Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [0]
Tales Of The South Pacific
First published in 1946
This collection of tales is set against the background of the South Pacific, the endless ocean, the coral specks called islands, the coconut palms, the reefs, the lagoons, the jungles, and the full moon rising against the volcanoes.
The tales are told by a young naval officer whose duties on an Admiral's staff take him up and down the islands. He meets many people, both service men and the original inhabitants, and hears their stories-the remittance man who lived among the Japs and radioed their movements until one fatal and dramatic morning; Bloody Mary, the Tonkinese woman who introduced her daughter to a young Marine lieutenant; Emile de Becque, the French planter who fell in love with an American nurse; Tony Fry, the individualist who fought a very personal war in his own very effective way; Lieutenant Bill Harbison, who lived like a hero but turned out to be a louse; and the young enlisted man from Ohio who was going to pieces on one of the islands until a Sea Bee gave him a reason for living.
Because Mr. Michener was there, he is able to reproduce exactly the mood and atmosphere of the early critical days of the Pacific War. Because, in addition, he has a lively imagination and inventive power, he has turned this raw material into stories that will be eagerly read for their dramatization of the greatest adventure of our generation.
CONTENTS
The South Pacific
Coral Sea
Mutiny
An Officer and a Gentleman
The Cave
The Milk Run
Alligator
Our Heroine
Dry Rot
Fo'Dolla'
Passion
A Boar's Tooth
Wine for the Mess at SEGI
The Airstrip at Konora
Those Who Fraternize
The Strike
Frisco
The Landing on Kuralei
A Cemetery at Hoga Point
THE SOUTH PACIFIC
I WISH I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting.
But whenever I start to talk about the South Pacific, people intervene. I try to tell somebody what the steaming Hebrides were like, and first thing you know I'm telling about the old Tonkinese woman who used to sell human heads. As souvenirs. For fifty dollars!
Or somebody asks me, "What was Guadalcanal actually like?" And before I can describe that godforsaken backwash of the world, I'm rambling on about the Remittance Man, who lived among the Japs and sent us radio news of their movements. That is, he sent the news until one day.
The people intervene. The old savage who wanted more than anything else in the world to jump from an airplane and float down to earth in a parachute. "Alla same big fella bird!" he used to shout, ecstatically, until one day we took him up and shoved him out. Ever afterward he walked in silence among the black men, a soul apart, like one who had discovered things best hidden from humanity.
Or I get started on the mad commander who used to get up at two o'clock in the morning and scuff barefooted over the floors of his new hut. "Carpenter! Carpenter!" he would shout into the jungle night. "There's a rough spot over here!" And some drowsy enlisted man would shuffle from his sweating bunk and appear with sanding blocks. "See if you can get those splinters out, son," the commander would say softly.
Take the other night up in Detroit. Some of us were waiting for a train. The air in the saloon was heavy. For more than an hour a major told us about his experiences with Patton in Africa, in Sicily, and in France. He used great phrases such as: "vast deployment to the east,"
"four crushing days into Palermo,"
"a sweeping thrust toward the open land south of Paris,"
"a gigantic pincers movement toward the heart of Von Rundstedt's position."
When he had won the war, he turned to me and asked, "What was it like in the Pacific?" I started