The National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated stations present The Pacific Story. This is the story of the Pacific, the drama of the millions of people who live around this greatest sea, where the United States is now committed to a long-term policy of keeping the people. This is a documentary account of the situation in the Pacific, of the men and events which are today influencing world affairs for generations to come. The Marchesas. Seven thousand miles east of Indochina, where the French are fighting to maintain their balcony on the Pacific, some two thousand natives of the Marchesas Islands look on with indifference. They represent an earliest stage of the white man's scramble for power in the Pacific, the white man's blackest page in the Pacific. A century ago, there were a hundred thousand and more of us Polynesians here in the Marchesas. Today, there are about twenty-five hundred of us left. They were a magnificent people. In beauty of form, they surpassed anything I had ever seen. I saw not a single instance of natural deformity among them. The men in almost every instance were six feet tall, and nearly every one of them might have been a sculptor's model. Under the white man, ninety-eight percent of the Marchesas have died. It was not entirely our fault. It was not entirely. The Spaniards were in the Marchesas nearly two hundred years before us, and they butchered many of the Marchesas. Just a minute. Who is speaking of what we did in these islands? I was speaking of the Spaniards. Then you were speaking of me. I discovered the Marchesas. It was I who named them Las Islas Marchesas de Mendoza for the Lady of the Spanish Viceroy of Peru. But that was in 1595. Yes. And what natives we killed, we killed in self-defense. That was Alvaro Mandana, commander of the fleet of Don Garcia Hurtada de Mendoza, the Spanish Viceroy of Peru. And a hundred and eighty years after he sailed away, the famous British navigator Captain Cook rediscovered the island. But the British laid no claim to them. That should go into the record. Of course. No one paid any attention to the islands until our captain Etienne Marchand came and chartered the islands in 1791 and named them the Isles of the Revolution. Ah, but that same year I came on the Cahiva and the seven small islands around it and named them the Washington Islands for the United States. I beg your pardon? Captain Ingram is the name. You remember me? Oh, yes. Yes, I do remember something about that. But the very next year, our Lieutenant Hergest came here and in 1842, our Admiral Deptitoire took possession of the islands. And in the name of France... Just a minute. I was here before you, Admiral Deptitoire. You? Ivan Krustenstern is my name. Ivan Krustenstern. Oh, yes. The Russian Admiral. Yes. I came here in 1804 and surveyed the entire group and made an extensive study of the islands. Yes, yes. So you did. We committed no outrages against the natives. I remember now. You did arrive here before our Admiral Deptitoire. And so did I almost 30 years before. And I raised the flag on Cahiva and claimed the islands for the United States. Huh? Oh, to be sure. You are Captain Porter of the U.S. Navy, no? Yes. My name is Porter. When Captain Porter came to the Marquesas in 1813, the United States was at war with Britain. In his flagship, the frigate Essex, he attacked British shipping in the Atlantic, captured a number of vessels and a good many prisoners. Then, in need of repairs and supplies, he rounded Cape Horn into the Pacific and headed for the Marquesas. That's a course for no Cahiva, Lieutenant Joseph. From the information we have, we should be able to moor the entire flotilla and entire wee bay. Yes, sir. Among the natives on the beach was an Englishman named Wilson. I just wanted to pay me respects, Captain. So, and to place me vast knowledge of these islands at your disposal, sir. And what is the temper of the people? Oh, they're a charm a lot, really. Probably the most handsome people in the South Seas, they are. Strong and powerful. But are they friendly? Oh, very hospitable, matter of fact. Very trusting. Some of them cannibals, you know, that eat each other. Oh, but they've never eaten me. Even though some do say that they're bloodthirsty. There's only one thing, Captain, sir. Yes? Yes, there's trouble between the tribes. Serious trouble? Oh, yes, sir. The Tiowee tribe. That's the one that's right here around Tiowee Bay. They don't get on well with the Appa tribe on the other side of the ridge at all. There's dozens of tribes here in these islands. So while these people are very friendly... Captain Porter proceeded cautiously. First, working through Wilson, he sent a party ashore to make friends with the Marquesans. It's possible we may be here for some time. Then he engaged the help of the Marquesans in the construction of a fort, and around this established a camp. He brought ashore goats and cattle and pigs. The sly Wilson became the close advisor of Captain Porter. There'll never be peace in these islands here, Captain Porter, until the differences between the tribes are settled. Now, as I see it, if I may be permitted an observation, sir, as I see it, there are too many chiefs on these islands. How many are there? Oh, I presume to guess, sir, but... Oh, many tribes I don't know more. But I do know this, sir. There are more than 100,000 natives in these islands. Maybe as many as 160,000. Now, take those appas on the other side of the ridge there. They've got a chief that's poison. Troublemaker he is. Now, if you wish to ask me advice, I'd say that we ought to join the Tiohe tribe here around us and go after them appas. Very soon the friction between the two tribes burst into flames, and Captain Porter took the side of the Tiohe eyes. The appas were put down. The news of the fighting swept through the islands. Other tribes became involved. Stand your ground! Stop them! All right, lieutenant, forward! Forward, men! After them! The fighting raged over the mountains and through the beautiful valleys. When it was done, 31 tribes swore allegiance to the United States, and Captain Porter hoisted the American flag over the fort of Nuka Hiba and named the island Madison Island after the President of the United States. Quiet settled over the island, and Captain Porter went about repairing your ships and replenishing your supplies. With his task done and his men rested, Captain Porter called his officers together in his cabin. It's time to resume operations against the British. You three officers, whom I've named, will remain here. You will have under your command 20 men. I'm leaving in your charge the three captured vessels and six prisoners of war. Any questions? Lieutenant? None, sir. Very well. We'll get underway at dawn. The Marchagans came down to the shore and watched the vessels one by one put out to sea. The American officers and men stood among them, but Wilson was not there. Wilson was back in the hills. The white captain and his scoundrel had robbed you of your island. They outraged your women. They brought your disease. They took your breadfruit and bananas and coconuts. They planted things in your yams and they raised that flag over your island. They've gone to bring more shiploads of men here and make you slaves. Down with the Americans! Kill them! Free the prisoners of war and they'll join us against the Americans. Follow me all of you! Follow me! Down with the Americans! The beaches and the valleys blazed with fury. The fort fell. The American flag was fall down. Most of the Americans were killed. One lieutenant and a few of the men managed to reach one of the captive ships in the harbor. We've got to get that thing to up there! Come on! There comes that Renegade Wilson and his captive ship! Heave down! Heave! Heave! Heave! Heave! Heave! Heave! With musket fire spattering the decks around them, Lieutenant Gamble and the few American survivors escaped to sea in the captive vessel. They reached Hawaii, but there they were captured by the British, who meantime had also captured Captain Porter and his flagship, the Ethics. The United States never recognized Porter's annexation of the Marquesas. The islands became the backwash of the European scum of the South Sea. The adventurers and fortune seekers, traders and seamen, dilettantes and fugitive criminals, missionaries, whalers and beachcombers came to the island of Tahuaca and the valley of Atayu. They came to the island of Hiba O'o across the channel. They came to Nuku Hiba and Fata Hiba. They commandeered the best locations along the beautiful sandy beaches and in the hills overlooking the shores. You play! You should be my friend! I got the genocist to build a place for me right back up there in those groves, right there where I have full control of all the coconuts and the breadfruit and the banana trees and the lime trees. That's what I'm after. Yeah, but have you got any wenches like mine? I am here to make money first. That's all you play the think of. One thing at a time, dear drinker. Brog shops and ramshackle trading posts sprang up along the beautiful semicircle of the bay. Bungalows were built in the shadow of the massive rocks. A church and a refectory was built at the edge of the rich verdure which covered the valleys and extended up into the steep mountains. And while the roistering white men laughed and brawled and dragged Polynesians into the grog shop and sought their women in the settlements and in the valleys and in the hills, the tolling of the church bells became a familiar sound. The white man's disease like a shooting flame swept through our islands and for every white man it killed, it killed hundreds of my people. Look at the outriggers coming in. More of our people from Fatuhiva are coming here to escape the sickness. But they are bringing the sickness with them. We must stop them from coming here. We must stop them. We cannot stop them and even if we could, they are our brothers. Wailing ships brought tuberculosis. My people had never known any such disease. They cared for the sick white men and they got it. And never having had such a disease, it spread through them and cut them down without mercy. Other ships brought syphilis and smallpox and many other strange diseases. The bell tolled day after day. But the boiling of the white men for control of my people did not stop. I'll tell you who's master here. I am, see? And even if you wish to challenge my authority, then take a look. You try me, Beverly Slap. I'll tell you. Oh ha! Well, well, well. Then it was that our chief, Leo Tate, went to your Atman for help. And he gave it gladly, did he not? Yes, he gave it because he had something in the back of his head. Admiral de Biditoire acted quickly, sent an armed forces shore into the valley of Atau and established a garrison. He raised the French flag. But when the Marquesans realized the meaning of all this, trouble followed. Among those killed was the French officer Captain Halley. The French then pursued their conquest with more vigor. The fighting spread to the other island, to Nuka Hiba, to Hiba-Ou, to Patu Hiba. The Marquesans fought fiercely with every means they had, even cannibalism. One by one, the island was subdued by the French. Yes, all but Hiba-Ou, bloody Hiba-Ou. Kill the French man! We will never give up! We will never give up! Bloody Hiba-Ou, it was the last island to fall to you, Frank. But to the credit of France, it must be said that we brought law and order to the Marquesas. We set up and administrated offices in Atau on Hiba-Ou, and there is still a settlement there today. But after all that, there was really little reason for us to stay in the island. By the time of the American Civil War, the Marquesas had virtually been abandoned by the French. The whale was no longer put in at the sunny lagoon. Few traders called. Beachcombers, when reveled in its plenty, now shuddered at its loneliness, and pleaded with ship masters to take them away. Where the thousands had walked, now there were few, or none. The island of Moatane was empty, and silent, and desolate. Fatahuku was empty. What are these? Here. These... these burial caves. You mean... People are buried in these caves? Yes. Many. How many? Nobody know now. But many. Many. No more people this island. I see. At the close of the American Civil War, an American with ideas came to the island. Captain Hart. This is the most promising island, as I see it. Hiba-Ou. Bloody Hiba-Ou. Second largest island in the group. There's copra here, but hardly enough to justify regular steamship calls. It'd have to depend on tram steamers or trading schooners. But that plateau up there, that's something else. Cotton. Should be able to grow cotton without trying there. Some cotton grow wild here on Hiba-Ou. Can't help but grow on this island. But up on that plateau, I'll cultivate it. You want to work for me? No. No work. Well... you? No. No work. Plenty eat here. That's the trouble. Breadfruit and bananas and coconuts and mangoes for the pickin'. How many of you want to work for me? Not a me, Hart. Not a what? All the work. All the work. So, Captain Hart sailed back to the United States and returned with a shipload of Chinese from California. He put in this cotton crop, and while they grew under the supervision of his overseer, he went abroad and returned with still more Chinese. But the Chinese were not satisfied. We cannot prosper making money for the Americans. We are foolish to work in his cotton fields when there is so much to trade here. Yes. Much copper and sugarcane and wild cotton. Later, stop working for the Americans and work for our saviors. Quiet. Did he come now? Ah, I have a surprise for you. A wonderful luxury. Tonight, when your work is done, I'll give it to you. Opium. The American gave them opium to try to keep the Chinese working in his fields. But one by one, the Chinese left anyway. Those that did not leave the islands became traders. Then, to induce those of my people who were left to work for him, the American gave them opium, and they sickened and died. Captain Hart went further abroad, sailed around the Horn up into the Atlantic, returned with Martinique Negroes. They failed. Then he turned to the West. Anomites from Indochina were being brought into the South Seas for labor. He brought in anomites. The work broke them down, and they died. The cotton fields on the high plateau where the soil was rich and the water plentiful, the cotton fields grew up with undergrowth. The jungle closed in, choked the cotton to death, and reclaimed the land as if no white man had ever scratched it. And Captain Hart sailed away and never came back. The opium stayed. Some of the few of my people who were left became users of the drugs. And few white men permitted it to be used. Control of opium is a difficult thing. When we came back to the islands, we discovered its use. The French came back in the 80s. The history of the Marquesas is of late years, much confused by the coming and going of the French. At least twice they have seized these islands, and at least once they have deserted them. That was Robert Louis Stevenson when he visited the Marquesas in 1888. He walked among the Pepe's. The Pepe's are found everywhere. These are stone platforms at which the Marquesas built their houses. They are from 20 to 30 feet square, and they stand from 2 to 6 feet high. Robert Louis Stevenson also saw the Mares, the biggest stone platforms where once stood the houses of the priests. And he saw the great platforms that were the public meeting places, the amphitheaters of the Marquesas. The Mares, like the thousands of Pepe's, are empty. From the time of Robert Louis Stevenson, the French have remained in the Marquesas. Yes, and when the war came and France fell to the Nazis, we in the Marquesas denounced the Vichy government and joined the fighting French of General de Gaulle. When France fell, many of you French here and in the other islands of French Oceania were really for the Vichy government. Did we not declare for the fighting French government in London? Only after most of the French civilians here and in the Society Islands and in Tahiti voted for continuing the fight on the side of Great Britain. By this time, the Marquesas were officially part of French Oceania and were governed from the headquarters at Pepe's in Tahiti. Then most of you French who still were for Vichy were shipped away to French Indochina. The fighting French government then sent Cady Admiral Georges Piré d'Ajahn-Loup to the Pacific Islands. By this time, the Japanese had occupied most of French Indochina and were looking eastward toward French Oceania. If they should gain possession of these islands, they would gain a strategic victory. Look here at this chart. Admiral d'Ajahn-Loup pointed out the strategic importance of the islands. Here you see in these islands we virtually cut off Samoa from approach from the east. Also we lie directly across sea transport lanes from Panama and the west coast of the United States to Australia and New Zealand. Regardez, voici. And here you see, should the Panama Canal be damaged, we plonk all sea transport using the Straits of Magellan to Australia and New Zealand. D'Ajahn-Loup organized the resistance on the islands and the Japanese, angered at this presumptuousness since the islands were largely defenseless, issued a warning. The activities of the fugitive fire from France, who was also known as Admiral d'Ajahn-Loup, are not lost upon us and we say to him, Japan will not hesitate for a moment to resort to force to stamp out him and all the Gauls in the Pacific. The maneuver stood fast and from this time on the islands of French Oceania swung into the orbit of the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Music Warships and transport, cargo carriers and tankers, vessels of all kinds put into the bays of the islands of the Marcheses in the years of the war. The descendants of the hundred thousand or more Polynesians who once lived on Nukahiba, Ibaoa, Fatuhiba and all the other islands of Marcheses came down to the beaches to see them. But these were no longer all pure Polynesians. Now they were intermixed with Chinese and Indians, Anomites and Negroes. And some of the oldest among them could remember when those other ships had come, bringing white men and trouble. Music The fighting never reached our islands during the war, but the islands were nevertheless strategically important. We had had for some years a wireless station at Atuona on Ibaoa. We had had a subsidiary station at Tai'o'ai on Nukahiba. With these we kept in close communication with our headquarters at Pepeete in Tahiti. And also we had always communications with the outside world by schooners and steamers which called every few weeks. With enormous problems of reconstruction and rehabilitation at home, France is facing severe tests in her possessions across the seas. At one and the same time she is struggling to get on her feet and to convert her empire into a solid political unit. Imperialism! Imperialism! We demand imperialism! We want freedom! The fighting in Indochina echoes across the Pacific to the people of the Marcheses who regard it with indifference. What meaning can it have to us? The Preamble of the new Constitution of France says, France forms with the peoples overseas a union founded on the equality of rights and duties without distinction of race or religion. And these apply to you Marchesans and it applies to all the other peoples in our overseas possession. To us it makes no difference. Today the old ones sit on the beautiful melancholy beaches and look far out across the peaceful sea. Where once the outrigger canoes rode the waves manned by stout and eager Marchesans, now there is only emptiness. The lovely hills and valleys are forlorn. Such life as the islands know is about the village of Atuona at the mouth of the most beautiful valley on Iwaoa overlooking the Bay of Traders. Here the Marchesans move aimlessly among the few bungalows and the administrative office of the French or sit on their stone pepeys in the shade of their thatched roofs. Your honor, your honor, your honor. Sometimes they think they hear voices, perhaps the voices of their people ringing through the valleys and from the cliffs and mountain tunnels or the voices of white men. It was I who named these islands and what natives we killed, we killed in self defense. I named these islands Washington Islands. I surveyed the islands and made an extensive study of them. I named this island Madison Islands in the name of the United States. The white captain and his scoundrel have robbed you of your islands. Scoundrel with the Americans, kill him. To the credit of France we brought law and order to the Marchesans and we set up offices at Atuona. And sometimes they think they hear a bell ringing, but this they know cannot be. For years and years have passed since that bell rang and like the people who's passing at Marches forever disappeared from these beautiful islands. You have been listening to the Pacific Story presented by the National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated independent station to clarify events in the Pacific and to make understandable the cross currents of life in the Pacific Basin. The Pacific Story is written and produced by Arnold Marquis. Tonight's production was directed by Andrew C. Love. The music was scored and conducted by Henry Russell. Your narrator was Dave Ormont. Programs in this series of particular interest to service men and women are broadcast overseas through the worldwide facilities of the Armed Forces Radio Service. The program Pacific Story written and produced by Arnold Marquis and produced this evening by Andrew Love came to you from Hollywood's Radio City and is heard in Canada through the facilities of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This is NBC, the National Broadcasting Company.
