War and peace, environment and society: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, and the Second World War, 1940--1955.

摘要

This dissertation explores the impact of the Second World War on the ecology and society of Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. The short-term objectives of the mainly American military forces, couched in terms of wartime expediency, determined the pattern of the impact of the war on the islands. Military forces developed an environmental control scheme to control malarial infection temporarily, relying on ecological change, pesticides, medicine, and behavioral control. British Solomon Islands Protectorate authorities allied themselves with malaria control officers to persuade military commanders to separate American and New Zealand troops from Solomon Islanders working on the base as members of the Solomon Islands Labour Corps. Rank-and-file troops had a short-term view of the cultural impact of their interactions with Solomon Islanders than the British officials, who feared the war would upset the colonial social structure. The rapidly departing military forces abandoned surplus military equipment, which both helped and impeded postwar economic development. Efforts to clear unexploded ordnance, particularly the Australian bomb disposal team's futile effort to clear the large ammunition dump at Hell's Point, reveal the disparity between the expenditure of resources in wartime and during the postwar cleanup.