Some Selective Information for:

"The terms Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia should also be used carefully. This three-way division was first used by Dumont D'Urville [1790-1842] in the 1820s, and the terms came into currency after the mid-nineteenth century. These remain useful to designate broad geographic regions but they should not be seen, as they once were, as denoting cultural regions, since to do so is to continue with a range of nineteenth-century racial assumptions and classifications." K.R. Howe, 2003, The Quest For Origins: Who First Discovered And Settled The Pacific Islands? (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press), page 25.

"Principles of mana, tohunga, and toa provide solid bases for social inequality but do not by themselves institute a stable structure of status. What really organizes status differences in Polynesia into a strong system, is the genealogical principle of seniority. Mana, tohunga, and toa are the variable principles of status representing the psychological or cultural aspects of the status system, while seniority, establishing, as it does, a stable and systematic organization, is a true structural principle. ... All societies honoring first-born form some system of geneaological seniority.... Order of birth has this mystical rationale: The first-born inherits most mana, the last-born least.... Seniority in Polynesia carries some connotation of superiority at every genealogical level, ranging from statuses demanding the highest form of deference to those for whom a simple and almost casual offering of deference is sufficient. Polynesian social structures are literally built on the principle of seniority." Irving Goldman, 1970, Ancient Polynesian Society (University of Chicago Press), pages 14-15.

"The traditional island world, however, was not idyllic. On both mountainous islands and coral atolls, arable land was relatively rare; fresh water was not always easily available. Cyclones and tidal waves periodically destroyed lives and resources. A variety of diseases affected islanders; life expectancy was not long and infant mortality particularly high. Tribal fighting often erupted and resulted in loss of life, even if pitched battles were rare. Codification of social relations was strict and probably allowed little latitude for deviance or idiosyncrasy. In Polynesia the lower orders lived in a state of economic and social inferiority to the chiefs and lesser gentry.... Island life was neither tragic nor stagnant. Wars, festivals and cycles of harvest, of the seasons and of the life cycle all varied daily activities.... By the time the French conquerors arrived in Tahiti and the Marquesas in 1842 and New Caledonia [in "Melanesia"] in 1853, island life was different from the time of Bougainville [1729-1811]." Robert Aldrich, 1990, The French Presence In The South Pacific 1842-1940 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press), pages 175-176.

"The name 'Tahiti' - or as Bougainville first wrote it in 1768, 'Taiti,' and Cook in 1769, 'Otaheite' - was the name the natives gave their island and which Europeans came to apply to the indigenes. If the Tahitians had a name specifically identifying themselves, it is not known. What is known is that all of those living in the Society Archipelago, including Tahiti, referred to themselves as 'Maohi.'" Edwin N. Ferndon, 1991, Tahiti. In Terrence E. Hays [Editor], Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume II Oceania (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co.), pages 305-307, page 305.

PAUL GAUGUIN INFORMATION (NOT IN THE FEBRUARY 2017 BROCHURE)

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 - 8 May 1903) = "…son of an emigré Republican journalist [Clovis Gauguin and Alina Maria Chazal]; grew up in Lima (Peru), then in Orléans and Paris. 1865-1871 went to sea. 1871-1883 worked as a stockbroker in Paris, painting in his spare time. 1873 married a Danish woman, Mette Gad; the couple had five children. 1874 met Pissarro and other Impressionists and studied at the Académie Colarossi. 1876 exhibited for the first time at The Salon" [bold in original]. Ingo F. Walther [Editor], Impressionist Art 1860-1920 (Köln: Taschen), page 663.

"Gauguin was a talented stockbroker, and supported his family with ease. The reason he continued to work was because this made it possible for him to buy paintings that he liked (Manet, Cézanne, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Monet, and Guillaumin) and to spend moments of leisure painting. In 1886 he showed seven paintings in the fifth impressionist exhibition." Guiseppe Marchiori, 1967, Gauguin: The life and work of the artists illustrated with 80 colour plates [1968 translation from the Italian by Caroline Beamish], (London: Thames And Hudson), page 11.

"Gauguin's development as a painter (like his manner as a man) seems sudden and brusque. He began late, and skipped the normal student years; the development of his own style out of Impressionism came suddenly and all at once. But the years between, during which he served his apprenticeship as a professional and absorbed the atmosphere and understanding of the styles around him, were comparatively long. He was fortunate in not having to unlearn an academic manner and thus being able to step immediately into the progressive esthetic of his time." Robert Goldwater, 1957, Gauguin (NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.), page 70.

"Impressionism = "The Impressionist style of painting first emerged as a definable, shared approach among a small group of young French artists, and it was these artists who were meant by the term - which was originally coined disparagingly." Ingo F. Walther [Editor], Impressionist Art 1860-1920 (Köln: Taschen), page 12.

THE following five terms come from Peter and Linda Murray, 1968, A Dictionary of Art & Artists: Revised Edition (Penguin Reference Books):

"Impressionism was the derisive name given to the most important artistic phenomenon of the 19th century and the first of the Modern Movements." Page 207

"Neo-Impressionism has, properly speaking, little to do with Impressionism. In its purest form, as it is found in Seurat, it involves the use of Divisionism…." Page 290.

"Post-Impressionism is a rather vague term applied to the movement which developed in reaction against both Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism and had as its chief aim either a return to a more formal conception of art or a new stress on the importance of the subject. The most important figures covered by the term are van Goghm Gauguin, and Cézanne." Pages 326-327.

"Synthetism, or Cloisonnisme, is synonymous with Symbolism. The movement was originally a literary one, starting in 1886 with Rimbaud's 'Illuminations'. In 1889 Gauguin and other artists from Pont-Avenexhibited their work as 'Synthetist' painters, their object being the expression of ideas, mood, and emotion and the complete rejection of naturalistic representations. Their pictures were painted in brilliant colours, separated by black lines, and sought to be both decorative and abstractions, or syntheses, of the ideas which inspired them." Page 403.

"Nabis, Les (from Hebrew, prophet), was the name taken by a small group of French artists…between c. 1889 and 1899. They were attracted by Gauguin's advice to paint in flat, pure colours…." Page 287.

Concerning "Impressionism" and Claude Monet (1840-1926) = "The derisive label Impressionist was coined by a journalist, Louis Leroy [1812-1885], after he saw one of Monet's entries entitled Impression: Sunrise [1874, Impression, soleil levant]; in his review of the exhibition he ungraciously compared the painting with 'wallpaper in its embryonic state.' The critical notices were hostile and ridiculing; the painters were reviled and the public was invited to attend the exhibition for amusement, and indeed many did come to laugh." Sam Hunter, 1956, Modern French Painting: 1855-1956 (NY: Dell), Page 62.

"Camille Pissarro [1831-1903] was the oldest, the most capable of dullness, and yet, next to Monet, the most influential of all the Impressionists. His influence was partly due to his seniority; by 1873 he was already over forty and had attained a degree of maturity and accomplishment, whereas his friend Monet, ten years younger, was not yet fully expressing his varied range. But qualities other than age made Pissarro capable of being, at different times, the mentor of Gauguin, Van Gogh [1853-1890] and Cézanne [1839-1906], who said of him, 'He is a man worth consulting and something like God Himself.'" Phoebe Pool, 1967, Impressionism (London: Thames And Hudson), page 37.

In 1882 Gauguin wrote to Camille Pissaro (1830-1903) = "I cannot resign myself to spending the rest of my life in finance and as an amateur painter. I have got it into my head that I shall become a painter as soon as I can discern a less obscured horizon and that I shall be able to earn my living by it." [December 18, 2012} http://www.maineantiquedigest.com/events/first-of-multi-part-single-ownerhistorical-documents-sale-achieves-6-million/3644].

Paul Gauguin's translated words in Noa Noa and his 1891 impression of Pape'ete = "Life at Papeete soon became a burden. It was Europe--the Europe which I had thought to shake off--and that under the aggravating circumstances of colonial snobbism, and the imitation, grotesque even to the point of caricature, of our customs, fashions, vices, and absurdities of civilization. Was I to have made this far journey, only to find the very thing I had fled?...The European invasion and monotheism have destroyed these vestiges of a civilization which had its own grandeur." Paul Gauguin, Noa Noa (originally published in the Revue Blanche in 1897 and in an expanded book form in 1901) translated from the French by O. F. Theis], 1957, (NY: The Noonday Press), page 7 and page 106.

"When he sailed into the calm harbour of Papeete on 8 June 1891 he was full of expectation. But his shoulder-length hair and large-brimmed cowboy's hat indicate just how little he know about the people he was intending to live among. The Tahitian, surprised at the odd appearance of this powefully built man, laughed and jeered. They had never seen a man with long hair and Gauguin was quickly nicknamed 'taata vahine' (man-woman). Not surprisingly, in response to the heat and the hilarity, Gauguin had his hair cut and within a few days had bought a white colonial suit." Bronwen Nicholson [Editor]. 1995, Gauguin And Maori Art (Auckland, NZ: Auckland City Art Gallery) page 18.

"Tahiti was an immediate disappointment. Papeete, the capital, was ruled by officials, clerks an soldiers, like a little French sub-prefecture only even more narrow minded and boring. Gauguin was thought to be on some government mission and was regarded with some suspicion as a spy. When poverty forced him to go and live in a native village, miserable about the difficulty of communicating with Paris, embittered by his clashes with colonial authority, drinking far too much, surrounded by Tahitian girls who 'invaded his bed', Gauguin was ostracized by Papeete society and was virtually forced to return to France. After a long and exhausting voyage under conditions which only a man as strong as he was could have survived, Gauguin disembarked at Marseilles in August 1893 without a penny to his name." Guiseppe Marchiori, 1967, Gauguin: The life and work of the artists illustrated with 80 colour plates [1968 translation from the Italian by Caroline Beamish], (London: Thames And Hudson), page 6.

"At the end of his first year in Tahiti, Gauguin felt that his achievements were already sufficient to prove to the faint-hearted that it had been no folly to leave Europe." Belinda Thomson, 1987, Gauguin (London: Thames And Hudson), page 154.

Gauguin, back in France after his first stay in Tahiti = "On 10 November 1893 Gauguin's First Major One-Man Show Opened - Some forty canvases that Gauguin had rolled up and shipped from Tahiti were stretched and mounted in white, yellow, or blue frames. 'This exhibition,' Rotonchamp later wrote, 'was an undeniable success in terms of curiosity it aroused, but commercially it proved a disaster. The public was baffled, not so much by the peculiarity of the artist's technique as by his preoccupation with the literary and paleo-ethnographic.' Gauguin's onetime teacher Camille Pissaro summed up the reaction of the artistic community. 'Gauguin is currently doing a show that has won the admiration of the literati. They are enraptured, or so it appears. The collectors, they tell me, unanimously consider this exotic art too caught up in South Seas islanders. Only Degas [1834-1917] thinks highly of it. Monet [1840-1926] and Renoir [1841-1919] find it simply bad. I saw Gauguin. He expounded on his theories about art and assured me that the young would find salvation by replenishing themselves at faraway, savage resources. I told him that this art did not belong to him, that he was a civilized man. We parted both unconvinced." Françoise Cachin, 1989, Gauguin: The Quest For Paradise [translated from the French by I. Mark Paris] (NY: 1992 Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Edition), page 95.

Camille Pissaro on 25 November 1893 in a letter to his son Lucien: "Gauguin's present show is the admiration of all the men of letters. They are, it appears, completely enthusiastic. The collectors are baffled and perplexed....Gauguin is certainly not without talent, but how difficult it is for him to find his own way! He is always poaching on someone's ground; now he is pillaging the savages of Oceania." John Rewald [Editor], 1972, Camille Pissarro: Letters To His Son Lucien (Third Edition, Revised And Enlarged) (Mamaroneck, NY: Paul P. Appel, Publisher), page 221.

"It is regrettable that Pissarro never heard two of the greatest tributes paid to him. In 1902, Gauguin wrote: 'If we observe the whole of Pissaoro's work we find there, despite fluctuations, not only an exteme artistic will, never belied, but also an essentially intuitive, pure-bred air....He looked at everybody, you say! Why not? Everybody looked at hom too but denied him. He was one of my masters and I do not deny him.' Even more touching, when Cèzanne was invited to exhibit in Aix in 1906, the now much venerated master had himself entered in the catalogue as 'Paul Cèzanne, pupil of Pissarro.'" Phoebe Pool, 1967, Impressionism (London: Thames And Hudson), page 249.

"Paul Gauguin made it his business to achieve a high public profile during his lifetime and was one of the first independent artists of his generation to gain international recognition. But his prominence has probably always had as much to do with the dramatic events of his life as with the appeal of his art. Gauguin's flight from European civilization to take up a primitive existence in Tahiti became legendary; indeed, it did much to fuel the myth of the artist as tortured soul, destined to be misunderstood and to live outside the bounds of civilized society. Gauguin himself was well aware of the advantage such personal notoriety could have for his work. It did not much seem to matter that his behaviour and character were censured rather than praised; the important things was to be talked about." Belinda Thomson, 1987, Gauguin (London: Thames And Hudson), page 7.

Translated words from Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals = "It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting. It is better to paint from memory, for thus your work will be your own; your sensation, your intelligence, and your soul will triumph over the eye of the amateur."[http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Gauguin2007Refs.html] [Full text of Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals, 1936, Translated by Van Wyck Brooks (NY: Crown Publishers), page 71.

Concerning} D'où venons-nous / Que sommes-nous / Où allons-nous (Where we come from / What are we / Where are we going) = "Where does it come from? The answer to this question is inexhaustible, for the painting is, without a doubt, a summa of Gauguin's pictorial and even sculptural work before 1897 and, by extension, of his aesthetic philosophy. Simply by tracing the genealogy of any of the several figures in the painting--the old woman at left, for example, or the statue of Hina--one can explore its origins in a complex series of borrowings and self-borrowings that, as in the work of him sometime mentor Edgar Degas, bound Gauguin's production into an evolving, self-referential discourse." George T. M. Shackelford, 2004, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" In Gauguin Tahiti, edited by George T. M. Shackelford and Claire Freches-Thory, 2004, (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts Publication), pages 167-203, page 182.

Gauguin's translated words on his 1897} D'où venons-nous / Que sommes-nous / Où allons-nous (Where do we come from / What are we / Where are we going) = "Gauguin did more than describe the allegorical subject of this picture. He also told of the method and manner of its execution, stressing what his predecessors in romanticism would have called inspiration, and his twentieth-century heirs the uncontrollable workings of the subconscious, true source of the artist's genius. 'I worked day and night that whole month in an incredible fever. Lord knows it is not done like Puvis de Chavannes [1824-1898]: sketch after nature, preparatory cartoon, etc. It is all done from imagination, straight from the brush, on sackcloth full of knot and wrinkles, so the appearance is terrible rough. They will say it is careless, unfinished. It is true that one is not a good judge of one's own work, nevertheless I believe that this canvas not only surpasses all my previous work, but I will never do anything better or even like it.'" Robert Goldwater, 1957, Gauguin (NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.), page 142.

Translated words from Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals = "I have been good sometimes; I do not congratulate myself because of it. I have been evil often; I do not repent it."[http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Gauguin2007Refs.html] [Full text of Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals, 1936, Translated by Van Wyck Brooks (NY: Crown Publishers), page 240.

James A. Michener on Tahitians and Gauguin = "You watch in the darkness and realize with a shock that you have seen this all before! But where? Then you remember! Gauguin! He saw these massive forms, this somber beauty, the mysteriousness of this race. There is no single way to prepare yourself for Polynesia comparable to memorizing Gauguin. In Tahiti today, on this hot Christmas, you will see every color he used, every model he studied. The significant fact about Gauguin, who died in terror, hating life, is that in Polynesia he painted with infinite love. His brooding spirit crept into every canvas; his compassion rests with every painting." James A. Michener, 1951, Return to Paradise (Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, Inc.), page 55.

"The whole of Gauguin's career, particularly the authentication and dating of many of his early pictures, has been obscured and be-devilled by the lies of his friends, his wife, his children and Gauguin himself." Phoebe Pool, 1967, Impressionism (London: Thames And Hudson), page 197.

"In October 1897, discouraged by the desultory sales of his work in Paris, Gauguin looked ahead to a 'time when people will believe I am a myth, or rather an invention of the press.' In 1902, nearing the end of his life, he paid a high price for his Faustian pact with fame--forced to live out the remainder of his days in isolation. Nostalgic for home, feeling an atavistic desire to return to the country of his birth, Gauguin dreamed of settling in the Pyrenees, near Daniel de Monfried. But he was dissuaded from taking such a disastrous step. Those who had his best interests at heart were concerned for his health, already undermined by syphilis; de Monfreid did not mince his words, warning that to come back to Paris would spell death. But more important at this juncture was the damage it would do to his myth: 'You are at the moment that extraordinary, legendary artist who sends from the depths of oceania his disconcerting, as it were, off the face of the earth.' Coming back would merely stir up his enemies and destroy the slow but steady rise in his status. 'In short, you enjoy the immunity of the great dead, you belong now to the history of art.--And in the meantime, the public is learning; people are uilding up your reputation, unwittingly or deliberately. Even Vollard is working at it bit by bit. He can already perhaps scent how your celebrity will become uncontested and universal.'" Belinda Thomson [Editor], 2010, Gauguin: Maker Of Myth (London: Tate Publshing), page 23.

"He [Gauguin] returned repeatedly to the role of the Catholic Church in the modern world, comparing its condition with the demands of the Gospels and coming to some devastating conclusions. 'The Catholic church no longer exists as a religion. Too late to try to save it now. Proud of our conquests and confident of the future we call out 'Halt there!' to this cruel, hypocritical Church. In the twentieth-century the Catholic Church is a rich Church. She has plundered all the philosophical texts to falsify them and hell reins supreme." Eckhard Hollmann, 1996, Paul Gauguin: Images from the South Seas [Translated from the German by Fiona Elliott] (Munich-NewYork: Prestel-Verlag), page 78. And see Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals, 1936 [Translated by Van Wyck Brooks] (NY: Crown Publishers), page 187.

Bishop Joseph Martin on death of Paul Gauguin 8 May 1903 = "The only [recent] noteworthy event has been the sudden death of a contemptible individual named Gauguin, a reputed artist but an enemy of God and everything that is decent." Stephen F. Eisenman, 1997, Gauguin's Skirt (NY/London: Thames and Hudson), page 194.

"Formally the government official at Atuana [sic] had written to the adminisration in Papeete: 'I have the honor of informing you that the painter Gauguin, Eugene, Henri Paul, died at Atuana on the Eigth day of May, 1903, at 11 a.m. in the morning. I have notified his creditors...' And a seven-page inventory of Paul Gauguin's belongings accompanied the death norice to Tahiti. There were more than a hundred tins of food, many bottles of beer, two litres of absinthe, a half-dozen demi-johns of wine. Ther were also listed a sewing machine, a guitar, a mandolin, a stovem crockery, cooking utensils, miscellaneous books, mildewed and worm-eaten, weapons for hunting, ammunition, a horse and a carriage, on and on and on, item for item, in precise columns. Far down at the end of the list, as if of negligible value, was a brief statement of drawings and canvases, hundreds, that had been gathered up in the littered house. And at the end of his report, the French official in Atuana had affixed his summation of the dead man's effects. 'Already I am convinced that the debts will far surpass the assets, since the works of the deceased, because he was a decadent painter, have little chance of finding a buyer." Wilmon Menard, 1965, The Two Worlds of Somerset Maugham (Los Angeles: Sherbourne Press, Inc.), page 252.

WORLD WAR II PACIFIC INFORMATION TO PLACE "OPERATION BOBCAT" INTO PERSPECTIVE (NOT IN THE FEBRUARY 2017 BROCHURE)

"The main purpose of the base at Bora Bora was to provide a tank farm for supplying fuel to Allied shipping during their long journeys across the South pacific. Also a small seaplane base would be built, harbor installations with unloading facilities constructed and coastal defenses installed." Thomas J. Larson & Alex W. du Peel, 2004, Bora Bora History and G.I.'s in Paradise: The Bobcat Project World war II story of the G.I.'s in Bora Bora (Pape'ete: Édition Pacific Promotion Tahiti S.A.), page 27.

FROM JAMES NORMAN HALL IN 1944: "It was the U.S.A. all right. There were boys of all kinds, conditions, and environments; boys silent and boys talkative; boys from the great cities, from farms andcountry towns; from the plains country, the timber country; from universities, high schools, trade schools, and from no schools to speak of save that of experience. Sme were the kind tomake the most of this sojourn in tropical seas. To others the experience would mean little or nothing and they would return home to grouse about having been uried on a lousy little island a thousand miles from nowhere. Some would lament deeply what was to be done to the island; others would not think twice about this aspect of the situation." James Norman Hall, 1944, Lost Island, (New York: Popular Library), page 83.

"Although Americans usually date the beginning of World War II with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, individuals in Asia date the beginning of the war from September 1931 when the Japanese Kwantung Army invaded three provinces in northeast China, named Manchuria. For Europeans, the beginning of the war occurred in September 1939 when German forces invaded Poland. The beginning and ending of the war for the United States can be viewed at Pearl Harbor on the Hawai'ian island of O'ahu where one can visit the memorials for the USS Arizona, sunk in the December 7^th attack and the USS Missouri where the instrument of surrender was signed between the Allied Powers and Japan." Charles F. Urbanowicz, 2015, http://www.csuchico.edu/~curbanowicz/FRENCHPOLYNESIAWWII.html [French Polynesia And World war II In The Pacific].

"To the overwhelming majority of Europeans the term the Second World War immediately conjures up memories or impressions of the conflict against Hitler's Germany. Perceptions of this war vary greatly from nation to nation.... That Europeans should be Eurocentric in their view of events is natural." H. P. Willmott, 1982, Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press), page 1.

"To over fifty million men, women, and children, it [World War II] meant death. To hundreds of millions more in the occupied areas and theaters of combat, the war meant hell on earth: suffering and greed, often with little if any awareness of a cause or reason beyond the terrifying events of the moment. To nations everywhere, World War Two meant technological innovation, bureaucratic expansion, and an extraordinary mobilization of human resources and ideological fervor" (John W. Dower, 1986, War Without Mercy: Race & Power In The Pacific War, page 3).

"On the night of December 29, 1940, a few moments before 9:00PM, Franklin Delano Roosevelt [xxxx-1945] wheeled himself into his chair through the WHite House warrens and into the Diplomatic Reception Room on the first floor....Roosevelt was preparing to deliver an address that generations hence would deem one of the most important pieces of political rhetoric in modern history. It was called 'The Arsenal of Democracy." A. J. Baime, 2014, The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), page xiii.

"This is the story of America's forgotten heroes of World War II. They didn't wear uniforms, at least not at first. They wore business suits, dungarees and flannel shirts, spectacles and Stetsons. Homburg hats and hard hats, lab coats and welding leathers and patterned head scarves. They were the American businessmen, engineers, production managers, and workers both male and female who built the most awesome military machine in history: the arsenal of democracy that armed the Allies and defeated the Axis." Arthur Herman, 2012, Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory In World War II (NY: Random House), page ix.

"In spite of being the world's most powerful economy, militarily America, with fewer than 100,000 combat soldiers [in 1939], was a pigmy. Her armed forces ranked eighteenth in the world, trailing countries such as Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Holland and Belgium. The U.S. Navy was also short 20,000 men." Francis Pike, 2015, Hirohito's War: The Pacific War 1941-1945 (London: Bloomsbury), page 129.

"The Congress [of the United States of America] took due notice of the war and did what it had to do, but it never was happy and seldom gracious about it. Franklin Roosevelt demanded vast powers it did not want him toi have, but he got them. The War and navy departments wanted money in stratospheric amounts and with no badgering and hectoring from Congress about how it was to be spent, and it was handed over. The wartime bureaucracies, which Congress always disliked, asked for authority over areas of American life formerly thought to be none of government's business, or powers Congress jealously had always held to itself, but it was granted. The liberals agonized that the war was being used as an excuse to wipe out social and welfare programs. The conservatives feared the war would set federal powers so firmly in place that traditional American freedoms would never be seen again. But the real cause of their anger was a fact they first denied but eventually had to accept--they were being stripped of their power because they could not run the war. Only a small, agile, centralized authority could run the war. Only the president could run the war. Congress with its slow and cumbersome procedures and with more than half a thousand individual and individualistic members could not run the war." David Brinkley, 1988, Washington Goes To War: The Extraordinary Story of the Transformation of a City and a Nation (NY: Ballantine Books), page 196.

"At Midway, the scoring punch of the Japanese Navy had been blunted [during the Battle of Midway, June 3-6, 1942]: four carriers and one cruiser were sunk, 5,000 Japanese had lost their lives, and 322 planes were lost. Worse, the pilots who were lost--many of whom had a thousand hours in combat experience over the skies of China, not to mention experience gained since then--were irreplaceable. American losses comprised ninety-nine carried-based aircraft, thirty-eight Midway-based planes, and the [Aircraft Carrier] Yorktown." William A. Renzi and Mark D. Roehrs, 1991, Never Look Back: A History of World War II In The Pacific, page 76.

"The road to Tokyo began on an island in the Pacific that few Americans had ever heard of and none of the military planners knew much about. But on Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon [Islands, Melanesia], the Japanese were building an air base from which to strike at American convoys to Australia. The island had to be taken, and quickly. The landing was America's first big amphibious assault. On August 7, 1942, some 10,000 Marines went ashore almost unopposed." C.L. Sulzberger, 1966, The American Heritage History of World War II (NY: Simon & Schuster), page 232.

"During the six-month struggle for the island [of Guadalcanal], 4,123 Americans had fallen. On Iwo Jima 25,851 Marines would be lost in less than four weeks, and the price of the eighty-two-day fight for Okinawa, the greatest bloodletting of all, would be 49,151 Americans." William Manchester, 1979, Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir Of The Pacific War (Boston: Little, Brown and Company), Page 193.

"Of the 21,000 Japanese defending the island [of Iwo Jima in 1945], only 216 were taken prisoner. If this was the cost of taking an island of only eight square miles and which had been Japanese only since 1891, what would be the cost of the conquest of Japan?" E. Bauer, 1979, The History of World War II (NY: The Military Press), page 639.

"The casualties [on Okinawa] were the heaviest that any single island had cost the American forces. About 7,400 American died outright on the island, but the navy had lost perhaps 5,000 more men who were killed while offshore, mostly from Kamikazes. Japanese losses can only be estimated. About 107,000 were killed outright, while an additional 20,000 were sealed in caves to die of starvation, suffocation, or cremation if gasoline had been poured in after them. About 4,000 Japanese planes were lost, while the number of U.S. naval aircraft lost was 763, with no fewer than 458 falling in combat with Japanese aircraft." William A. Renzi and Mark D. Roehrs, 1991, Never Look Back: A History of World War II In The Pacific, page 174.

"No sooner had the ink dried on the unconditional surrender document at Reims [Germany] in May 1945 than thirty American divisions, along with air corps and naval units, began rushing from Europe to join in Operation Downfall, the looming invasion of Japan. Douglas MacArthur [1880-1964] planned a two-step assault, the largest amphibious and airborn invasion that history had known. Downfall would begin with Operation Olympic--a frontal assault on Kyushu, the southernmost island, by nearly eight hundred thousand men--on November 1, 1945. The second phase, Operation Coronet--the landing by two million more troops on the largest island, Honshu--would follow on March 1, 1946." William B. Breuer, 1995, Feuding Allies: The Private Wars of the High Command (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), page 302.

"On 1 June [1945] the President's Interim Committee, composed of high officials and top atomic scientists, recommended that the new bomb be used again Japan as soon as possible, without warning, and against a target that would reveal its 'devastating strength.' A well-considered alternative, to drop one bomb on a relatively uninhabited part of Japan, after due warning, in order to demonstrated the uselessness of further struggle, was rejected. It was feared that Japan would move in Allied P.O.W.s as 'guinea pigs'; and nobody could predict whether or not the bomb would work. If, after a warning, it proved a dud, the United States would be placed in a ridiculous position. And anyone who has followed our account of the senseless destruction and suffering inflicted by the kamikazes around Okinawa will appreciate the fact that compassion for Japan formed no factor in this decision." Samuel Eliot Morison, 1960, Victory in the Pacific: 1945 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company), pages 339-340.

"The official ceremony of Japan's surrender took place on board the American battleship, Missouri, on Sunday, 2 September [1945] - henceforth decreed by President Truman as VJ Day. ... The American flag flown by Commodore Perry when he entered Tokyo Bay in 1853 had been brought from a naval museum and now hung from a bulkhead overlooking the scene." Tatsuichiro Akizuki, 1981, Nagasaki: The First full-length eyewitness account of the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki [translated by Keiichi Nagata and Edited and with an introduction by Gordon Honeycombe) London: Quarter Books), page 130. And See http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/japsurr.html [The University of Oklahoma Law Center} The Japanese Surrender Documents of World War II].

"As President of the United States, I proclaim Sunday, September 2, 1945, to be V-J Day, the day of the formal surrender of Japan. It is not yet the day for the formal proclamation of the end of the war nor of the cessation of hostilities, but it is a day of retribution as we remember that other day, the day of infamy." [See: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=129]

"The degree to which Americans register shock and extraordinary shame about the Hiroshima bomb [on August 6, 1945] correlates closely with lack of information about the Pacific war." Paul Fussell, 1988, Thank God For the Atomic Bomb And Other Essays (NY: Summit Books), page 25.

"Shortly after World War II had ended, American intelligence in the Pacific received a shocking report: The Japanese, just prior to their surrender, had developed and successfully test-fired an atomic bomb. The project had been housed in or near Konan (Japanese name for Hungnam), Korea, in the peninsula's North. The war had ended before the weapon could be used, and the plant where it had been made was now in Russian hands." Robert K. Wilcox, 1985, Japan's Secret War (NY: William Morrow and Company, Inc.), page 15.

SUMMARY WORLD WAR II STATEMENTS (NOT IN THE FEBRUARY 2017 BROCHURE)

"Japan's ferocious southern thrust was heartless and ultimately suicidal. Millins had been killed or maimed, whole cities destroyed, women raped and enslaved, men treated as beasts of burden, children imprisoned, even executed. Twenty million Asian and European civilians and six million servicemen and women - a conservative estimate, because no one knows the exact figure - were wiped out in the fighting or died of disease, starvation and mistreatment. The death toll among Australia's armed forces was 17,420, almost double the number that were killed or died of wounds fighting the Germans." Peter Thompson, 2008, Pacific Fury: How Australia And Her Allies Defeated The Japanese (Sydney, Australia: William Heinemann), page xxviii.

"The Japanese offensive for which Pearl Harbor served as a prelude was as dramatic as any in military history: by February 1942 the Japanese had evicted the British garrison from Singapore; in May Japanese submarines were discovered in Sydney Harbour. By August Japanese forces reached their furthest extent, holding Indonesia, the Philippines, the northern half of New Guinea, Micronesia in its entirety, and the Solomon Islands south to Guadalcanal. Port Moresby was saved only by heroic Australian resistance, and Darwin was bombed repeatedly. But if the Japanese assault was prodigious, so in time was the American response. In May and June of 1942--within six months of Pearl Harbor--the Japanese navy was arrested in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. In August Marines landed at Guadalcanal and began the murderous process by which American troops (assisted by Australians and eventually by the British Navy) worked their way back to the west and the north in a pincer movement. One thrust went up the island chains of Micronesia under Admiral Nimitz: Tarawa (November 1943), Kwajelein (January 1944), Guam (July 1944), Peleliu (September 1944), and ultimately the Japanese island of Iwo Jima (February 1945). The other went up the northern shores of New Guinea and hence to the Philippines under General MacArthur. The two met at the Japanese island of Okinawa in June 1945; in August atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the war ended." Richard Lansdown, 2006, Strangers in the South Seas: The Idea of the Pacific in Western Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i). page 324.

FINAL STATEMENTS (NOT IN THE FEBRUARY 2017 BROCHURE)

NOTE FROM A 1971 BOOK: "The native Tahitian eats a meal of rice from Madagascar, French bread with butter from Australia, Ceylonese tea sweetened with sugar from Martinique, and if he [or she!] is affluent a cab of bully beef from New Zealand or salmon from Canada--the whole meal washed down with generous servings of red Algerian wine." Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff, 1971, The French Pacific Islands: French Polynesia and New Caledonia (Berkeley: University of California Press).

NOTE FROM A 1998 BOOK: "Many Polynesians reject the name 'French Polynesia,' preferring Te Ao Maohi - the place of the Maori people....For centuries, France has claimed a unique relationship with the islands and societies of the South Pacific. Just as England sees Australia as the antipodes, French writers have viewed the Pacific as the other end of the world. From France, the South Pacific is indeed 'elsewhere' - the opposite of Europe, the place of greatest distance. Even the night skies contribute to this novelty. The visitor from the northern hemisphere feels the strangeness of the new constellations, but the peoples of the South Pacific only have to look up to find the Southern Cross, an infallible sign that they are at home. For Europeans, the South Pacific is the end of the world. For the people of the region, it is home. This cultural gulf is repeated in art, literature and politics, and stains the relationship to this day....Generations of students are brought up on the exploits of European explorers like Cook, La Pérouse [1741-1788], and Bougainville, who named landfalls after the geography of the old world: New Caledonia, New Britain, New Hebrides, New Ireland, New South Wales, New Guinea, Nouvelle Cythère. But historians today speak less of European discovery of the Pacific, and more of the multiple and intersecting cultural contacts between Europeans and islanders, with their own histories, cultures and visions....With the [1962] end of the war in Algeria [which began in 1954], France had to wind down its nuclear testing program in the deserts of the Algerian hinterland. The establishment of the nuclear testing program - the Centre d'Expérimentation du Pacifique (CEP) - brought an economic and social earthquake in its wake, affecting the whole country...." Nic Maclellan & Jean Chesneaux, 1998, After Moruroa: France in the South Pacific, pages 11-12, 15, and 116.

NOTE: December 22, 2015 from Reuters: "A Hong Kong-led consortium has been awarded a 70-year contract to bid and operate a $2.5 billion luxury beach resort in French Polynesia that the government hopes will revitalize the South Pacific nation's struggling economy. Headed by real estate firm Recas Global, the consortium will finance, build and run the Tahiti Mahana Beack luxury resort, including a convention center, restaurants and shopping malls, the government said in a communique. Other members of the consortium include Chinese state-owned China railway International and real estate company R&F Properties, French Polynesia President Edouard Fritsh said. 'We think French Polynesia will be the new destination for wealthy tourists from China and other parts of Asia,' said Recase Global chairman Ivan Ko. Ko, who is investing for the first time in French Polynesia, said the main attractions of the region were its pristine environment, original culture and high safety standards. He declined to give details on the consortium's financing. Due to open in six years, the complex is expected to create more than 10,000 jobs, a welcome relief for the archipelago which suffers froma jobless rate of more than 20 percent, according to 2012 government data. Tahiti is the largest island in French Polynesia. Tourism accounts for 10 to 15 prcent of the economy, but the sector has been hit hard by the global financial crisis. French Polynesia is largely dependent on imported goods and financial assistance from France. (Reporting by Cecile Lefort; Editing by Richard Pullin)" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-polynesia-resort-idUSKBN0U60BM20151223].

NOTE: December 23, 2015 from Pacific Business News: "When completed in 2022, Tahiti Mahana Resort [located on 130 acres in Punaauia, Tahiti] would be one of the largest resports in the Pacific, comprised of five international hotels, a timeshare property, residential condominiums, a shopping mall, luxury retail stores, an aquatic park, theaters and a convention center. Many of these facilities are intented to serve Tahiti residents as well as visitors, Oda had previously told PBN."

NOTE: Francis Oda is the Chairman of the Honolulu architecture firm, Group 70 International. On December 23, PBN also had the following: "The investment team [for the Tahiti Mahana Beach Resort and Spa project] includes RECAS Global Limited, China Railway International Group, as well as investors from Europe, North America and Tahiti. They have pledged $2.5 billion towards the estimated construction budget of $3 billion."

NOTE THE FOLLOWING FROM JAMES A. MICHENER IN 1951: "The South Pacific was once the playground for the ship-sick European sailors. Then it became the roistering barricade of the last great pirates. Next it was the longed-for escape from the canuons of New York. Then the unwilling theatre for an American military trumph. But now it has become the meeting ground for Asia and America. Wherever you go in the South Pacific you find present wealth in the hands of white people and most of the business energy in the control of Chinese or Chinese-natives." James A. Michener, 1951, Return to Paradise (Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, Inc.), pages 415-416.

FINALLY: I first lectured on the ms Paul Gauguin in 2007 and again in February 2016 where I provided lectures as the Smithsonian Journeys Expert. In addition to serving as the Smithsonian Journey Expert on the February 2017 cruise, other lecturers are scheduled to be Lindsay Whaley (Dartmouth College) and Susan Rubin Suleiman (Harvard University).

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Charles F. Urbanowicz Web Selected References:

2016a http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/NoordamAmsterdam2016List.html [September-November References for the cruise of the Noordam and the Amsterdam} September 25, 2016 to November 17, 2016. Vancouver, British Columbia, to Hawai'i and then to the South Pacific, disembarking in San Diego].

2016b http://www.csuchico.edu/~curbanowicz/AmsterdamFactFiction2016.html [Non-Fiction & Fiction Writers by Carol (Sadie) Urbanowicz].

2016c http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/CertainSmithsonianCruise2016FactsBrochure.pdf. [Brochure: Some Selective Information For Smithsonian Journeys: French Polynesia (February 4-14, 2016).]

2016d http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/CertainSmithsonianCruise2016Facts.html. [Brochure references as well as reading list and video links for Smithsonian Journeys: French Polynesia (February 4-14, 2016).]

2015a http://www.smithsonianjourneys.org/experts/charles-urbanowicz/ [Smithsonian Journey Expert.]

2015b http://www.csuchico.edu/~curbanowicz/FRENCHPOLYNESIAWWII.html [French Polynesia And World War II In The Pacific.]

2015c http://www.csuchico.edu/~curbanowicz/FORUMWWII2015.html [World War II, 1931-1945: Words, images, And Locations. A video was made of the presentation and is available at http://rcemedia.csuchico.edu/Mediasite/Play/bdf71d0cda6d4494ad7259086a2878d61d (50:29)].

2007a http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/PearlHarbor2007.html [Pearl Harbor After Sixty-Six Years and World War II in the PTO (Pacific Theater of Operations).]

2007b http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Gauguin2007Refs.html [Gauguin Pacific References].

2005a http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/WorldWarIIEnds2005.html [World War II Ends!]

2005b http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Tahiti2005.html [Tahiti: From 1971 To 2004/2005!]

2004a http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/TahitiAndEuropeansFa2004.html [Europeans in Tahiti: From Cook to Gauguin.]

2004b http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/PacificWAMLApril2004.html [Mapping The Islands of the Pacific: Islanders and Others (Including Cook and Darwin).]

2003 http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DestinationPolynesia.html [Destination Polynesia: Tahiti And The Neighbor Islands.]

1993 http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/FSep-30-93.html [Peoples & Cultures of the Pacific: Okeania est omnis divisa in partes tres.]

1991a http://www.csuchico.edu/~curbanowicz/Forum/Dec1991.html [Operation Hawai'i: Prelude to Pearl Harbor.]

1991b, http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/OperationHawaii.pdf.[Operation Hawai'i.]

1980 http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/1980PolynesianPaper.html [Women In The Pacific: Some Polynesian Examples.]

Selected Web Resources:

In addition to the ever changing (and fascinating) Wikipedia [https://www.wikipedia.org/], the following web-sites are of value:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/ [Central Intelligence Agency - The World Factbook].

http://www.janeresture.com/index.htm [Jane's Oceania Home Page].

http://www.captaincooksociety.com/home [The Captain Cook Society].

http://www.militaryheritage.org/DARNGBobcat.html [Delaware Military History: The 198th Coast Artillery (Antiaircraft) in World War II, Operation Bobcat Island].

http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/Table_Of_Contents.htm [The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia - Table of Contents].

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ [HyperWar: A Hypertext History of the Second World War].

http://www.nids.go.jp/english/publication/kiyo/pdf/2011/bulletin_e2011_4.pdf [What Should the "Pacific War" be Named? A Study of the Debate in Japan, by Jun'ichiro Shoji, Director, Center for Military History, National Institute for Defense Studies]

http://www.nps.gov/wapa/indepth/extContent/wapa/guides/offensive/sec3.htm [National Park Service: A Guide to the War in the Pacific]

http://ww2db.com/index.php [World War II Database]

http://www.thewarpage.com/ [The War Page} Including excellent "visuals" on the Pacific Theatre of Operations].

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/Admin-Hist/021-AdvanceBases/AdvanceBases-4.html [United States Naval Administration in World War II: Chapter IV Bobcat].

http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/pacific/bougainville/bougainville.html [Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, 1729-1811].

http://danslapetitemaison.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/nouvelle-cythere-new-experiences-and-exploration-in-the-enlightenment [La Petite Maison~A Brief frisson with the world of French Eighteenth-century erotica].

Selected Paul Gauguin videos:

Bruce Alfred, 2003, Biography: Post-Impressionists - Van Gogh and Gauguin [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tPHvj2BDGs] [1:26:22]

Simon Bent, 2007, The Yellow House [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXqrKOqVHAk] [1:13:04]

Gloria Groom, 2008, Gauguin And the Generation Of The 1890s (Second Annual Meta Kleiman Docent Education Fund Lecture, Indianapolis Museum of Art) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51MyBoXxqaQ] [1:00:50]

Christopher Hampton [Screenplay], 1986, The Wolf At The Door [Donald Sutherland as Paul Gauguin] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A_1ea4vYmk] [1:36:35]

Oriol Hernan, 2008?, Paul Gauguin Paintings [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8OwzdRa2V0] [4:11]

David Manson, 2014, The Post-Impressionists - Paul Gauguin (Full Documentary) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4xYO_KHz9Q] [49:03]

Kenney Mencher, 2012, Paul Gauguin [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8gBf5gLMUU] [17:01]

Michelle Moshay, 2012, Hidden Faces of Paul Gauguin [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD5ouG3JltY] [31:51]

Moshay-Teekamp, 2006, Teekamp's "Hidden Faces Of Paul Gauguin" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE7G4GFXVC8] [7:19]

Keanu Reeves, 2015, Keanu Reeves Reading From Paul Gauguin's 'Noa Noa' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj1YVgxm8bU] [51:30]

Peter Teekamp, 2007, Slideshow - Tahiti Watercolors 2007 M/S Gauguin by Teekamp (October 13-24, 2007 sailing) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH00P1rq5bU][7:22]

Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe, 2009/2010, Paul Gauguin's house in Hiva Oa [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XFtPYkDxQs] [1:03]

Steven Zucker and Beth Harris, 2013, Khan Academy: Paul Gauguin, Vision after the Sermon, or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1888 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5lhKvKvWPg] [3:39]

Selected World War II videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK8gYGg0dkE [America Declares War on Japan - President Roosevelt Speech] (4:47)

Or see a slightly different version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK8gYGg0dkE [Franklin Delano Roosevelt - Pearl Harbor Address on December 8, 1941]. (2:36)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_1rzp2YVxQ [World War II in the Pacific: Every Day 1941-1945] (5:05)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e_AZ3j2LbY [World War II in Europe and the Pacific: Every Day] (7:13)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1STthONg-c [Top 10 World War II Movies] (12:30)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh57jkS0Vaw [Japanese Sign Final Surrender on USS Missouri, September 2, 1945] (8:39)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw90C4MpHrQ [Emperor Hirohito Rescript at WWII end, English Translation] (4:48)

http://www.openculture.com/2015/06/dr-seuss-world-war-ii-propaganda-films.html [Dr. Seuss' World War II Propaganda Films: Your Job in Germany (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)] (12:49 and 17:16).

Selected Published Items (in addition to those cited above):

Caroline Alexander, 2003, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (NY: Viking).

James Bradley, 2015, The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia (New York: Little, Brown And Company).

Richard Brettell et al., 1988, The Art of Paul Gauguin (Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art).

Stephen H. Brown, 2003, Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail (NY: St. Martin's Press).

Françoise Cachin, 1989, Gauguin: The Quest For Paradise [translated from the French by I Mark Paris] (NY: 1992 Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Edition).

Bengdt Danielsson and Marie-Thérèse Danielsson, 1986, Poisoned Reign: French Nuclear Colonialism in the Pacific (Penguin).

Charles R. Darwin, 1839, The Voyage of the Beagle.

Bernard Denvir [Editor], 1992, Gauguin Letters from Brittany and the South Seas: The Search For Paradise (NY: Clarkson Potter/Publishers).

Joan Druett, 2011, Tupaia: The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigtor (New Zealand: Random House).

Edwin N. Ferndon, 1981, Early Tahiti As The Explorers Saw It 1767-1797 (University of Arizona Press).

Edwin N. Fernson, 1991, Tahiti. In Terrence E. Hays [Editor], Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume II Oceania (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co.), pages 305-307,

Stewart Firth, 1987, Nuclear Playground (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press).

Paul Gauguin, 1901, Noa Noa [Translated from the French by O.F. Theis] (NY: 1957 Noonday Press).

Irving Goldman, 1970, Ancient Polynesian Society (University of Chicago Press).

Stephen Harding, 2015, Last To Die: A Defeated Empire, a Forgotten Mission, and the Last American Killed in World War II (Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press).

Earl Hinz, 1992, Pacific Island Battlegrounds Of World War II: Then And Now (Honolulu: The Bess Press).

Eckhard Hollmann, 1996, Paul Gauguin: Images From The South Seas (Prestel-Verlag, Munich - New York).

Tony Horwitz, 2002, Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before (NY: Henry Holt and Company).

K.R. Howe, Robert C. Kiste, and Brij V. Lal [editors], 1994, Tides Of History: The Pacific Islands In The Twentieth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press).

K.R. Howe [Editor], 1981, Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press).

K.R. Howe, 2003, The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered And Settled The Pacific Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press).

Saburo Ienaga, 1968, The Pacific War, 1931-1945: A Critical Perspective on Japan's Role in World War II [1978 English translation] (NY: Pantheon Books).

Leo Janse, 2009 [Editor], Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters - The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition (London: Thames & Hudson, in association with the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute), Six Volumes. FASCINATING NOTE: These six volumes are all available on the web at: http://vangoghletters.org/vg/.

Steven Johnson, 2010, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (NY: Riverhead Books).

Steven Johnson, 2014, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made The Modern World (NY: Riverhead Books).

Patrick Vernon Kirch, 1984, The Evolution of Polynesian Chiefdoms (Cambridge).

Arthur Koestler, 1964, The Act of Creation (NY: Macmillan).

Richard Lansdown [Editor], 2006, Strangers in the South Seas: The Idea of the Pacific in Western Thought (University of Hawai'i Press).

Nic Maclellan & Jean Chesneaux, 1998, After Moruroa: France in the South Pacific (Melbourne: Ocean Press).

William Manchester, 1979, Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (Boston: Little, Brown and Company).

James A. Michener, 1947, Tales of the South Pacific (Fawcett Crest Books).

Alan Morehead, 1966, The Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific 1767-1840 (Penguin Books).

Bronwen Nicholson [Editor]. 1995, Gauguin And Maori Art (Auckland, NZ: Auckland City Art Gallery).

Charles B. Nordhoff and James N. Hall, 1932, Mutiny on the Bounty.

Charles B. Nordhoff and James N. Hall, 1933, Men Against the Sea.

Charles B. Nordhoff and James N. Hall, 1934, Pitcairn's Island.

Douglas L. Oliver, 1974, Ancient Tahitian Society [Three volumes] (University of Hawai'i Press).

Douglas L. Oliver, 1989, The Pacific Islands [Third edition] (Harvard University Press).

Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard, 2016, Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan (NY: Henry Holt and Company).

Nathaniel Philbrick, 2003, Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 (NY: The Penguin Group).

Francis Pike, 2015, Hirohito's War: The Pacific War 1941-1945 (London: Bloomsbury). IMPORTANT NOTE: This 1,110 page volume does not have any maps, appendices, or a bibliography; all of these items, and more, are only available on the web at: http://www.francispike.org/.

Max Quanchi and John Robson, 2009, The A To Z Of The Discovery And Exploration Of the Pacific Islands (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press).

John Rewald [Editor], 1972, Camille Pissarro: Letters To His Son Lucien (Third Edition, Revised And Enlarged) (Mamaroneck, NY: Paul P. Appel, Publisher).

Glynis Ridley, 2010, Camille Pissarro: Letters To His Son Lucien The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, The High Seas, And The First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe (NY: Crown Publishers).

David Robie, 2005, Eyes Of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior (Auckland: Asia Pacific Network).

Anne Salmond, 1991, Two Worlds: First Meetings Between Maori and Europeans 1642-1772 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press).

Anne Salmond, 2009, Aphrodite's Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti (University of California Press).

George T. M. Shackelford et al., 2004, Gauguin Tahiti (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts).

Debora Silverman, 2000, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search For Sacred Art (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux).

Bernard Smith, 1960, European Vision And the South Pacific 1768-1850: A Study In The History Of Art And Ideas (Oxford University Press).

Oskar Hermann Khristian Spate, 1979, The Spanish Lake (University of Minnesota Press).

David Stanley, 1989, South Pacific Handbook (Chico, CA: Moon Publications, Inc.).

David Stanley, 2004, Moon Handbook's South Pacific [Eighth Edition] (Emeryville, CA: Avalon Travel Publishing).

Susan Rubin Suleiman, 2006, Crises of Memory and the Second World War (Harvard University Press).

Belinda Thomson [Editor], 2010, Gauguin: Maker Of Myth (London: Tate Publshing).

Paul Theroux, 1992, The Happy Isles Of Oceania: Paddling The Pacific (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons).

Ingo F. Walther, 2004, Paul Gauguin 1848-1903: The Primitive Sophisticate (Cologne: Taschen).

Robert K. Wilcox, 1985, Japan's Seret War: Japan's Race Against Time To Build Its Own Atomic Bomb (New York: Morrow).

James Wilson, 1799, A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean 1796-1798 (NOTE: There is an outstanding 1968 reprint by Frederic A. Praeger, Publishers, of this seminal work.).

Simon Winchester, 2015, Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers (HarperCollins Publishers).

[1 January 2017 = ~11,800 words]

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