PACIFIC ISLANDS UNDER JAPANESE MANDATE 



595 



Between the finish of a coconut-husk- 

 ing contest for native men and the start 

 of a half-mile race for Japanese resi- 

 dents, in which merchants, officers, and 

 sailors puffed and strained like real 

 democrats, the busy little civil governor, 

 tiring of the quiet monotony of a wicker 

 chair under an awning, started to investi- 

 gate the origin of a squat building be- 

 tween the Spanish church and the Ger- 

 man school. 



THE STORY OF A "BATH-HOUSE" 



Of solid stone and mortar, with iron- 

 barred windows and heavy doors, it had 

 withstood time and revolutions. The 

 governor said it was a bath-house. Sev- 

 eral dutiful Japanese subjects corrobor- 

 ated his verdict and exhibited in mute 

 proof one of the combination casks and 

 furnaces in which they delight to parboil 

 themselves after every day's work. 



However, the Spaniards did not build 

 block-houses of stone and iron for baths. 

 The massive stone wall cutting off the 

 end of the island where the settlement is 

 located, just like the crumbling walls in 

 Mexico and South America, showed their 

 ambitions and fears ran in other direc- 

 tions. 



The wall in Ponape now is an orna- 

 ment of the past. The Germans cut roads 

 through it and vines cover its rough face. 



"We'll ask this woman ; her father was 

 a German," said the governor. 



A young woman, fatter than any of the 

 others in the group, sat under the shade 

 of a tree, nursing a husky baby. A few 

 weeks earlier she had been noticed at a 

 native dance, her light skin contrasting 

 with the other women, bare from the 

 waist up, as they swayed and sung to the 

 strange harmony. 



The governor spoke to her in German. 

 She shook her head, unsmiling and un- 

 communicative. The language of her 

 father was already forgotten. The ques- 

 tion was repeated in choppy Nipponese 

 to a young Japanese, who translated it 

 into the native vernacular. 



"She says the Germans used it as a 

 chicken-house," he explained. 



"And what was it before it was a 

 chicken-house?" asked the governor, like 

 a real antiquarian. 



Xobody in that ladies' nursing circle 



knew. Why worry about the past or fu- 

 ture when there is nothing to worry about 

 in the present, is Ponape philosophy. 



THE) GERMANS MADE THE NEW GUINEA 

 NATIVES POLICEMEN 



By this time Governor Okuyama had 

 his dander up. Something must be found 

 out. Leaning against a tree was a study 

 in black and white, an outsider among 

 the straight-haired, brown-skinned na- 

 tives. Shirt and trousers were white; 

 feet, hands, and face were inky black, 

 with a jaunty white cap on his woolly 

 pompadour. 



"He's from New Guinea," the gov- 

 ernor explained. "The Germans used 

 them as policemen, because they are so 

 black the natives are afraid of them." 



The former local terror, though he 

 understood both German and English, 

 could not remember farther than the 

 chicken-coop era ; but, true to his police 

 training, he went to find out. He re- 

 turned with a report that it had been built 

 and used as a jail. He added that sev- 

 eral of its inmates, hurried to an untimely 

 end, were buried under its cement floor, 

 promising disturbed dreams for those 

 who doze in its modern bathtub. 



INQUIRING FOR A BOY IN AMERICA 



The foot-race was finished and the 

 governor flitted to distribute the prizes 

 to the winners. An old man approached 

 timidly. A smile encouraged him. 



"You American?" he asked in his little- 

 used English. 



It had been ten years since the last 

 American missionary had left the island. 

 Possibly there is some similarity among 

 Americans. 



"A Ponape boy lives in United States," 

 he said. 



"Whereabouts in United States?" I 

 asked. 



He shook his head hopelessly. 



"Just United States," he replied. "Per- 

 haps you know him," he added, for in all 

 of Ponape's continent — of 134 square 

 miles — everybody knows everybody else, 

 as well as some of the great men on the 

 other islands, to them far away. 



"Perhaps. What's his name?" I sug- 

 gested, knowing a few hundred out of 

 America's 110,000,000. 



