ABSTRACT
The impact of war on local communities and on shared memory is often severe, particularly so in compact places, on small islands like Efate. Submersion has engendered rust and decay but at least has preserved the ship from post-war scrap dealers or the ongoing souveniring that has carried away most other war material. Entrepreneurs like Reece Discombe, moreover, in the 1950s and 1960s, salvaged and exported to Southeast Asia and Japan many tons of war scrap metal, much of this retrieved from seabed military dumps. Some war material or remnant relic does still survive underwater, including sunken scuba dive favourites, President Coolidge, the Tucker and miscellaneous military surplus and trash dumped off Santo's Million Dollar Point. Still, the presence of scattered half-American children along with personal war stories and anecdote, song repertories, place names, nicknames, wrecks and relics, and John Frum activism all worked for several decades to keep war memory fresh.
