Word: tongan
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Tonga's 150 islands (total area: 250 sq. miles; pop. 45,000) for almost 3½ centuries. Tongans have no housing problem, no unemployment; they get free medical and dental care. Education (including English, Tongan history, singing and native arts) is compulsory from...
...Taxes. Under Queen Salote's diligent administration, Tonga has built up sizable overseas investments. The islands, which became a British protectorate in 1900, have no income tax, no public debt and a remarkably low crime rate: one murder in 30 years. At the age of 16, every male Tongan gets eight acres of land, for which he pays an annual tax of about $7 U.S. to the Tongan government and a token rental to his chief. Tonga has its own passports, its own currency and its own postal system (including the station, famed among philatelists, of "Tin Can Island...
...World War II (Tonga formally declared war on Germany in September 1939, with a proclamation that began: "We, Salote . . ."). In the spring of 1942, U.S. troops went ashore on Tonga with orders to "take the island and destroy the enemy." The invaders were met by a group of friendly Tongans who explained that they had heard of Pearl Harbor long before, had promptly tossed all of the islands' 100-odd Japanese into jail in the capital city of Nukualofa. Later, thousands of other Allied soldiers stopped off at the Tongan Islands on their way to & from the Pacific battlefronts...
Niuafoou, in the Tongan Islands north of New Zealand, is ready to go again. Its last eruptions were in 1929 and the early...