COASTWATCHER (#249)

Alan Pollock’s Rough Notes:

A work in progress – the fuller biographies will emerge in due course: please sign up to the Newsletter (bottom of the page) and we’ll let you know when we’ve done more justice in writing up our extraordinary signatories.

COASTWATCHER”, by special request from SURVIVING BRITISH COASTWATCHERS, for this most important representative, it is signed, as appropriate, ANONYMOUSLY, for the foresight of the AUSTRALIANS & their Navy, who planned the system, and ALL these HEROIC PEOPLE & their HELPERS, who knowingly stayed behind, high up in the interior on many strategic islands, watching to provide VALUED INTELLIGENCE by radio, of great use to the AMERICAN PACIFIC FORCES on enemy AIR, NAVAL & GROUND movement, sometimes having to move hides, always vulnerable to betrayal or discovery by Japanese occupation forces; for all those AUSTRALIAN NEW ZEALAND, BRITISH, DUTCH and ALLIED COASTWATCHERS, particularly those killed in the war, and remembering the many Allied airmen and others they saved & returned by aircraft or submarine; also ALL the LOYAL OCCUPIED NATIVE PEOPLES and PACIFIC ISLANDERS and highlighting the FIJIAN troops & Commandos, who fought in the SOLOMONS, GUADALCANAL, NEW GEORGIA & VELLA LAVELLA, such as the outstanding gallantry & sacrifice of their Victoria Cross award, CORPORAL SUKANAIVALU-(posthumous BOUGAINVILLE 23Jun44), the five NZ trained Fijians who killed 50 Japanese & escaped when surrounded, and those SOLOMON ISLANDERS such as Sgt Maj VOUZA GC & US Silver Star, of the British Constabulary. captured on a mission in SUPPORT of the AMERICAN INVASION of GUADALCANAL after Aug42, who, savagely tortured and bayoneted to chest & throat, refused to give any information, was left for dead, lashed to a tree, by the Japs but freed himself, amazingly regaining American lines