Pacific Island Books : History and Biography

I Remember Hiroshima by Stephen Kelen. ISBN 0868061034. Published by Hale&Iremonger. Recommended retail price $10.

In 1946 Stephen Kelen, an Australian soldier, author, playwright and journalist, was posted to Japan as a member of the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces. In Japan he transferred from Intelligence to become a feature writer on the British Commonwealth Occupation News. He spent more than three years in and around Hiroshima writing about and photographing the devastation surrounding him. He spoke to many of the survivors – to a priest who had tended the wounded in the immediate aftermath of the explosion; to a bookseller who had capitalized upon misfortune and sold twisted mementos of the blast; to a clerk whose arm had been exposed to the flash and was useless but who now made his living selling fire insurance amidst burnt-out buildings; to the child, widely known as the ‘flash bang baby’, who had been born within an hour of the explosion.

But perhaps most importantly, Kelen attended the first Hiroshima Peace Festival in 1946, a festival that has since become an annual event. He was struck by the absence of animosity, the upsurge of rejoicing, the spontaneous acceptance of himself, not as a representative of the enemy, but as a fellow human being. Today, more than 40 years later, Stephen Kelen remembers Hiroshima in moving and poignant detail. His story is accompanied by the unique collection of photographs he took that vividly recapture the havoc, the slow rebuilding of the city, and the subsequent Peace Festivals.

Born in Hungary in 1912, Stephen Kelen has been an Australian for more than 40 years, active as an author, playwright, journalist and sportsman (he has won several world and international table tennis championships). During World War II he volunteered and served in the Australian Army in New Guinea, the Halmaheras, North Borneo and as a member of the occupation forces in Japan. His articles on Hiroshima were published by leading newspapers and magazines in Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon and England. One of his novels, Freedom is a Rainbow, was a prize winner in a United Nations contest in New York. After the war he worked as an editor and writer. His radio dramas and features have been broadcast by the ABC, the BBC and radio stations in Switzerland, Germany, Holland and France.

Since 1975 Stephen Kelen has been President of International PEN Sydney Centre and has represented Australian writers at International PEN Congresses. Soft cover, 79 pages. Published in 1983.

Merchant of the Zeehaen, The : Isaac Gilsemans and the Voyages of Abel Tasman by Grahame Anderson. ISBN 0909010757. Published by Te Papa Press. Recommended retail price $29.95.

In 1642 Abel Janszoon Tasman ‘discovered’ New Zealand, while looking for the Great Southern Continent on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. There was a brief and bloody encounter with Maori in what is now known as golden Bay, but Tasman left little behind him to mark his brief presence here – a squiggle on the still incomplete map of the world, a couple of place names.

Who was Tasman, and what kind of explorer was he? How good were his seamanship and navigation skills? Thanks to his biographer and generations of scholars, the exploits of James Cook are well known, and his achievement is fully understood. But Tasman is a much more ambiguous figure. At the time, his voyages were thought to be of no great merit. At best he was credited with making an arms’-length circumnavigation of ‘New Holland,’ the island continent we now know as Australia. Even today our view of Tasman is cloudy and incomplete.

In this ground-breaking book, based on new research, Grahame Anderson tells the story of Tasman'’ voyages of exploration, and explains the pivotal role of Isaac Gilsemans, the '‘merchant of the Zeehaen.’ Who sailed with him in 1642-3. Cartographer, illustrator, editor and explorer, it was Gilsemans who drew the coastal profiles of lands visited during the voyages.

But it wasn’t until he did some on-the-water research in 1985, sailing in search of Tasman’s anchorage near D’Urville Island, that Anderson discovered something no one else had realized for more than 340 years. The illustrations that formed part of the official record of the voyages were precise cartographic documents, not vague sketches of unidentifiable coastline, as had previously been thought. The fifteen years of research that followed his discovery bring the name of Isaac Gilsemans into the forefront of the history of seventeenth century oceanic exploration, and shed new light on Tasman’s voyages around the Pacific – and may eventually enable Anderson to locate and recover Tasman’s anchor, lost off the coast of Tasmania in 1642.

Written with the general reader in mind, The Merchant of the Zeehaen paints a vivid picture of Tasman’s achievements as navigator and explorer, and reveals the role played in them by his Merchant, Isaac Gilsemans. This book is essential reading for all armchair sailors, and everyone interested in exploration, New Zealand history, voyages of discovery and map-making.

Grahame Anderson is an architect and yachtsman. His interest in draughtsmanship, history, sailing, and the New Zealand seashore, led to the initial discovery and ongoing research which resulted in this book. He has written many technical papers on aspects of architecture, heritage buildings and coastal development. He is the author of Fresh About Cook Strait – a celebration of Wellington Harbour (Methuen, 1984), and Fast Light Boats – a century of Kiwi innovation (Te Papa Press, 1999). He is the recipient of numerous awards, both for his non-fiction writing as well as for architectural design and environmental research. In 1990 he was a Research Fellow at the Stout Centre, Victoria University of Wellington. Soft cover, 162 pages. Published in 2001.

Where Nets Were Cast: Christianity in Oceania since World War II by John Garrett. ISBN 9820201217. Published by the Institute of Pacific Studies. Recommended retail price $17.

This third volume of The History of Christianity in Oceania describes the exposure of island churches to brutal interlopers in World War II. The war foreshadowed the twilight of the missionary and colonial eras. Independent churches broke free, as did island states. Christian leaders – men and women – contributed to the processes of change. In the 1960s the ecumenical and charismatic movements affected the life of the major churches. The World Council of Churches and the Second Vatican Council produced a ferment of unity, transformation, and social concern. Outbursts of ecstatic revival and many new religious movements brought forms of renewal and self-expression attuned to Islanders’ cultures and languages.

This sequel to To Live Among The Stars and Footsteps in the Sea traces “the larger issues in church history – the very different traditions represented, the thrust toward ecumenism in the later post-war years, the interplay of mission with the social and political identity of the island people, and the heroic examples found in the thumbnail sketches of the lives of dozens of missionaries and island church leaders.” Francis X. Hezel, SJ

John Garrett, of the Pacific Theological College, Fiji, and the Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, has traveled in Oceania, Europe, and North America for thirty years to study Christianity in the region. He is a Christian Minister and former communications director of the World Council of Churches. His work has brought him into close touch with Protestants, Catholics and Anglicans in many parts of the world. Soft cover, 499 pages. Published in 1997.

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