Marine General Charles Price, commander of the Sāmoa force, did not want African American soldiers, saying there was a danger that they would have sex with ‘primitively romantic’ Sāmoan women, producing undesirable mixed race children. He charted it out and felt whites and Sāmoans produced a ‘very high class half caste’ and Chinese and Sāmoans resulted in a ‘very desirable type’. Many Americans thought the Polynesians were racially superior to the Melanesians and Sāmoans ‘perhaps the finest physical specimens of the race … intelligent and amiable, love to sing and dance.’ Price’s incoherent eugenics involving blacks rose with the arrival of the 51st Defense Battalion, a black unit. They were allowed only two days in Sāmoa before being shipped to Melanesia where the ‘higher type of intelligence’ among the African-Americans would not only ‘cause no racial strain’ but also ‘actually raise the level of physical and mental standards’ among Melanesians. Another black unit was sent to the Ellice Islands rather than allowed to stay in Sāmoa. Price was not alone in such beliefs. New Zealand administrators of the Cook Islands requested the removal of 900 black soldiers on bases there.
Babies became political. When American Sāmoa debated a rule that three-quarters Sāmoan blood was a prerequisite for land and title holding. Some, including ali’i Tuiasosopo, wanted it changed, because the military had left so many children without fathers. There had been no effort to provide support for the children: ‘Is this father an innocent man, or a criminal? No, this father was a soldier fighting for the good cause of freedom, but through nature, the child was given birth. Sāmoa will never, in time to come, be pure Sāmoan.’ The rule was not changed.
By December 1943, most of the marines had moved on. A month earlier many of them had taken part in the Battle of Tarawa 2400 kilometres north west of Āpia, forcing the Japanese back toward their homeland. Sāmoa had a sting for its military visitors; mosquito borne elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis) caused more damage in Sāmoa than the Japanese. Treatment required a cool climate to suppress it.
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