Word: caledonia
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Aussies used to think that they had a protecting screen in the islands which lie off Australia's northern and eastern shores: New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomons, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia. But in Japanese hands these islands could be either invasion steps toward Australia or walls between Australia and the U.S. If Australia is thoroughly walled in, the Japanese can take their time about invading it and turn against India or Russia...
...population, will arouse general indignation and take on the character of a national catastrophe." These sentiments Ambassador Gaston Henry-Haye echoed in Washington to a totally unimpressed Sumner Welles, who called the raid "legitimate" and who three days before had said that the U.S. would recognize Free French New Caledonia. The British seemed quite sure that the sad and sensible people of Occupied France would understand and approve what they had done. De Gaullist circles in London assured them of that. All over France men had died for minute, perilous acts of sabotage that could not have accomplished in years...
...worse than that, this simple fact means that if the Japanese succeed in snatching the threatened Indies and threatened Free French New Caledonia, they will be able to cover almost half the Indian Ocean and more than half of Australia. Furthermore, they will be able to punch at three more potential Allied naval headquarters, Colombo, Sydney, Auckland...
...Japanese were as mad as little boys who had been denied sticks of bubble gum. They had hoped to get the strategic French islands of the Pacific-especially New Caledonia, which might soon prove to be a vital base in the flanking of Australia-as easily as they had got Vichyated French Indo-China. But Free France, in the person of an admiral who is also a friar, denied them that pleasure last week...
...United States interested in an obscure, faraway island in the Pacific called New Caledonia? Why must we be concerned about a port in West Africa called Dakar? How do different types of soil and varying weather conditions affect the defense and power of any country? . . . Geography as we must study it . . . is a study of differences in environment and their effect on men's lives...