EDUCATION OF ISLAND NATIVES
SKILL WITH MODERN INSTRUMENTS
“These people, who have been called primitive children, are capable of almost anything if they are given the opportunity and the training,” said the Rt. Rev. W. H. Baddeley, who has been Bishop of Melanesia since 1932, in Christchurch, when he spoke about the work done in the Melanesia Diocese.
In 1932, he had asked the Government to train two Solomon Islands boys to operate a wireless on the mission ship, said Bishop Baddeley, but the officials had laughed and said that the natives could never understand the work.
When the Japanese invaded the islands in 1942, however, there were in the bush transmitting and receiving sets, each in charge of a Solomon Islander, and information about Japanese shipping and troop movements had been sent in code to headquarters. That work went on for more than a year. Bishop Baddeley said that one native had qualified as a dentist, and that others were experienced doctors.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BPB19470421.2.11
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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 19, 21 April 1947, Page 4
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163EDUCATION OF ISLAND NATIVES Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 19, 21 April 1947, Page 4
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