Our Troops in New Caledonia 1942 US Army FB-34 (Patreon)

more at http://quickfound.net/

Originally a public domain film from the US Army, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonia

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

New Caledonia (/ˌkælɪˈdoʊniə/; French: Nouvelle-Calédonie) is a special collectivity of France, currently governed under the Nouméa Accord, located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, to the south of Vanuatu, about 1,210 km (750 mi) east of Australia and 17,000 km (11,000 mi) from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Chesterfield Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of Pines, and a few remote islets. The Chesterfield Islands are in the Coral Sea. French people, and especially locals, refer to Grande Terre as Le Caillou ("the pebble").

New Caledonia has a land area of 18,576 km2 (7,172 sq mi) divided into three provinces. The North and South Provinces are located on the New Caledonian mainland, while the Loyalty Islands Province is a series of islands off the mainland. Its population of 271,407 (October 2019 census) consists of a mix of the original inhabitants, Kanak people, who are the majority in the North Province and the Loyalty Islands Province and people of European descent (Caldoches and Metropolitan French), Polynesian people (mostly Wallisians), and Southeast Asian people, as well as a few people of Pied-Noir and North African descent who are the majority in the South Province. The capital of the territory is Nouméa...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_home_front_during_World_War_II

The civilian population, culture and infrastructure of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia (Pacific Islands) were completely changed between 1941 and 1945, due to the logistical requirements of the Allies in their war against Japan (taemfaet and daidowa in Micronesian or sahaya kana tuta in Melanesian). At the start of the war some of the islands had experienced up to 200 years of colonialism from Europe and its colonies, some on the verge of being fully annexed, others close to independence. The early Japanese expansion through the western Pacific then introduced a new colonial system to many islands. The Japanese occupation subjected the indigenous people of Guam and other Pacific Islands to forced labor, family separation, incarceration, execution, concentration camps, and forced prostitution, but also created opportunities for advanced education.

The Pacific Islands then experienced military action, massive troop movements, and limited resource extraction and building projects as the Allies pushed the Japanese back to their home islands. The juxtaposition of all these cultures led to a new understanding among the indigenous Pacific Islanders of their relationship with the colonial powers...

Due to the vast amount of information recorded by the Allied armies in comparison with the local populations of the Pacific many of the events of the time are seen from their perspective. It had been decided that Britain and its colonies would have a secondary role in the Pacific, so it was mostly Americans that passed through the Islands on their way to war. They appeared in the Pacific largely unannounced due to security concerns. In the view of one French colonist "if martians had landed among us we would not have been more surprised".

Most of the military personnel from the continental U.S. had never before left their homeland or experienced any culture other than their own. Americans experienced the Pacific Islands including the U.S. organized incorporated territory of Hawaii through cinema and books which divided the inhabitants into submissive hula dancers or cannibals. Also the American military was segregated at this time further leading to the culture shock that awaited many in the Pacific Islands. American views on race also led to disagreements among the Allies, as New Zealand officers would have dinner with their Fijian counterparts, while Americans would not. Similar racial tension was to lead to a riot in Wellington, New Zealand when American soldiers would not allow Māori into the Allied Services Club...