Photos of Queenstown In Japanese Ruins

Lake County Mail, Issue 47, 28 April 1948, Page 1

Photos of Queenstown In Japanese Ruins

“Ample evidence of the Japanese dislike of all Europeans and that their alliance with Germany was simply a marriage of convenience is available among the wreckage of Garapan,” said Mr John L. Arron, an American Intelligence Officer in the Pacific zone, who visited Queenstown last week. “ You may not believe it, but during our search of those ruins I came across a Japanese travelling bag containing personal belongings. It was of a type often used by Japanese officers, and among them were these three photographs of Queenstown, New Zealand. Whether the owner of those photographs had visited Queenstown before the war or whether he had taken them from the body of one of our Marines on that or another island, I do not know. I had heard much of the beauty of New Zealand from our boys who had been here for rest periods, and when I found these photos amidst the ruins of Garapan, Queenstown to me was Utopia, I made up my mind that some day I would come here . . . and here I am. Queenstown is indeed a Utopia.” Mr Arron recounted some interesting views of the people of some of the islands he had been at during the American advance.

“ The Chamorrans, who were officially classed as third class citizens by the Japanese (Japanese from the mainland are first class; Japanese from other islands second class; Chamorrans third class; and Kanakas fourth class) say that Spain’s non-beligerency did not prevent the Japanese from regarding the Spanish priest, Father Jose Tardio, and three Spanish nuns with the gravest suspicion.

“As soon as Japan become involved in the war the Japanese segregated Father Tardio from his large Christian Chamorran community and converted the main Catholic Church at Garapan into a store house and refused to allow the nuns to attend to the spiritual welfare of the Chamorran children. , “ In the same manner as the Christian Marshall Islanders became antiJapanese when denied their faith, the Chamorrans bitterly resented the Japanese sacrilege, and the gap between them and their overlords became very wide.

“ Chamorran rage against the infidel Japanese is understandable when you see the wreckage of the' church. It was a pretty little mission church built by the parishioners of Garapan with their own hands. To-day its remains contain blood-soaked refuse discarded by the Japanese during their battle to maintain Garapan. The east end of ■the church escaped damage from shell fire, but the altar had been stripped by Japanese vandals.

“ Carrying large pictures of Christ and crucifixes (apparently the only possessions they took when they fled to the hills), a small but steady stream of smiling Ohamorrans entered the American lines when the attack began. After many years of oppression under Spanish, then German, and finally Japanese rule, the Ohamorrans look forward to the future with its promise of independence and especially its freedom of worship.

“ They are unquestionably the most interesting race in the Pacific. They are the earliest known inhabitants of the Marianas. Under Spanish rule they intermarried with Spanish and Tagalogs from the Spanish Philippines. To-day they are a blend of these three lively races, speaking almost true Spanish as well as Japanese.