Dods life on Tarawa
LAST week we looked at the early life of Jean Elizabeth Brown nee Dods and how she ended up working in the Western Pacific High Commission and the Colonial Government of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.
This week we take a look at her life on Tarawa.
Ms Dods went there to work as secretary to the Resident Commissioner. The Colonial government at the time recruited staff from the other British colonies.
Later on, the Gilbertese people would slowly be introduced into the running of their country, but in the ‘40s, the civil servants were all expatriates.
When she arrived at Tarawa aboard the Tamatea in 1946, there was no wharf for the ship to berth as the scars of World War II were littered across the atoll.
“Planes with wings slanted in the sandy beach, amphibian tanks that never made it to the beach and sparse vegetation all stripped of its beauty,” she said.
Remnants of the battle of Tarawa, waged by the United States and Japanese forces only three years earlier, were still visible when Ms Dods arrived.
Later on an Australian man made his millions by buying up all the hunks of metal rusting in the sand and lagoon and selling them as scrap metal.
She said before the battle, the Japanese occupied Tarawa and 16 young New Zealanders were held captive. They were all beheaded when the Japanese heard the allied forces were coming to retake Tarawa.
Many new buildings were erected in the time Ms Dods was on Tarawa, and she said the bones of soldiers who were killed in the battle were dug out when the footings of buildings were going down.
“The atoll was a long semicircular group of islets which are connected when the tide goes out,” she said in an interview at her Vanua Levu home.
“We were sent ashore in a small launch and were shown our temporary quarters.”
These were small houses with coconut tree trunks holding up the thatched roof and walls.
“On the first night the Acting Resident Commissioner, who had been a District Officer in the Gilberts before the war, invited us to dinner to meet the other island residents.”
As the reader would recall from last week’s Point of Origin, when Ms Dods got the job she was given some money to buy some items in Suva – mainly clothes and food that she would need because there were no shops on the island.
The list of clothes included high-heeled shoes, a cocktail dress, an evening dress and gloves.
Ms Dods said the English niceties were still practiced despite being in a hot, humid atoll more than 14,000km away from London.
“On this tiny sandy atoll, about a kilometre and a half long and 33 metres across, we dressed for dinner in our evening frocks.
“It was 1946 and we were following the fashion of the day.”
One of the formal occasions she was told to prepare for was a very British garden party.
“They told us not to forget to take an evening dress, highheeled shoes, and an afternoon frock for a garden party.”
She remembers the first she attended on Tarawa being for the King’s Birthday, and it was set for 2pm and required formal dress.
She said the men were OK with their pants, coats and ties.
“The women, however, went crazy.
“Some of them tried to make dresses, others brought out old-fashioned clothes and stockings, high-heeled shoes, to walk around in the sand.
Ms Dods said many of them suffered very achy legs from tiptoeing around to stop from sinking into the sand by their heels.
“It doesn’t sound real, but it happened.”
A similar kerfuffle occurred when Prince Phillip visited the Gilberts on a New Zealand or a British warship as an officer.
“Of course they had a cocktail party aboard and all the European residents were invited.
“Again the flurry of ‘what can we wear?’ and the women were rushing around.
“I think because I came from Fiji it didn’t worry me, we seemed to be more formal in Fiji than in England.
“Anyway, I had the clothes for it.”
The warship anchored out in the lagoon and the attendees had to dress up and go out to the ship on launches.
“So we had to wear a cocktail dress with stockings, highheeled shoes and gloves.
“You had to have gloves and while some of the women were running around looking for gloves to wear, one of them turned up in fur-lined gloves which usually work in colder climates when spending longer periods of time outside – not on an atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
“That was all she had so she wore them, they were so set in their ways.
“So we went out in the launch to the side of the ship and up the stepladder to greet the captain who was at the top.
“He would introduce you to Prince Phillip before you moved into the crowd.”
Gloves were not the only fashionable item not readily available, bags were also very hard to come by.
“This woman was so desperate she got her wetex cloth, took the four corners, covered that with material and attached a handle, so she had a string pouch bag.”
It looked a bit flat so she put a cake of soap in to give it some shape.
“So she was set, she went up with her bag and she got to the top of the steps and while she shaking hands with Prince Phillip the bag fell, opened at his feet and out rolled the cake of soap.
“He looked down and with a smile on his face made some funny remark, but everybody pretended it didn’t happen.”
While she was no doubt entertained by the shenanigans on the atoll, what Ms Dods loved even more, was her life there against the backdrop of coconut trees that sprouted out of the white sand that led down to the beautiful blue lagoon.
She enjoyed the scenery for nine years.
“There aren’t any big trees, but blue, blue lagoons, a dreamlike place really.”
Ms Dods also took a liking to the good-natured Gilbertese people who she described as “lovely”.
“They never stole, they never went into your house, very unusual the Gilbertese, love them.
“A lot of people wouldn’t like that life, I don’t know why I did, it just appealed to me.”
To put things into a bit more perspective, she would spend her two-hour lunch break in her bikini, soaking up the sun while floating on an outrigger canoe. “I really loved it.”
Two of her travel mates, Joyce Beddoes and Peter Allen, had fallen in love on the boat trip to Tarawa.
And while there, she was in the company of a good number of young British men in their 20s and early 30s who came to the Gilberts after doing an administrative officers course at Cambridge, it was a sort of finishing school for colonialists.
“They got to know the Gilberts and the people and learn the language.
“It was all so very nice and they were all so well behaved they must’ve been warned not to touch the girls.”
The social scene was very British – dinner parties at the residence or an officers quarters.
“One night I was invited to dinner at a British officer’s house and there was a guy there that looked rather nice.
“He came and sat next to me and little did I know that would turn out to be my future husband.”
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