We traveled from Suva to Nadi, pronounced ‘Nandi,’ in separate cars: Laura and her priest in one, the bishop and two of his junior officials in theirs, the acting consul and I in ours, and since the ride was a long one, through some of the most rugged terrain of the South Pacific—coconut groves, winding trails up small hills and long runs beside the sea—it was dark before we pulled into the big military base at Nadi. Since the plane had not yet arrived from Honolulu, we waited in three separate groups, but American officers moved among us holding clipboards containing the documents we would have to sign to complete authorization for this extraordinary flight. The plane was not a commercial airliner but a B-17, a heavy bomber, which proposed, after refueling, to fly direct to Brisbane in Australia, where hurried plans were even then being made for Catholic officials to receive the fugitives and make such dispositions as they deemed best. What they would be no one in Fiji knew, least of all the fleeing lovers, who seemed more composed than any of us.
At last the huge plane came in and a ground officer told me: ‘It would be more sensible if it laid over tonight and flew out in the morning, but our orders were strict: “Get them out of here tonight!” and we’re doing it.’
It was something like one-thirty in the morning when the bomber completed its refueling and the ramp was ready to receive the exiles-to-be. Now all groups moved toward the plane, Laura striding defiantly and holding hands with the priest, who was still dressed in clerical garb; Bishop Dawson followed close behind—a sad and defeated cleric—along with officers from the base, with the consul and me bringing up the rear.
At the foot of the ramp Bishop Dawson moved forward to embrace Father Bega and give him his blessing; Laura he ignored. Other clergymen did the same, and I believe it was to restore a kind of balance that Laura signaled for me to come and bid her farewell. I kissed her warmly, and then came an embarrassing moment, for I had never met Father Bega face-to-face, and I did not know how to address him. But Laura saved the day by saying easily: ‘Thomas, this is an American officer who has been very kind to me,’ and we shook hands.
As they climbed the ramp I was attacked by an inadvertent thought: She looks so white and he so black. And I wondered if they had any concept of the fearful troubles they would have in Australia, which I had recently found to be one of the most race-conscious nations on earth, and an unworthy idea flashed: I wonder if Dawson and the Noumea authorities are sending them to Australia to teach them a lesson?
Then they were gone, vanishing into the cavernous belly of the bomber, and since it contained no windows from which they could wave to us, we saw them no more. All doors closed, the big plane moved out to the far end of the runway, lights seemed to spring up from everywhere, propellers whirred, and the giant creature sped down the runway at us and then rose majestically into the dark sky.
While helping to arrange the expulsion of Father Bega from Fiji, I received instructions from headquarters in Noumea: ‘British Foreign Office raising hell about behavior our men at Navy Base in Tonga. Foul-up involving little red truck. Fly down and send us fullest details.’ I was pleased with the assignment because I had never visited Tonga but did know that it was a fairy-tale kingdom comprising a group of islands some five hundred miles southeast of Fiji. After the couple left for Australia, I flew direct from Nadi to Nuku’alofa, capital of the kingdom. There I fell immediately under the spell of the gigantic Queen of Tonga, six feet eight inches tall and about three hundred pounds, who would cause such a sensation in London some years later when she attended both the burial of King George VI and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. That her towering bulk and warm gracious smile made her the prime favorite of those processions came as no surprise to those of us who had known her during the war.
Queen Salote kept on her palace grounds a gigantic sea turtle reputed to be at least two hundred years old—some claimed three. Among other unusual sights in her kingdom was the mystic holy place consisting of two massive upright stones across whose tops rested an enormous platform—who erected them, when and for what purpose no one could say—and the nightly flight of thousands upon thousands of big bats, so many that they darkened the sky. It was our pleasure to go out at dusk with shotguns and knock a score or so out of the sky as they flew overhead, and we did not do this for sport; Tongans dived for the fallen bats, whose flesh they cooked into an excellent stew.
If I have given the impression that my extended tour of duty through the islands of my domain was somewhat free and easy, the reader should remember that on Bora Bora I worked diligently to compile the record of our military occupation of that island and now on Tonga I was similarly engaged with hour upon hour of research, interviews, calculating the number of our troops involved, and trying to solve the mystery of the little red truck.
I spent about three weeks assembling the easy answers and another week dictating my guess as to what had happened, but while doing so I broke down so often in uncontrollable laughter that I am not sure I provided a coherent account, and I see no point in trying to recall the specifics of my report, which ran to many hilarious pages. But a brief summary of what could happen to a group of military men in a tropical paradise when no one was looking might prove instructive.
In the early days of the war the kingdom of Tonga played a role of some importance, because it was feared that the Japanese attack, which could strike at any moment, might bypass Fiji, which was better protected, and capture Tonga, whose numerous islands could provide many fine anchorages for Japanese warships. Hurried steps were taken to defend against this danger, and in a corner of the town of Nuku’alofa a very large warehouse, which in peacetime had belonged to the trading firm of Burns Philp, was converted into a Navy warehouse. Crammed with valuable fighting gear and supplies to help withstand a siege, that warehouse became the focal point of my report, for everything that happened on Tonga in the period for which I was responsible revolved around that warehouse and its precious contents.
Since the anchorages of Tonga were the targets of importance, the U.S. Navy was naturally placed in control, and I would suppose that in the early days someone like a rear admiral had been in command. But as the battlefronts moved farther and farther north—to Guadalcanal, Bougainville and islands like Tarawa and Saipan—it was clear that the Japanese fleet could no longer risk the long run to Tonga to do minor damage. The danger was over. Experienced admirals and captains were required in the forward areas, and Tonga was left to fend for itself, which was when I came into the picture.
Only Gilbert and Sullivan could have done justice to what happened next. The principal comedian was a weak-chinned, inept, frightened naval officer of moderate rank who found himself commanding officer of the island and whom I shall call simply The Commander. From seeing too many movies he had come to believe that Navy captains should bluster and rasp out commands, but at the same time he was terrified of any emergency and handled it simply by disappearing. In one incident after another, when I tried to find out how The Commander handled it, I was told: ‘He disappeared. We didn’t see him for three days. Couldn’t find him,’ and when I asked: ‘Where did he disappear to?’ my informants would say: ‘He just vanished. Maybe hiding in bed.’ In not one crisis did The Commander ever participate.
He was a totally average man, indistinguishable in any way from the multitude of overweight forty-year-olds with thinning hair found in any populated area. He did have one peculiarity, which many of his men commented upon: from any group of women he had a penchant for picking out the prostitute and moving her into his quarters—on the Navy base. With such a commanding officer it was clear that our operation on Tonga was going to have problems.
But all was not lost. Assigned to Tonga was an extraordinary medical doctor, a Navy lieutenant commander whom I shall call merely The Doctor, a brisk, capable fellow who had all his life wanted to see military action and who, when he saw that his superior, The Commander, had abandoned even the pretext of running the base, leaped into the breach. A staff officer who
in no way was entitled to command, The Doctor, everyone agreed, proved himself to be an almost ideal Navy line officer. He was not afraid to issue orders, and they were usually the right ones. Nor was he loath to keep his men in line, for when necessary he could be stern.
He looked the part he liked to play: trim, with a firm jaw, eyes that missed little, a crisp voice suited to command and a handsome bearing. After spending a few days observing the pitiful performance of The Commander, he moved in and took control.
Like even the best men, he did have one weakness: he simply loved to discharge his heavy .45 revolver, for its powerful snap made him feel as if he were commanding not a backwater naval base on a peaceful island but a four-master fighting pirates on the open seas. Men who had enjoyed serving under him told me: ‘Doc just loved to fire that cannon of his.’ He’d hear a noise at night and come out blazing. In the afternoon a bird of some kind would fly near his quarters, and out would come the .45. At other times, we would see him standing on the sick-bay porch just firing away at a coconut palm as if he were determined to cut it down with bullets, just for the hell of it. He was one gun-happy man, and we used to say: ‘Stay around him long enough and you’ll lose a leg.’
But the base on Tonga might easily have operated without trouble, for The Commander never made waves and the captain was basically a responsible man, but they had the misfortune to operate in the midst of an unusual population, described in the official history in this blunt way: ‘No native people in the South Pacific have such a bad reputation for petty thieving as do those of Tonga.’ That judgment is mild, because the Tongans who lived around the naval base in Nuku’alofa carried theft to a degree of proficiency that would have awed Fagin or even an Al Capone, and the presence of what they saw as wealthy American troops in their midst made their mouths water.
Chief of the thieves in my time was a siy young fellow named Tipi, in his mid-twenties, wiry, light tan in coloring with jet-black hair, very white teeth, which he flashed at me whenever I interrogated him, and an awesome capacity for lying and covering his tracks. Had he continued with school, which he quit after the third grade, he would almost certainly have had a brilliant career in business or as a salesman for some reputable firm. As it was, all his aptitude for wheeling and dealing went into thieving, and when he came up against the gun-toting doctor, he surpassed himself in his acts of cunning.
It started, so far as I could reconstruct the episode, shortly after The Commander surrendered control and allowed The Doctor to assume command. Thirsting to taste the fruits of power, the belligerent doctor issued a battery of orders calculated to ensure discipline on the island, but this action caused irritation among both the sailors and the Tongan work force: ‘Lieutenant Michener, he treated us natives same as cattle. We handled valuable equipment for Navy, never lose nothin’. Natives drive Navy cars, trucks, take better care your people do. Girl typists mo bettah than yeomen, everyone say that. Goin’ movies at night part of our pay. Now all changed, we don’t like.’
As soon as Tipi heard the first rumbles of discontent, he swung into action with his master plan, and the first step he took was to immobilize The Commander completely, with the enthusiastic aid of a prostitute with the unlikely name of Meredith. When I asked how she had acquired it, a Tongan girl who worked as a secretary on the base told me: ‘She has a Tongan name, but one of her friends saw Meredith in a book and said: “This sound pretty, just like you,” and the name stuck.’ As to the productive meeting with The Commander, several eager gossip-mongers informed me: ‘Tipi arrange, and pretty soon Meredith sleeping on base and fixing for Navy equipment all kinds—refrigerators, stoves—to go to her little house next to Tipi’s, and things she got extra, it goes to Tipi.’
Men on the base rarely saw The Commander after Meredith moved in, but now Tipi had to neutralize The Doctor, and he did this in an ingenious way. He had Tongan workmen build a small pistol range far removed from the big warehouse, and there The Doctor conducted target practice for hours at a time. The drill on the base became: ‘Commander in bed with Meredith, Doctor busy at the range, nobody guardin’ the store.’
It was here that the little red truck became a major part of the story of Tonga because it was involved in an outrageous series of events that came to a violent head on August 14, 1944, before I reached the island. A native enabled me after considerable questioning to piece together a reasonable account of what happened: ‘I work with Tipi like you already know. My job, watch The Commander’s shack be sure he in bed with Meredith, watch the pistol range be sure The Doctor over there. I give signal “All O.K.” then Tipi drive little red truck down that lane way over there, nobody see from here, he go around back.’ Another of Tipi’s cohorts enlightened me: ‘We get wire cutters, three men, me, two others. We go back the big warehouse nobody can see, we cut snip, snip, snip’—his hands opened and closed rapidly as if holding wire cutters—‘and we cut two panels out of warehouse, big enough red truck drive right in.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘First time Tipi drive his truck in, he take only cigarettes, canned food, things native people like, all what you call PX stuff.’
‘How could he sell it? We have military police, you know.’
‘Not sell! Give away!’
‘Surely somebody must have discovered the big hole in the back of the warehouse?’
‘Commander asleep, Captain firing gun. Navy chiefs all home their Tongan girls.’
‘So what happened next?’
‘Tipi never take enough make police catch on. Next trip radios, washing machines, fine set of tools.’
That was how things stood on the evening before the fourteenth of August.
In the morning The Doctor found that a gasoline can had been stolen from his jeep, so he went to an official of the Tongan government to lodge a formal complaint. While he was inside the office, thieves jacked up his jeep to steal all four tires, and when everyone ran out to inspect the cannibalized car, a different set of thieves sneaked in through the back of the office and stole most of the furniture, plus The Doctor’s briefcase.
That did it. In a rage The Doctor returned to his own quarters, and then, without actually issuing orders, he more or less let the men know that he would not interfere if they stormed through the Tongan community repossessing whatever they identified as goods stolen from the Navy. The news was received in the barracks with wild enthusiasm, and with The Doctor in the van with two loaded revolvers, what became known in Navy records as The Great Cigarette Raid began.
The rampage lasted all of the fourteenth to midnight, and all the next day till sunset, and the cataloging of brutalities, forcible recovery of goods and indignities visited on peaceful civilians would fill many pages. In reports provided me, three incidents especially caught my eye and I included them in my official account. One group of sailors, outraged by the way in which the prostitute Meredith had lorded it over them while serving as the The Commander’s mistress, raided the house she maintained in the village and from which she plied her trade when not sleeping on the base, but found nothing. The place was bare, as was the normally well-furnished house next door belonging to Tipi; that clever lad, forewarned that a riot might be brewing, had moved all valuable items out of the two houses and hidden them amid distant trees.
Another group of commandos stormed into the house of a notorious thief and finding no Navy property on the premises, although they knew he must have a hoard stashed somewhere, were so frustrated that one sailor, to scare the man, whipped out his revolver and fired into the roof above the thief’s head, whereupon the other sailors commenced firing their guns through the roof until sunlight streamed in. Neighbors told me later: ‘We afraid that many in community being executed.’
The culminating episode occurred when another gang came upon a house whose prosperous look seemed to prove it had been furnished with Navy goods. The sailors rushed in, manhandled the elderly man they found in a room furnished like a study, then assembled all the wo
men in the place and terrorized them, threatening to shoot them and the old man unless they relinquished the stolen goods. Belatedly, Tongan police rushed in to inform the raiders that they had wrecked the residence of the Prime Minister. During all this fury, no one had seen or heard from The Commander, and where he was hiding I never found out.
When the two-day rampage ended, The Doctor blew down the barrels of his revolvers to clear them of smoke, and returned to his quarters firmly convinced that the Tongans had been taught a lesson. But when I interrogated islanders about the aftermath, I found this was hardly the case: ‘Pretty soon all quiet, The Commander asleep again with Meredith. Doctor shooting at the range. All nice. So Tipi bring his red truck again, we back it into big hole where no one see us and we start to haul out real big things—generators—like that.’
‘What did Tipi do with such things?’
‘Nobody lookin’, he takes them to ships in harbor, they go to islands in the Ha’apa Group, maybe Vava’u Group, far away, they need things same like us.’
‘But why did you always go in the afternoon? You might have been seen.’
‘Night time they very careful. Guards. Big dogs too, we not try.’
‘And you were never caught?’
‘Nobody see us. Look, you sit here same Commander, you not see back of warehouse, specially you sleep in bed, very happy.’
In order to give my report verisimilitude, I knew I had to inspect the big warehouse myself. So, along with a Tongan policeman, a guard from the nearly disabled base and my two informants, I went to the big front doors, unlocked the double bolts and stepped into the gloomy grayness of the huge building. To my astonishment it was completely empty. There was only a big gaping hole in the rear.
The World Is My Home: A Memoir Page 10