James A. Michener - More Tales of the South Pacific

Editor's notes:

James Michener is one of America's most prolific writers, with more than forty books to his credit, but he didn't publish his first one until he was forty years old. And that, Tales of the South Pacific, wasn't a hit until it became the catalyst for the blockbuster Broadway musical, South Pacific. Michener was in his late thirties, a Navy "paper-pusher," when he discovered his creative calling. Stationed on an island south of Guadalcanal, he started filling paper with words about the islands, natives, and the people brought there by war.

Though Michener saw little combat, he had an opportunity to explore the islands, getting to know their people along the way. "When a man of thirty-five or older travels, he sees things differently," Michener says. "I could see things in a broader time frame. I saw the islands as permanent places that had evolved their own cultures. And I wanted to report what was happening to a large number of American men during a crisis period." Tapping away at a typewriter in his Quonset hut from about 10 at night till 2 in the morning, he turned out page after page about the islands.

Over the years, Michener has returned to the South Pacific many times, most recently earlier this year. "I have been welcomed almost anywhere I go in the South Pacific," he says. "They've adopted me. They name things after me. They give me honors." At this he pauses, then chuckles lightly. "They're delighted to find that I'm still around." So are we, and we asked him to fill some of our paper with his latest tales of the South Pacific. Here are his notebook-style observations of the region that has captured his spirit:

BEAUTIFUL-BEAUTIFUL

Bora-Bora is still what I called it decades ago: The most beautiful island in the world. In a recent series of plane and ship travels through the South Pacific, I was allowed the privilege of returning to the Polynesian islands I love, and Bora-Bora was always my favorite. There it stood, a magic island rising from the sea with its basalt volcano core soaring high above dense jungle, a circular reef enclosing the island on all sides to form its perfect lagoon.

I had the opportunity to visit Bora-Bora when I was stationed in the South Pacific during World War II. There I met handsome island fishermen, beautiful maidens with flowers in their hair as if waiting to pose for Paul Gauguin, and one of the finest politicians I will ever know, Monsieur Francis Sanford, an inspired French schoolteacher who worked with the American forces on Bora-Bora. He had four jobs: to assist the Americans, to protect his Bora-Bora people from exploitation, to "promote" as much American military gear for his island as possible, and to help keep French Polynesia on the Allied side of the war rather than see it join up with Vichy France and Adolf Hider. He performed his tasks so brilliantly that when peace was restored he became, in turn, a political leader in the French islands, a full-fledged French senator in Paris, governor of French Polynesia, and beloved elder statesman in retirement.

A ROYAL FLUSH

My trip had started in Hawaii, America's fiftieth state, which remains the influential center of Polynesia even though it lies in the North Pacific. When I arrived in January, native Hawaiians were petitioning the U.S. government to declare their islands a kingdom, with a full restoration of the royal family whose reign ended in 1893 when their last queen, the noble Liliuokalani, was deposed so that a republic could be established, with American acquisition following in 1898.

This proposal to restore the monarchy is not an idle daydream, because it isn't necessary to be a state to be part of the Union. Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania are not states; they are commonwealths. If native Hawaiians restore their monarchy, it doesn't mean that they want to secede from the Union. All they want is to be a monarchy again. Indeed, they've already designated the man who would, because of his heritage, be their new king. But a vigorous group of women has designated one of its members to be queen, and since some of the most glamorous and able rulers of old Hawaii were queens, not kings, their proposal has ample precedent. Native Hawaiians now comprise less than three percent of the population, so the campaign for a monarchy involves only a fragment of the citizenry. But many non-Hawaiians support the idea on the basis that the United States loves kings and queens. "Look at the flood of hype about the British royal family," they say. "We should have royalty of our own." My own judgment is that it could do little harm and might give tourism, the islands' principal industry, a huge boost.

CENTERS OF UNEASINESS

At many stops throughout the South Pacific, I heard rumbles of discontent among native peoples. In Australia, disgruntled aborigines were occupying public buildings to demand better treatment and more attention from the government. In New Caledonia, there had been open warfare between Frenchmen, whose families had lived on that big, handsome island for 100 years and showed no intention of leaving, and native Melanesians, whose ancestors had lived there for 1,000 years and were equally determined to remain. In the fighting, some had been killed on both sides. But now there was an uneasy truce, and travel was safe.

In Fiji, there had been two coups by native Fijians who took control of their islands after the descendants of contract laborers from India had lawfully captured ruling power in an open election. And in Tahiti, there was agitation by natives who insisted that the ruling French, many of whom had lived in the islands for generations, turn over the government to them. But despite these centers of uneasiness, the vast area — spanning the reaches of the South Pacific—provided its traditional mix of natural beauty, relaxing calm, and people of the most congenial character and variation.

BLOODY MARY'S FORETASTE

Our ship docked at Port Vila, Vanuatu, the former French-British condominium called the New Hebrides, a scattered group of wild and colorful islands south of the more famous Guadalcanal. It is of special interest to me for two reasons: It formed proof that two such different nations could peacefully govern and operate a colony, and it was where I was based for two years as a sailor in World War II and later wrote my first book, Tales of the South Pacific. In the musical South Pacific, Nellie Forbush, the nurse from Little Rock, and Emile De Becque, the fugitive from Marseilles, conducted their love affair here, while Bloody Mary, the sharpminded Tonkinese conspirator, gave us a foretaste of how difficult it would be for American troops to conquer her resilient people in Vietnam.

In 1980 I'd had the delightful honor of serving as President Carter's personal representative at the celebration of Vanuatu's emergence as a free nation, but my delight was dampened when I learned that the prime minister, Reverend Walter Lini, an Anglican priest, had selected a cabinet that contained only English-speaking Protestant Vanuatan natives, an insult to the French-speaking Catholic islanders. A separatist movement (which ultimately failed) was initiated by the predominantly French-speaking inhabitants on the large island of Espiritu Santo, and the new republic got off to a bad start. I was therefore happy to learn, as I started my return Journey to Vanuatu, that new elections had taken place in which the French-speaking citizens of the islands won a majority of seats in the government. Thus, twelve years later, an abuse was corrected, a coalition government proclaimed, and I rejoiced as I met my old friends.

Since I had visited Fiji a number of times during the war, I was eager to return to the islands and learn what had caused the two recent military coups. When we docked at Suva, long a central point in Pacific travel, my Fijian-government host explained the facts. "When you knew the island in 1944," he told me, "you could see that the population mix was becoming volatile: native Fijians fifty-three percent, the descendants of sugar workers from India forty-seven percent. In thirty-six years from 1879 to 1916, thousands of Indians were brought in by the British to work the sugar fields because Fijian men considered field work demeaning. The native Fijians remained a proud and uncompromising indigenous population.

Since I had visited Fiji a number of times during the war, I was eager to return to the islands and learn what had caused the two recent military coups. When we docked at Suva, long a central point in Pacific travel, my Fijian-government host explained the facts. "When you knew the island in 1944," he told me, "you could see that the population mix was becoming volatile: native Fijians fifty-three percent, the descendants of sugar workers from India forty-seven percent. In thirty-six years from 1879 to 1916, thousands of Indians were brought in by the British to work the sugar fields because Fijian men considered field work demeaning. The native Fijians remained a proud and uncompromising indigenous population.

In 1987, the pot started to boil when the Indians — now the greater part of the three-quarters of a million inhabitants — won virtual control of the government. "Fijians like me," my host said, "were outraged at this loss of power, but there was nothing we could do. They had won the 'ballgame of the bedroom.' More babies every year. We'd lost our island."

At this critical point, charismatic, Bible-quoting Fijian army Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka gritted his teeth and vowed that his countrymen would not be dispossessed of their islands. In a gesture resembling Napoleon's famous coup of 1799 when he marched his armed soldiers into the hall where the French legislature had assembled and announced that he was taking over the government, Rabuka did the same. "Acting secretly and swiftly, he captured our government without firing a shot," my host recounted, amazement tingeing his voice. "Pssst! It was done."

"And the Indians?" I asked.

"The leaders," he said, "the big-money men, the doctors, the lawyers, the teachers, saw that their control had vanished. They fled. To Australia, New Zealand, Vancouver. The government is again in native Fijian control and our new constitution guarantees that it remain so." When I asked if there were any Indians in the new cabinet, he said, "one woman. Indian Affairs."

This distressed me, for the Fijians were making the mistake that Walter Lini had made in Vanuatu when he established a government all English, no French. When I talked with Rabuka, now a general, and President Ganilau, two extremely sharp men who understood what was happening, we discussed the necessity of bringing Indians back into the government. Apartheid, island-version, they agreed, was not needed in the Pacific.

HIS MAN FRIDAY

Our ship did not stop at either American Samoa or the more important Western Samoa, and this disappointed me, for I had the happiest memories of the time I had spent in the latter islands. However, l did hear one bit of heartening news: An American group has announced plans to restore Vailima, the famous house in which Robert Louis Stevenson spent his last days. He loved Samoa, and the Samoans loved him. It's appropriate that his home should be restored and cared for. Visitors from all over the world will pay him homage.

In Tahiti I found an economic miracle (or nightmare, depending on your view). Papeete, which I had known in 1944 as a remote tropical corner of the world, governed economically by the powerful Banque d'Indochine, was now almost a metropolis, with horrendous traffic problems, huge planes flying in from all directions, and neither Indochina nor its bank any longer in existence. Most impressive was the presence of Japanese investors who were buying the major hotels, building golf links, and sponsoring regularly scheduled jet flights direct from Tokyo. Appalling was the new price structure; the cost of idling away days in the tropical sun had become as expensive as a hurried business visit to Tokyo, London, or New York.

ARTISTIC VlSIONS

The Marquesas group lying far to the east was immortalized by two vastly different foreigners who found the paradise they sought in these mountainous, jungle-clothed islands with their heavenly valleys sunbaked beaches, and exciting islanders. Herman Melville, the New England writer, jumped ship here in 1842 and found experiences, scenes, and people he would use in his powerful novels Typee, Omoo, and Moby-Dick. Paul Gauguin, more than half a century later, would come to the Marquesas to paint and write his extraordinary version of the tropics.

I was also impressed that the French government in Paris is pouring so much money into the Marquesas for roads, airstrips, dock repairs, schools, and medical care. Granted, they're doing it to forestall separatist movements or complaints about nuclear testing on a nearby island, but they are doing it.

The second surprise was the fine harbor that France had cleaned up on one of the islands where I met the crews of some six or seven American and European adventurers who were sailing their small boats around the world. Two of the families had two or three children under the age of twelve. Each morning they studied from the estimable Calvert System of education-by-mail. To remote spots all over the world where American parents are striving to educate their children under difficult circumstances, the Calvert people deliver their lessons. A married pair in Alaska who flew small planes and loved the outback could not send their son to a regular school, but they used the mail system so effectively that when their son took the SAT and other placement tests, he stood at the top of the list, so far beyond the normal scores that he won scholarship offers from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and a handful of other fine schools. Choosing Harvard, he graduated with honors and went on to win a Rhodes scholarship and establish a distinguished career in politics. Some of those kids I met in the Marquesas might do the same.

RETURN TO PARADISE

The farthest east I reached was mysterious Easter Island, where the great stone heads grinned down at me, scores of them, as if they had some secret no one like me would ever probe. Who made these compelling images? When? Under what conditions? And what happened to the makers? All we have to rely on are guesses, none of which impress me. I'm working on a theory that the work was done by the little menehunes who lived in Hawaii before human beings arrived. They were rascals and loved to fool mortals.

TREASURE ISLANDS

In my latest return to the South Pacific, I saw not only the magical islands that have always captivated wanderers, but also the two native groups that have made these islands such treasures in modern life when individualism so often gives way to conformity. In the west I had visited with my old friends of Melanesia, the big, dark warrior types of Vanuatu, Fiji, and New Caledonia. And in the east, on the islands of Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and mysterious Easter Island of the silent, stone heads, I had seen the golden-brown people long chosen as subjects of writers and painters.

When I consider the turmoil in other parts of the world, I appreciated returning to a world of far vistas, beautiful islands, and people at peace.

James A. Michener is the best-selling author of Hawaii, Texas, Alaska, Iberia, and Caribbean, and dozens of other novels and nonfiction works. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for Tales of the South Pacific. Michener now lives in Austin, where he is professor emeritus at The University of Texas Center for Writers. His latest book, The World is My Home: A Memoir, was recently released by Random House. He is presently working on a writers' manual called A Writer's Handbook, to be published later this year, and Mexico, a new novel due out this fall.