Fifty years ago this newspaper published photographs of wars in the Pacific.
The time the Japanese invaded the Pacific was recorded as one of the bloodiest fights.
Suva was the centre of operation to evacuate Europeans from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands as Japanese army swept across the Pacific.
Some of the bloodiest battles followed when the Americans fought to recapture the group. Today war wreckages such a planes, tanks, and battery guns remain as a reminder of the blood, arms and limbs sacrificed to win the war against a powerful Japanese invasion.
One of these ruins is the Japanese flying boat on a beach a Butaritari, Kiribati.
Today the plane has since deteriorated but a photograph taken in 1970 stills remembers.
In Betio, Kiribati a memorial was erected by the United States Marines, for the bloody battle of Tarawa, November, 1943.
Tarawa was immediately handed over to British officers of the Civil Administration; and the then Union Jack and Stars and Stripes were flown side by side, and Americans and British collaborated in erecting.
The murder memorial remembers 22 British subjects, some of them administrators, murdered by the invading Japanese soldiers.
It bears these words “In memory of 22 British subjects murdered by Japanese at Betio on the 15th day of October 1942. Standing unarmed at their post they matched brutality with gallantry and met death with fortitude”.
It is said three major interrelated factors contributed to Japan’s aggression during and in the lead-up to World War II.
These factors were: fear of outside aggression, growing Japanese nationalism and need for natural resources.
The major significance of the territory to the Empire of Japan was its strategic location, which dominated sea lanes across the Pacific Ocean and provided convenient provisioning locations for sailing vessels in need of water, fresh fruit, vegetables and meat.
