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IN 1964 Handabe Tiaba arrived in Port Moresby to join the Territory of Papua and New Guinea's new House of Assembly as the member for Tari in the Southern Highlands. [...]

1. In the early afternoon of Saturday 14 February the British ship Vyner Brooke, carrying some of the last civilians to escape from Singapore, was steaming just off south-east Sumatra. [...]

From the release of Damien Parer's Kokoda Frontline in 1942, there have been several high quality documentary films and many popular and scholarly histories on the battles on the Kokoda Track, but until Alister Grierson's Kokoda of 2006 there was no feature film. Initially well received by an Australian public, Kokoda raises several important questions for historians. Makers of films on historical events properly draw on contemporary images: they are evocative of a time and place, guides to all that detail of dress, manners and possessions that take a crew so long to get right and that the pedantic delight in criticising, and they provide templates for shot composition. But the images in films are not subjected to the same scrutiny that historians apply to written sources. In Grierson's Kokoda, images are drawn from somewhere on the Track and relocated and, in one case, taken from another battle and another place. Film critics were concerned with placing Kokoda within the history of war films and evaluating it against other war films. When film critics considered whether Kokoda was 'real' or 'convincing', they were judging whether the behaviour of soldiers in battle moved and engaged an audience. Almost no film critics considered the film's accuracy as history, and it does repeat many popular errors about the Kokoda battles. Finally, it is interesting to consider what has been omitted and whether this has been the inevitable consequence of reducing an event spread over 100 kilometres of Track and several months to 92 minutes of film time, and whether the choices have diminished the end product as film or as history. More historians need to make themselves familiar with film and engage more readily in the public evaluation of those films claimed to be based on 'true' stories and illuminating what have come to be accepted as determining events in national histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From late 1942, Australians knew that the Japanese had shipped women to Rabaul, where they worked in brothels catering for Japanese troops. Japanese captured on the Kokoda Track and elsewhere described the brothels, and New Guineans and who had been in Rabaul talked about them. Australian military and civilian prisoners saw the brothels, and a few of those Australians observed them over a long period. Japanese who served in Rabaul have left reminiscences about the brothels, and one Korean woman has testified that she worked in Rabaul. As result, there is scattered material on perhaps 3,000 comfort women in an Australian Territory, but when Australian reporters and commentators need to give the comfort women an Australian relevance, these women are never mentioned. Their experiences are not used to provide evidence on the recurring debates about whether the comfort women were coerced or free and whether they were recruited, shipped and employed by private contractors rather than the Japanese military or government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From this issue, 'Pacific Currents' replaces the 'Current Developments in the Pacific' and 'Political Chronicles' sections in the Journal. While we will continue to welcome submissions on contemporary issues in the Pacific Islands -- on elections and political developments, for instance, or economic and demographic trends -- we will seek to encourage the publication of material that is more wide-ranging and reflective, that tackles a topical issue from a longer perspective, that makes a contribution to a larger debate of contemporary significance, freed from the need to be 'up-to-date'. The section's 'archival' intention will now be complemented by more interpretive essays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]