 The National Broadcasting Company at its affiliated stations present the Pacific story around this greatest sea where the United States is now committed to a long-term policy of keeping the peace. This is the documentary account of the situation in the Pacific, of the men in events which are today influencing world affairs for generations to come. They represent an earliest stage of the white man's scrambled for power in the Pacific. The white man's blackest page in the Pacific. A thousand and more of us pollinations here in the Marquesas. Today, there are about 2,500 of us left. They were a magnificent people. In the 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, 98% of the Marquesans have died. It was not entirely our fault. It was not. Entirely. The Spaniards were in the Marquesas nearly 200 years before us, and they butchered many of the Marquesas. Just a minute. Who is speaking of what we did in this island? I was speaking of the Spaniards. And you were speaking of me? I discovered the Marquesas. It was I who named them Vasis-les Marquesas de Mentosa for the Lady of the Spanish Viceroye Peru. Well, 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 Ortada de Mendoza, the Spanish Viceroye Peru. And 180 years after he sailed away, the famous British navigator, Captain Cook, we discovered the island. But the British made 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 Nukihiva 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 Herjest came here and in 1842 our Admiral de Petitois position of the islands. And in the name of France, I was here before your Admiral de Petitois. You? Ivan Krustenstern is my name. Ivan Krustenstern... Oh, yes. The Russian admiral. Yes. came here in 1804 and surveyed the entire group and made an extensive study of the island. Yes, yes, so you did. We committed no outrages against the natives. I remember now. You did arrive here before our Admiral de Pitoire. And so did I almost 30 years before. And I raised the flag on Nuka Hiva and flamed the islands for the United States. Huh? Oh, to be sure, you are Captain Porter of the US 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 ethics, 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 of course for Nuka Hiva, Lieutenant. Yes, sir. From the information we have, we should be able to moor the entire Foskiller and the entire eBay. Yes, sir. I just wanted to pay me respects, Captain Sir, and to place me vast knowledge of these islands at your disposal, sir. Mm-hmm. And what is the temper of the people? Only their charm a lot, really. Probably the most handsome people in the South Seas they are, strong and powerful. But are they friendly? Oh, very auspitable, matter of fact, very trusting. Some of them cannibals, you know, that eat each other. Oh, they've never eaten me. Even though some do say that they're blood thirsty. There's only one thing, Captain Sir. Yes? Yes, there's trouble between the tribes. Serious trouble? Oh, yes, sir, the Tyrewee tribe. That's the one that's right here around Tyrewee Bay. They don't get on well with the Appet 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 of the Marquesas. It's possible we may be here for some time. Then he engaged the help of the Marquesas in the construction of a fort. And around this established a camp. He brought ashore goats and cattle and pigs. But 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 Appets on the other side of the ridge there. They've got a chief that's poison. Trouble maker he is. Now, if you wish to ask me advice, I'd say that we ought to join the tribe. Now, we'd try the other rounders and go after them, Appets. Very soon the friction between the two tribes burst into flames, and Captain Porter took the side of the Tiois. The hoppers were put down. The news of the fighting swept through the islands. Other tribes became involved. 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 port of Nukaheba and named the island Madison Island after the President of the United States. Quiet settled over the islands, and Captain Porter went about repairing your ship 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 in six prisoners of war. Any questions? Lieutenant? None, sir. Very well. You'll get underway at dawn. The Caucasians 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 in his scoundrel rode to the robs of your island. They outraged your women. They brought you disease. They took your breadfruit and bananas and coconut, your plantains and your yams, and they raised that flag over your island. They've gone to bring more shiploads of men here and make your slaves down with the Americans. Kill them! 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. Lieutenant Gamble and a 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 in 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. Dilip Tanks and Fugitive Criminals, missionaries, whalers and beachcombers came to the island of Powaka and the Valley of Bataille. They came to the island of Hebaor across the channel. They came to Nuka Heba and Fasa Heba. They commandeered the best locations along the beautiful sandy beaches and in the hills overlooking the shore. You see my place. Ha, ha, ha! Got the ginocchus cavilda face for me. Coconut and the breadfruit and the banana trees and the lime trees. Ha, ha, that's what I want. Yeah, but have you got any winches like mine? I am here to make money first. And that's all you play the thing of. Ha, ha, hang at a time. Ramshackle trading posts sprang up along the beautiful semi-circle 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 the shearing 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 far to heave 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. Weiling gifts brought tuberculosis. My people had never known any such disease. They cared for the sick white man, and they got it. And never having had such a disease, it spread through them and cut them down without mercy. Other ships brought sickless and smallpox. And many other strange diseases. And the bell tolls day after day. But the boiling of the white men for control of my people did not stop. Ah! Tell it by a third. He okayed, went to your atman for help. Ray. And he gave it gladly. Did he not? Yes. He gave it because he had something in the back of his head. He sent an armed forces shore into the valley of Aitahu and established a garrison. He raised the French flag. But when the Marquesans realized the meaning of all this, trouble followed. For the French officer Captain Halley. The French then pursued their conquest with more vigor. The fighting spread to the other island, Chinooka Heva, to Heva-Oa, to Patu Heva. The Marquesans fought fiercely with every means they had. Even cannibalism. By one, the island was subdued by the French. Yes. All but Heva-Oa. Bloody Heva-Oa. 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 an administrative office in Atuono on Heva-Oa. And there is still a settlement there today. But after all that, there was really little reason for us to stay in the islands. By the time of the American Civil War, the Marquesas had virtually been abandoned by the French. The whale is no longer put in at the sunny lagoon. Few traders called. Beachcombers, who had reveled in its plenty, now shuddered at its loneliness and pleaded with shipmasters to take them away. Where the thousands had walked, now there were few or not. The island of Motane was empty and silent and desolate. But the Huku was empty. What are these here? These. These burial caves. You're mean. People are buried in these caves? Yes. Many. How many? Nobody know now. But many. More people desolate. 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. Heva-Oa. Bloody Heva-Oa. Second largest island in the group. There's corporate here, but hardly enough to justify regular steamship calls. It ought 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 Heva-Oa. And help but grow on this island. But up on that plateau, I'll cultivate it. You want to work for me? You know? No. No work. Plenty eat here. Yeah, that's the trouble. Bread, fruit, and bananas, and coconuts, and mangoes for the pickin'. How many of you want to work for me? Not of me, Hart. Now what? 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, Clark. Here you come now. Ah, I have a surprise for you, a wonderful luxury. Tonight, when your work is done, I'll give it to you. 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 traitors. Then to induce those of my people who were left to work for him, the Americans gave them opium, and they sickened and died. Captain Hart went further abroad, sailed around the Horn up into the Atlantic, returned with Martinique Negro. 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 a 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. A 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 it's use. We came back in the 80s. The history of the Marcavus is of late years much confused by the cunning 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 Marcavus in 1888, he walked among the Pepe's. The Pepe's are found everywhere. These are stone platforms with the Marcavus 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 Marais, the bigger stone platforms where one stood the houses of the priests. And he saw the great platforms that were the public meeting places, the amphitheaters of the Marcavus. The Marais, like the thousands of Pepe's are empty. On the time of Robert Louis Stevenson, the French have remained in the Marquesas. Yes, and when the war came and France fell to the 90s, we in the Marquesas denounced the Dixie 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 Ocean were really for the Dixie 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 to fight on the side of Great Britain? By this time, the Marquesans were officially part of French Oceana and were governed from the headquarters at Pepiti in Tahiti. Then most of you French who still were for Vici were shipped away to French Indochina. The fighting French government then sent Katie-Admiral Georges-Pirée Dachanlou to the Pacific Island. By this time, the Japanese had occupied most of French Indochina and were looking eastward toward French Oceana. If they should gain possession of these islands, they would gain a strategic victory. Look here at this chart. Admiral Dachanlou pointed out the strategic importance of the island. 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. Look at this, Vici. And here you see, should the Panama Canal be damaged, we flunk all sea transport using the strait of Magellan to Australia and New Zealand. Dachanlou 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 was also known as Admiral Dachanlou are not lost upon us. And we say to him, Japan will not hesitate for a moment to resort to force to step on him and all the golems in the Pacific. Dachanlou stood fast. And from this time on, the islands of French Oceanus swung into the orbit of the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Warships and transport, cargo carriers and tankers, vessels of all kinds put into the bays of the islands of the Marquesas in the years of the war. The descendants of the 100,000 or more Polynesians who once lived on Nukihiva, Hivaoa, Fonto Hiva and all the other islands of the Marquesas 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. They 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 Hivaoa. We had had a subsidiary station at Taiouai on Nukihiva. With these, we get in close communication with our headquarters at Peipei in Tahiti. And also we had always communication 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! The fighting in Indochina echoes across the Pacific to the people of the Marquesas 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, Marquesans, 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 Marquesans, now there is only emptiness. The lovely hills and valleys are so long. Such life as the islands know is about the village of Ataona at the mouth of the most beautiful valley on Hiva Orr, overlooking the Bay of Trades. Here the Marquesans move aimlessly among the few bungalows in the administrative office of the French or sit on their stone pay-pays in the shade of their fat shoes. They think they hear voices, perhaps the voices of their people ringing through the valleys and from the cliffs and mountaintops 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 Island. I surveyed the islands and made an extensive study of them. I named this island Madison Island in the name of the United States. The war captain in a scoundrel's robb of your island. Scoundrel with the Americans, kill him. To the credit of France, we brought Lord Ordo to the Marquesas and we set up offices at Ataona. 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 Marques forever disappeared from these beautiful islands. A broadcasting company and its affiliated independent stations to clarify events in the Pacific and to make understandable the cross currents of life in the Pacific basin by Andrew C. Love. The music was scored and conducted by Henry Russell. Your narrator was Dave Ormont. Service men and women are broadcast overseas through the worldwide facilities of the armed forces radio service. This by Arnold Marquess 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. Is NBC the national broadcasting company?