian 97, 133, 327–8 Liang Shuloong 212 Liberal Party 83, 182, 202, 336 Livingstone, Dudley 142 Lombrum 23, 36, 320 Loniu Passage 6 Lorengau 7–8, 9, 10, 23, 24, 36, 44, 45, 47, 52, 74, 209, 213, 221, 222, 238, 245, 249, 257, 259, 306 Los Negros 6, 10, 23, 36, 46, 161, 232, 233 Lugos 24, 36, 43, 45, 213, 219, 229, 242, 252, 254, 255, 306, 355 Lugos bung 2, 42, 220, 223 Luszki, Walter 134, 344–5

Index

Lutheran Mission Hospital 107, 257, 258, 304

Ma, Major 46 MacAlister, Mr 113–14 MacArthur, General Douglas 10, 168, 263, 344, 345 Mackellar, Malcolm 18 Madang 38, 73, 89, 186, 232 Maddocks, Hilda 127 Malahang Prison (Lae) 155, 156, 158, 160, 166, 174, 180, 192, 327 Malaya 7, 63; Malays in PNG 164, 111; Malays on Morotai 263 Mandate (League of Nations/United Nations) 8, 18, 21, 181, 184, 251, 256, 355 Manila 102, 108, 110, 134, 156, 157, 160, 168, 169, 171, 174, 181, 197, 198, 199, 205, 207, 259, 285, 313, 317, 318, 319, 320, 341, 343, 344 Manokwari 206, 285 Manus Island 1, 2, 5–11, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 89, 100, 107, 110, 128, 153, 159, 160, 171, 180, 182, 184, 200, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 216, 219, 220, 224, 225, 227, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247,

389

248, 249, 250, 251, 256, 257, 258, 259, 267, 268, 278, 282; Manus islanders 7, 8, 9, 27, 160, 216, 219–20 Mao Zedong 30, 72 Mariana Islands 8, 82 Markham River/Valley 87, 88, 91, 176, 179, 338 Marwassing, Aloes 289 Matankor people 8 Maule, Captain Max 158–9, 171, 174, 181–2, 183–5, 192–4, 195–9, 200, 201, 239, 319 McAuley, James 27–8 McCabe Agreement 242 McConnell, James 66 McCrae, James 215 McCubbery, Cyril 127–8, 129, 146, 154, 158–9, 160, 186, 187–8, 192–3, 195, 196–7, 198–9, 214, 217–18, 229, 245, 246–7, 303, 305, 333 McInerney, M. V. 303, 305, 307 McIntyre, Laurence 157, 172, 199, 210–12, 267–8, 282 McKillop, Irwin 137–8, 194, 195 McTiernan, Edward 304 Mead, Margaret 8–9, 219–20 medical services in PNG 26, 140–1, 257, 333 Melanesians 12–13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 26, 27, 29–30, 36, 38–42, 52, 57, 83, 87, 88, 89, 93, 110, 121, 133–4, 137, 187, 216–17, 219–20, 226–7, 246, 252, 255–6, 259, 295, 320, 326, 339, 346, 347–50, 351–2; Melanesian labourers 6, 9, 12, 28, 51, 91, 93, 174, 255–6; Melanesian women

390

39, 47, 57, 59, 65, 66, 70, 84, 133–4 Melbourne Herald 59, 76 Melbourne Sun 66 Melrose, Mattie 323, 371 Melrose, Robert ‘Bob’, 13, 16, 63–4, 173, 182, 237–8, 257, 309, 316, 322–3 Merritt, Major Sylvester 107, 108–9, 117–19, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 129, 130, 137, 146–7, 154–7, 159, 160, 161–6, 174, 183, 185, 196–201, 204, 205, 259, 285, 319, 353 Mills, Charles 149, 150–1, 193, 195 Milne Bay 53, 344 missionaries/missions/Christians 2, 7, 9, 14, 28–9, 36, 38, 42–3, 57, 83, 93, 107, 176, 203, 257, 258, 304, 322, 327 Mokerang airbase 10 Moluccas 263, 264, 268, 356 Momote airbase 9, 10, 57, 74 Moncur, Percy ‘Monty’ 98, 99–100, 105, 107, 111–13, 115–16, 117, 129, 132, 133, 134–6, 137, 142, 144, 147, 148, 164–6, 180, 192, 194, 325 Monson, Roland 56–8, 60, 64–5, 68–9, 70, 73, 76–7, 285 Moore, Clive 355 Moore, Major General George 158 Morgan, Captain Andrew 107, 108, 129, 156 Morgan, John 35, 45, 79 Morgan, R G 356 Morobe District 38, 88, 89, 90, 98, 108

Day of Reckoning

Morotai 199, 262, 263–5, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 273, 278, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 290, 293, 295, 301, 320, 338, 339, 340, 341, 345, 355, 356 Murphy, John 95 Murphy, Marjorie 253 Murray, Colonel Jack, 13–14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 23–4, 27, 34, 52–3, 54, 57–8, 59, 62, 65, 95–6, 126, 127, 145, 146, 172, 174, 182, 184, 208, 211, 213, 231, 236, 238, 239, 240, 241, 258, 259, 268, 304, 310, 322, 324, 328–30, 354

Nadzab 89 Nanking 34, 84–5, 209, 213, 236, 243, 311, 314, 341 Naruwali, Lance Corporal 180 Nauru 14 Nelson, Hank 12, 18, 20, 29, 255, 256 Netherlands, armed forces: Dutch Airforce 265, 267; Dutch 19th Regiment Jaegers 264; Royal Netherlands East Indies Army 264 Netherlands East Indies 71, 167, 199, 260, 262, 272, 283, 267, 282, 283, 285, 286–7, 345–6; see Indonesia Netherlands New Guinea Petroleum Company 262, 264, 266 New Britain 9, 17, 99, 100

Index

New Guinea Citizens Association 90, 92 New Guinea Goldfields 88, 91, 92, 96, 97, 98, 129 New Guinea Volunteer Rifles 97 New Ireland 17, 140, 327, 328 Newman, Corporal Alexander 262, 266–8, 269–70, 271–2, 300–1, 320, 340; court martial 270–71, 275–85, 286, 287–300, 302, 320, 340, 345–6, 352 Nicholl, Eric 131–2 Normoyle, Christopher 62, 324 North China Daily News 65 Nowan 75, 225–7, 246–7, 253

Oemar Ben Rebo 288–9, 297 offences against villagers 176, 327 Office of the Foreign Liquidation Commissioner 32, 37, 53, 54, 66, 81, 82, 209, 235, 241–2, 244, 250–1 Okinawa 21, 102, 242 Okon, Sergeant Lawrence 114–5, 119, 123, 125 Orat 177, 180, 189 Ordonez, Second Lieutenant Refugio 97, 102–5, 107, 108, 110–11, 113, 114–17, 118, 121, 122, 123–5, 129, 137, 145–7, 155, 156, 161–3, 164, 173, 201 Oro Bay executions 344

Pacific Islands Monthly 54–5, 91, 92, 93, 94, 108, 119–21, 157–8, 206 Pacific War 21, 40, 60, 72, 88, 97, 100, 102, 128, 263

391

Paliau Movement 29 Pasmanjekoe, Octavianus 289 paternalism 18–19, 21, 121, 123, 167 Patience, Allan 20–21 Paton-og, Ramon 111, 112, 114, 117, 118, 122–3, 129, 147, 318–19 Patrol Officers see District Officers Pearsall, J. G. 304 People’s Liberation Army 310, 314, 315, 321 Peterson, James 106 Philippines 10–11, 66, 101–2, 108, 134, 166–70, 172, 198, 200, 203, 207, 263–4, 318, 319, 342 Phillips, Justice Frederick Beaumont ‘Monty’, 13, 16–17, 23, 57–58, 59, 60–1, 62, 63, 64, 67–8, 69, 73, 76–77, 106, 156, 171, 172, 173–4, 182, 184, 186, 187–8, 189–92, 198, 199, 200, 204, 213–14, 215–16, 217, 218–19, 220, 224, 225, 227–8, 230, 238–9, 240, 247–53, 255, 256, 268, 295, 302, 306, 307, 309, 323, 328, 331, 348, 354 Phillips, Rusty 96 Phillips-Veirke, Mrs J 162–3 Pitilu Island 225 Pitu 263 Pokawi 222 Pokawin, Stephen 356 police 57–8, 61, 62, 64–9, 73–4, 75, 76, 78, 92, 106, 109, 110, 126, 128, 129, 130–1, 132, 133, 134, 135, 144, 145, 146, 151, 152, 155, 158, 171, 194–5, 200, 204, 216, 222, 246, 257–8, 267,

392

269, 271, 323–4, 325, 346; Melanesian police constables 9, 10, 20, 26, 29, 44, 45–6, 57–8, 61, 74, 106, 135, 137, 164, 173, 177, 178, 252; Royal Papuan Constabulary and New Guinea Police Force 10, 61, 99, 100, 323–4 Pomaki 75 Pondalis 221 Pondranei 2–3, 8, 11, 13, 24, 25, 26, 27–8, 29, 32, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 54, 66–7, 68, 69, 74, 75, 78, 79, 82, 84, 86, 153, 160, 171, 208, 217–24, 225, 226, 229, 233, 246–7, 252, 253, 254–5, 258, 260, 302, 308; attempts to arrest Pondranei’s assailants 26, 30, 44–7, 48–9, 50–1, 52, 54, 55–6, 61, 66, 74–6, 78, 79, 128, 171–2, 200, 282, 339–40; Pondranei case 15, 16, 29–30, 42, 52, 55, 56, 79–2, 84–6, 110, 127, 128, 153–4, 158, 159, 172, 182, 183, 200, 209–31, 234, 238, 239, 240–1, 244–56, 257, 260, 302–10, 311–15, 320–1, 331, 333, 341–3, 345, 346, 349, 352, 355 Porpua 178–9, 180, 188, 338 Port Moresby 8, 11, 13, 15, 16, 19, 24, 29, 33, 45, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 64, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 79, 80, 82, 83, 89, 92, 94, 99, 106, 108, 109, 127, 128, 130, 154, 155, 159, 160, 165, 173, 174, 176, 182, 184, 199, 200, 211, 213, 214, 215, 233, 235,

Day of Reckoning

237, 238, 257, 258, 309, 316, 317, 322, 324, 333, 335, 337, 341 Portuguese/Portugal 6, 263, 277 postwar conference of district officers 54–5, 182, 213 postwar period 10–2, 20, 21, 22, 31, 60, 72, 92, 93, 143, 189, 218, 264, 337, 342 postwar reconstruction of Lae 89–92 POWs 62, 63, 100, 108, 214, 264, 331 Prime Minister’s Department 14, 60 Prior, John 66 prostitution 133–4 punishment 2, 29, 50, 51–2, 106, 166, 190, 180, 187, 190, 191, 203, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212, 244, 252, 255, 256, 301, 320, 324, 339, 340, 346, 354

Qantas 92, 120, 131, 317 Queensland Criminal Code 171, 318 Quinlivan, Paul 355

RAAF 61, 57, 59, 67, 73, 99, 127, 199, 257, 260, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 269, 270–1, 273, 275, 276, 278, 282, 285, 286–7, 290, 300–1, 320, 336, 341, 345, 356 RAAF No. 60 Operational Base Unit 262, 263, 265, 301

Index

Rabaul 7, 17, 38, 39, 41, 59, 79, 88, 99, 100, 128, 142, 213, 216, 225, 230–1, 240, 255, 302, 303, 310, 311, 312, 327, 334, 342 racism 18, 21, 38, 39, 40, 102, 108, 118, 121, 122, 123, 132, 137, 145, 147, 156, 163, 164, 168, 173, 190, 342, 343, 347–52 Rahaley, L. 155 RAN 59, 72, 108, 320 Raymond, Wing Commander Arthur 273–4 Reuters 65, 286 Rigby, John 98, 108, 128–9, 146, 148, 151, 327 Rigby, Winifred 129, 327 Riordan, Bill, 65 Roberts, Allan 98–9, 105, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116, 146–5, 182, 192, 194, 195, 196, 199, 325, 326, 327, 353, 354 Roberts, Dorothy 99, 326 Rodgers, Don 58, 59 Romulo, General Carlos P 168 Roosevelt, F. D. 101 RSSAILA/RSL 90, 92, 98, 173, 356 Russell, Ronald 130, 148, 193, 195

Saipan 101–2 Salamaua 16, 88, 89 Salami Plantation 232–3, 234, 235–6, 239, 334, 336 Sauer, Colonel Jacob 166, 172 Schouten, William 6 Scott, Elizabeth ‘Fitzy’, nee Fitzgerald 97, 108, 109–10, 152

393

Scott, John Harcourt 96–8, 100, 103, 105, 106, 108–10, 111, 116, 117, 119, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131–2, 135–41, 142–3, 144–5, 146, 149–50, 141–2, 153, 154, 155–6, 157, 159, 161, 166, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 178, 180, 181, 182–4, 185, 192, 193–4, 195–6, 202, 203–4, 206–7, 208, 211, 214, 224, 250, 256, 257, 258, 270, 285, 300, 301, 309, 317, 319, 320, 325, 327, 333, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 353, 356; coronial inquest into Scott’s death 129–52 Scragg, Dr Roy 108, 138–42, 192, 196, 333 Seeadler Harbour 7, 9, 10, 42–3 Shanghai 30, 31, 32, 34–5, 40, 53, 62, 63, 65, 68, 84, 85, 102, 206, 230, 236, 242, 312, 313, 314–16, 321, 341 Shanghai Municipal Police 61 Shantz, Harold 157, 166, 172 Shearston, Trevor 19 Sinclair, James 14, 17, 25, 94, 331, 333 Singapore 63, 108, 214 Sinyenyan 223, 253 Sirip 225, 253 Slattery, John 144–5, 149 Smith, Sydney Elliott 62 Smith, Thomas 303, 305–7, 344 Smythe, Dr William 26, 217–18, 257, 260 social change in PNG 9–12, 93, 341

394

Sori 223 Sorong 283, 285 South Australian Police 61, 62, 325 South Pacific Commission 209 Soviet Union/USSR 22, 71, 169 Spain/Spanish 6, 56, 100, 103, 162, 166 Spender, Percy 322, 336 Stalin, Joseph 71, 72 Starke, Sir Hayden 304, 305, 308, 309 State Department 32, 82, 166, 167, 181, 202, 209, 234, 245, 319 Stewart, Dorothy 334 Stewart, Flora ‘Ma’ 94–6, 98, 123–4, 163–4, 333, 334, 353 Sturdee, Lieutenant General V. A. H. 61 Sullivan, Rodney 170 Supreme Court of PNG 17, 80, 106, 127, 155, 156, 181, 184, 185, 186, 190, 193, 197, 198, 213, 236, 240, 256, 259–60, 306, 331, 342 surplus US stores 22, 30–2, 40, 84, 100, 102, 210, 234, 236, 321, 336 Suvia 106, 132 Sydney Morning Herald 67, 286, 309 Sydney Sun 59, 64, 65, 76, 315 Sydney Truth 64, 65

Taiwanese and Korean conscripts 100 Tang, General En-po 315 Tebb, Iris 105–6, 132

Day of Reckoning

Thompson, Roger 14 Tielung, Dr Johan 266, 272–5, 284, 287, 296 Tiernan, John 267, 269, 275–6 time, concepts of 219–20, 222, 226, 227, 252, 281, 297 Ting, General Wei-hu 32, 74–5, 82–3, 209, 210, 212, 231, 240 Tingau 222 Tittle, William 256–60, 304, 316–17, 352 transport in PNG 59–60, 69, 73, 211, 224 Truman, President Harry 30 Trusteeship 8, 21, 85, 181 Tuwara 177–78, 180, 186–7, 190–1, 338

Uhl, Lieutenant Glen 23 United Nations 21, 85–6, 181, 265, 322 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration 85–6 US Air Force 70, 160, 200, 316, 317 US Army 3, 24, 46–8, 96, 97, 98, 100–2, 107, 108–9, 115, 119, 120, 123, 125, 129, 134, 141, 143, 146, 151, 152, 153–4, 155, 158, 161, 162, 166, 167–9, 170, 173, 174, 181–2, 183, 184, 194, 200, 201, 202, 207, 212, 233, 258, 270, 282, 317–18, 319, 320, 339, 340, 343, 344, 350; 537th Survey Battalion 24, 47–8

Index

US Army’s Judge Advocate Department 155, 158 US base on Manus 11, 23, 28, 31, 36, 66, 82, 89, 184 US Embassy in Canberra 156–7, 159, 161, 166, 170, 172, 200, 202, 205, 211, 240–1, 317–18, 319–20, 343 US Marianas Command 47, 81–2 US Navy 37, 43, 46–7, 76, 81, 82, 154, 210, 234, 239, 241, 244, 254 US Pacific Fleet 24, 47, 72, 241 US Philippines-Ryukyus Command (Philrycom) 108–9, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 173, 174, 181, 182, 184, 185, 198, 200 US relationship with the Philippines 10, 11, 47, 100–02, 108, 134, 166–70, 263, 264 Usiai people 8, 216

van der Doorn, Captain Cornelis 283, 284, 285, 287 van Dongen, Cornelis 266, 275, 276–7, 288 van Eck, D. 282, 283 Vincent, John Carter 167 Vinnell Corporation 32–6, 37, 45, 47, 53, 68, 79, 81, 83–4, 239, 243, 256, 257, 258, 304, 310, 312, 314–16, 317, 352 Vogelkop Peninsula 264, 285

Waghorn, Victor 130, 148 Waller, Keith 167, 169

395

Walters, Air Commodore Allan 269, 270–1, 276, 281, 282, 283, 286, 300 Wama 263 Wan Jin Wah 121 Wang, Captain Yee 76, 79, 209–10, 213, 235, 236, 243 Wang, Lieutenant 45 war graves 102, 114, 115, 123, 173, 182, 233 Ward, Eddie 12–13, 15, 24, 52, 59, 60, 62, 66–7, 68–9, 73, 76–7, 79–80, 84, 90, 93, 109, 146, 159, 173, 183, 199, 201–2, 329, 330 Warner, Dennis 71 Watkins, Walter ‘Wally’127, 154–5, 159–60, 171, 174, 182, 198, 199, 201, 331–2, 333 Watson, D. J. F. 61 Wau 88, 91, 94, 99, 136, 176, 336 West Australian 183 West, Harry 165 West, John 81, 235, 244 Western images of the Chinese 33, 38–41, 42, 349–50 Western images of the Pacific Islands 8–9, 256, 295, 347 Wewak 213 White Australia Policy 33, 122, 162, 170 White, C. 62 White, Joseph Richard ‘Dick’ 25–6, 30, 44–7, 48, 50–1, 52, 53, 55, 66, 74, 75, 78–9, 80, 81, 171, 218, 222, 225–7, 229, 252, 282, 326–7, 259, 260 White, N A 186, 187–9 White, Osmar 11, 31, 95

396

White, Thomas 182–3, 204 Whitlam, Harry 307 Williams, Dudley 304 Willis, Ian 88, 120, 361, 362, 363 World War I 7, 16, 26, 39, 94, 99, 128, 232 World War II 2, 3, 9, 39, 58, 70, 89, 99, 100, 101, 169, 176, 232, 250, 341–2, 347, 354; see Pacific War Wurfel, Lieutenant Colonel Seymour 158–9, 160–1, 163, 165, 171, 173–4, 181, 184, 185, 192, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 224

Day of Reckoning

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