PACIFIC ISLANDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 136, 6 December 1938, Page 9

PACIFIC ISLANDS

IMPORTANCE GAINED

EYED BY GOVERNMENTS

In various Government offices all over the world, officials are looking up the records about tiny islands which were previously considered to have no value, writes S. E. Tate in the Adelaide "Chronicle." Steps are being taken to assert ownership of islands in which more than one nation is interested. There is also a good deal of quiet bargaining between nation and nation for the possession of particular islands. The reason is that tiny islands are now becoming important as air bases for flying routes that span wide stretches of ocean. At present considerable interest centres in the ownership of various islands in the Phoenix, Gilbert, and Ellice Groups lying along and south | of the Equator. The status of several groups lying south of South America in the Antarctic area is also under scrutiny. America is playing a big part in the new game of island-grab-bing, with Great Britain, France, and other nations watching her activities very closely. For instance, Oeno Island, a tiny pin-point on the map near the betterknown Pitcairn Island, has become of interest to Great Britain because it is proposed^ to erect a wireless station there. America considers, however, that she has some title to the island on the ground that it was first discovered by an American sea captain in 1827 ON THE WAY TO CHINA. Three islands that have become of considerable importance to America in recent years are Midway, Wake, and Guam in the Pacific. Less than three years ago Wake Island was almost unknown. Five thousand miles from the American mainland, sailors knew it chiefly as a place to be avoided. Today it is an essential base for the China Clipper service that spans the Pacific Ocean. Midway Island, another base on this route, was just a barren piece of rock. When it became a cable station, soil had to be shipped there to make it habitable for the cable employees. Now it is a civilised spot complete with a modern hotel. Guam Island had a population and a history before the Pacific route was dreamed, of; America took possession of it in 1898, and it has proved a fortunate acquisition. Canton Island, one of the Phoenix Group, came into the news last year because two expeditions, one from England and one from America, went there to observe an eclipse of the sun. Canton Island is just a coral atoll, but it possesses a magnificent lagoon. Efforts are being made to create a permanent British settlement there, because it is considered that the island may become useful at a Not very long ago a British cruiser sent landing parties ashore to a number of small, uninhabited islands midway between New Zealand and South America. These visits were internationally regarded as a reaflirmation of British claims to these islands, which might, at some future date, play an important part in British air development. Pitcairn, the best-known island of the group, has long been something of a problem to British colonial administration. It is populated by the 200 descendants- of mutineers from the Bounty. These men, with a number of Tahitian men and women, landed on Pitcairn and established a colony .there. Since the development of air transport, Pitcairn may become an asset. THE ISLE OF PASSION. Another Pacific island, which may become very useful to the French, is Clipperton—sometimes known as the Isle of Passion. It is a desolate, coralringed formation, about one mile square, but it possesses a lagoon that is ideal for seaplane landings. In 1917 the island was the scene of the tragedy from which it derived its secondary name. A mad negro proclaimed himself "king" of the island, after all the other male inhabitants had perished. He decreed that all the women should become inmates of his harem, but an objector to this decree took the extreme step of crushing his skull with a hammer. The tragedy remained undiscovered for many weeks until a United States gunboat happened to stop there and found a number of terrified women shunning the spot where the body of the "king" lay still unburied.

Clipperton Island subsequently became the centre of a stormy dispute between France and Mexico, who both claimed sovereignty over the island. The dispute was arbitrated by- the King of Italy after The Hague Tribunal had declined the case. France took final, formal possession of the island in 1931.