Nations can often be petty and spiteful when it comes to post-war relations, but rarely, if ever, in history did one nation get more petty with not an enemy, but their former ally than when the U.S. military created what is known today as "Million Dollar Point" out of sheer spite.
1,750 kilometres or 1,090 miles off the coast of Australia in the South Pacific Ocean lies the island nation of Vanuatu. Just off the southeast coast of the island, on the outskirts of the main settlement of Luganville, lies a truly remarkable sight: a giant underwater junkyard containing thousands upon thousands of pieces of WWII American military equipment, from tanks, artillery pieces, and bulldozers down to rifles, pistols, food tins and Coca-Cola bottles- all slowly rusting away on the ocean floor. Known as “Million Dollar Point”, every year this submerged museum of wartime logistics attracts hundreds of curious snorkelers and scuba divers from around the world. But what is all this abandoned equipment doing here? Are these the remains of an epic naval battle? A tragic shipwreck? Some gigantic whoopsie-doodle? Nope! The origins of Million Dollar Point are far, far sillier - and pettier - than that! This is the story of one the greatest acts of political and economic spite in modern history and how it helped inspire a Naked Cult that in turn helped lead this region to independence.
The islands that make up modern Vanuatu, formerly New Hebrides, were first settled around 1300 BCE by peoples from Melanesian islands to the west such as New Guinea and the Solomons, followed by successive waves of migration by Polynesian peoples from the East, with later European overlords arriving and variously controlling the islands. For example, at one point the region had a complex and unwieldy bureaucracy, with separate British and French police forces and a judicial system presided over by a neutral judge appointed by the King of Spain - and by the way, while most commonly used today to describe a building with multiple individually-owned living units, the term condominium can also refer to a geographic area where multiple sovereign powers agree to share administrative duties.
But for most of its history, Vanuatu remained a quiet colonial backwater, subsisting mainly on the trade of coconut meat, fish, sandalwood, and other natural resources. However, in the wake of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941 and the subsequent Japanese blitzkrieg across southeast Asia and the Pacific, the archipelago suddenly found itself in danger of invasion. In May 1942, American forces arrived on the islands, setting up a command post on Efate.
Engineers from the U.S. Navy’s 1st Construction Batallion - better known as the Seabees - were soon dispatched to Espiritu Santo to construct a crushed-coral airstrip to support the then-ongoing battle on Guadalcanal.
In an incredible feat of wartime logistics the Seabees, working round-the-clock, constructed Turtle Bay Airfield in only 20 days. Soon more CB detachments arrived and constructed three more airstrips, one of which is Santo International Airport today. Throughout the war, thousands of bombers, fighters, and other aircraft from the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Army Air Corps as well as the Royal New Zealand Air Force operated from these airfields in support of operations throughout the South Pacific.
In addition to the airstrips themselves, the Seabees also built extensive supporting infrastructure including barracks, repair shops, hangars, hospitals, fuel and ammunition depots, and water desalination plants. Espiritu Santo also served as a major supply and repair depot for U.S. Navy ships, stocking millions of tons of the fuel, food, ammunition, spare parts, and other materiel needed to fuel the gruelling island-hopping campaign against Imperial Japan. In particular, Espiritu Santo Naval Base was home to USS AFD-1, one of four Auxiliary Floating Dry Docks stationed in the South Pacific to repair and maintain U.S. Navy ships.
Author: Gilles Messier
Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Caden Nielsen
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