The Rabaul strike, 1929

Abstract

most populous of the Tanga group of islands. Until about 30 years ago the clans of Boang generally lived inland for safety, but a drift to the coast began about 1913 when the German administration resolved to end lighting and cannibalism in the area and sent to Boang the Japanese trader Isokide Komine to make peace. Komine called the islanders together and persuaded them, at least temporarily, to burn their weapons and live under German law.1 Possibly because of this, by about 1913 members of the Boang clan Filamat, or Felomat, had built a coastal village at Sasa, just on shore from Boang's anchorage. One of this clan was Sumsuma,2 in pidgin Sumasuma, a boy about 10 years old in 1913, the eldest of a family of two boys and a girl. His mother, Tarapat, belonged to Sasa, and she named as his father Tamapuat, of Ansingsing village on another island of the Tanga group, Tefa. His parents were not influential, and Sumsuma seemed unlikely to become of much consequence on Boang. But he must from boyhood have been ad venturous, for when his mother beat him with a bamboo cane he waited until night, then ran away to a trading vessel which happened to be lying off Sasa at the time.