One of our first visitors was the local schoolmaster, Francis Sanford, beloved of yachtsmen. He took us to his house to meet his vivacious French-Tahitian wife, Lysa, and half of his brood of children—the other five being away at school in Papeete. We also met Coco, the 300-pound pig, who insisted upon settling himself in the midst of any gathering and who, once settled, was unbudgeable. He had been, Lysa explained apologetically, only a very leetle pig when one of the children brought him home as a pet, but he had grown!
The abandoned dock where we tied up during our stay in Bora Bora was a relic of the war. Here, during the late unpleasantness, several thousand American troops had directed round-the-clock activity, a state of affairs that remains a highlight in the memory of many on this island. As one of them expressed it, “Maybe everybody have another war pretty quick, yeah? Maitai!—Good! Then maybe more soldiers come—we work like hell all day, all night—see plenty movies—eat plenty ice cream—get plenty American babies!”
The Bora Bora attitude toward the mixed-blood children left on the island was a strange contrast to the attitude toward war babies in Japan. Every family on Bora Bora who has an “American” child is very proud, and the children themselves are eager to brag, in hesitant English, “I—am—Américain!” even if they look the very model of a perfect Polynesian. When an article about the war babies of Bora Bora was published in an American magazine a few years ago, a number of people from America sent letters offering to adopt a child and take him back to the States where he would have “all the advantages.” Not one family could be found, however, who could be persuaded to give up so valuable a treasure!
Because of their association with the U.S. military during the war, the Bora Borans found it difficult at first to understand the anomaly of an American family traveling in company with feared and hated Japanese.
“They good boys?” everyone demanded doubtfully. “They want to fight?”
We assured them that our companions had no desire to fight, but the community reserved judgment for a day or two and kept an eagle eye on the behavior of Nick, Mickey, and Moto. It didn’t take long to convince them, though, and soon the Three M’s were in greater demand than any of us. Day after day they squatted tirelessly on the dockside in the midst of a crowd of admirers, and displayed postcards, magazine pictures of Japan, and various souvenirs of their distant home.
It soon became evident that, if the French administration and the people of the other islands had no affection for the people of Bora Bora, they, in turn, had no affection for the French. “Bunch of thieves!” was the way one of the Bora Boran natives described them, and he explained to us how French officials had helped themselves to all the plumbing, the quonset huts, and the fluorescent lighting which the Americans had left behind “for the people of Bora Bora” and had carried them away to install in Raïatéa, making Uturoa perhaps the best-lighted town of its size in the entire South Seas.
I remember the day a French official, resplendent in gleaming whites, came aboard for a social call. Big Joe, our nearest neighbor and the one who spoke the best “American,” watched the proceedings anxiously from the dock and as soon as Barbara had ushered our visitor below he drew me aside.
“You want me throw him overboard, boss?” he whispered loudly.
“No—why?”