The War in the Pacific

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521441957.010

9 - The War in the Pacific

from Part Two - The Pacific Since 1941

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Donald Denoon and

With

Jocelyn Linnekin and

Donald Denoon: Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra

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Summary

A WORLD AT WAR

In the Pacific Islands, World War II came first as a reverberation of distant events. As Adolf Hitler ascended the Eiffel Tower in June 1940 to survey the boulevards of German Paris, the administrators of France’s colonies turned to shortwave radio for news. What they heard posed a dilemma. France had fallen and a pro-German government had reached an armistice with Hitler. Should they follow General de Gaulle and rally behind Free France, or was their loyalty owed to the new collaborationist government of Marshal Pétain? The BBC proclaimed the Free French cause, Radio Saigon backed Pétain, and the French colonists were divided. The few Islanders with opinions on the matter, such as the Tahitian Princess Teri’i Nui O Tahiti, favoured de Gaulle. The French Resident in the New Hebrides, a hybrid colony administered jointly by France and Britain, quickly opted for the Allies, but for months the governors of French territories prevaricated. Then in September 1940 settlers in Noumea and Tahiti resolved the issue by staging coups d’état against their governors and installing Free French governments. In New Caledonia the coup was supported by Australia, which sent a cruiser to Noumea with the Free French leader. As a consequence of these events, a few hundred men from the French colonies—Polynesians, demis and Kanaks—became the first Islanders to fight in World War II when they arrived in the Middle East in mid-1941 as volunteers in France’s Pacific Battalion.

Keywords

French Resident Australia Fiji Pacific Islands World War II New Zealand

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders , pp. 289 - 323

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521441957.010 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 1997

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9 - The War in the Pacific

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