World Battlefronts: Rule, Britannia

The clean wind blew from the Pacific, rippled the Stars & Stripes and the Union Jack flying side by side over the battered Gilberts. By virtue of a bloody conquest, the U.S. Navy had assumed military control over the 16 coral atolls. By virtue of a 49-year rule (1892-1941), broken briefly by the Japs, the British Colonial Office reassumed civil control.

On the second day of the Marines’ landing, while the struggle for Tarawa was still nip-&-tuck, two seasoned British Empire servants had come ashore: Lieut. Colonel Vivian Fox-Strangways, India-born, Africa-trained, Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony; and Major Francis G. I. Holland, Director of Education among the 27,000 Gilbertese. In his kit Major Holland carried a British flag.

At the command post on the wrecked beachhead, the Marines’ Major General Julian Smith proposed a dual ceremony. Up a coconut palm, stripped of fronds by shellfire, rose the Stars & Stripes. Simultaneously, up an adjacent tree, soared the Union Jack.

It was an earnest of what would happen to other lands retaken from Japan according to the Cairo plan; at least some of them would be returned without question to their former imperial owners.