The story of Tuvalu (formerly the Ellice Islands, situated north of Fiji) and Tuvaluans’ involvement in the Second World War. Tuvaluans worked with New Zealand coast-watchers in reporting the movements of the Japanese Navy. They suffered the effects of American occupation of their islands and bombing raids by the Japanese. Tuvaluans working on the phosphate islands, Ocean Island and Nauru, suffered under Japanese rule. Some were conscripted into the Japanese Navy and trained to fight, they were then executed when food supplies ran low. Others were transported to Tarawa or Kusaie as slave labour for the Japanese. This book documents the many dimensions of the war: military, social, political and environmental.

1994, Paperback, 187 pages, MBC University of Canterbury & IPS University of the South Pacific, ISBN 0-9583300-5-0,

41 photographs, 15 maps, frontispiece , appendices, index, notes and bibliography.