2. Pearlshelling refers to the commercial harvesting of pearlshell, once a valuable marine commodity, used primarily in the manufacture of buttons and for decorating various household items. It was graded and packed on shore and transported by sea to markets in London and later New York. Originally the shell was gathered from reefs, but from the mid-1870s divers donned specialized equipment to access deeper waters. Trepanging, the first marine industry established in northern Australia, refers to the harvesting of trepang (sea slug or bêche-de-mer) from reefs, originally by naked “swimming divers.” It was smoked to reduce its volume and sold into markets in China, where it was prized for its supposed medical and aphrodisiac qualities.

3. See, for example, Ganter, Regina, The pearl-shellers of Torres Strait: resource use, development and decline, 1860s-1960s (Melbourne, 1994)Google Scholar; Martinez, Julia and Vickers, Adrian, The pearl frontier: Indonesian labor and Indigenous encounters in Australia's northern trading network (Hawai'i, 2015)Google Scholar; Moore, Clive, Leckie, Jacqueline, and Munro, Doug, eds., Labour in the South Pacific (Townsville, 1990)Google Scholar; Mullins, Stephen, Torres Strait: a history of colonial occupation and culture contact, 1864-1897 (Rockhampton, Q, 1994)Google Scholar; Reynolds, Henry, North of Capricorn: the untold story of Australia's north (Crows Nest, NSW, 2003)Google Scholar; Shnukal, Anna, Ramsay, Guy, and Nagata, Yuriko, eds., Navigating boundaries: the Asian diaspora in Torres Strait (Canberra, 2004)Google Scholar; Stanley Sissons, David Carlisle, “The Japanese in the Australian pearling industry,” Queensland Heritage 3 (1979), 8–27Google Scholar.

4. Chief Secretary's Office, Brisbane, to Government Resident, Thursday Island, April 28, 1899, PRE/102, QSA.

5. Report and recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Pearl-shelling Industry, 1914–1916; Government Printer [printed 22/9/1916] (Bamford Report) NAA A460/1/5/25/2. Chairman was the Hon. F.W. Bamford, M.P. See also John Percival Spence Bach, “The pearling industry of Australia: an account of its social and economic development,” Department of Commerce and Agriculture, Canberra, 1955; and Adrian Cunningham, “On borrowed time: the Australian pearlshelling industry, Asian indentured labour and the White Australia Policy, 1946-1962,” Master of Letters thesis, Department of History, Australian National University, Canberra, 1992.

6. Martinez, Julia, “The end of indenture? Asian workers in the Australian pearling industry, 1901-1972,” International Labor and Working-Class History 67 (Spring 2005): 125–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. John Lamb's research on the Okinawan presence in Australia was funded by the Australia Japan Foundation of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. His report was published as Okinawans reaching Australia (Carlisle, 2019). The present article is based on a twenty-thousand-word unpublished paper I wrote for the project in 2016: “A failed experiment: Okinawan indents and the post-war Torres Strait pearl fishery, 1958-1963.” Some of its findings were published as “Okinawan ‘pearling specialists’ in Torres Strait and the end of the Queensland pearlshelling industry, 1958-1963,” Queensland History Journal 23.10 (2018): 651–65. Professor Mayumi Kamada of Nagoya University of Commerce and Business directs a large Japanese government-funded research project into the Japanese presence in the Arafura Sea. One outcome was Yuriko Nagata, “Okinawan contract pearl-shell labourers in the Torres Strait: 1958-1961,” Osutoraria Kenkyu [Journal of Australian Studies] 3 (2017): 61–70, based on Japanese newspaper sources and interviews with former divers on Okinawa in 2016. I thank John for sending me an early draft of his report and Yuriko for a copy of her article. What follows covers some of the same material but is more detailed and based on Australian concerns and sources.

8. Cunningham, “On borrowed time,” 99, 101, 102; George Michell Farwell, Cape York to Kimberley (Adelaide, 1962), 78; Con Denis George [Georgiades], “Pearling industry in Australia and Papua New Guinea, 1949-1977, and the part played by the author and the Japanese, adapted from ‘The Pearl’, Report to Government of PNG, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and to the Asian Development Bank by Denis C. George 1978,” (Cairns, Q, 1996); Regina J Ganter, The pearl-shellers of Torres Strait: resource use, development and decline, 1860s-1960s (Melbourne, 1994), 126–7; Philip Hayward and Junko Konishi, “A fleeting aquapelago: a theoretical consideration of the Japanese presence in the Torres Strait 1880s-1940s,” South Pacific Studies 37.2 (2017): 83; Shuji Kyuhara, “Remains of Japanese on Torres Strait islands, March 1977,” MLC 1791-132, John Oxley Library, Brisbane; Martinez, “The end of indenture?” 141; Norman Stewart Pixley, “Pearlers of North Australia: the romantic story of the diving fleets,” Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, 9, 1972, 19, 28; Coralie and Leslie Rees, Coasts of Cape York: travels around Australia's pearl-tipped peninsula (Sydney, 1960), 61–3, 81, 117–8.

9. See Hanagan, Michael P., “An agenda for transnational labor history,” International Review of Social History 49 (December 2004): 455–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Lawrence, David, Customary exchange across Torres Strait, Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 34 (2): 1994Google Scholar.

11. Shnukal et al., Navigating boundaries, discusses the five major pre-war Asian communities of Thursday Island.

12. Ganter, Regina, Mixed relations: Asian-Aboriginal contact in north Australia (Crawley, WA, 2006)Google Scholar; Reynolds, North of Capricorn; Deborah Ruiz Wall and Christine Choo, Re-imagining Australia: voices of indigenous Australian of Filipino descent (Southport, Q, 2016); Shnukal et al., Navigating boundaries.

13. See, among others, Ganter, The pearl-shellers of Torres Strait; Ganter, Regina, “The Wakayama triangle: Japanese heritage of north Australia,” Journal of Australian Studies 61 (1999): 55–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 221–2; Yuriko Nagata, Unwanted aliens: Japanese internment in Australia (St Lucia, Q, 1996); Sissons, “The Japanese in the Australian pearling industry.”

14. Bach, “The pearling industry of Australia,” 171. This author has documented eleven actual or threatened Japanese strikes or protest actions between 1901 and 1936.

15. Nagata, Unwanted aliens, 49, 68.

16. The estimate of the pre-war Japanese population was made by the Queensland Governor, Sir Leslie Wilson to Lt-General VAH Sturdee, CB, CBE, DSO, Headquarters, First Australian Army, July 5, 1944, File of “Papers ref. Torres Strait Islanders,” SRS 1139/1/86, QSA. The five returnees were Tomitaro Fujii, Tsuneichi Mana, Jirokichi Nakata, Kyuukichi Shibasaki, and Haruyoshi Yamashita, CPA [Communist Party of Australia] Activity and Interest in Thursday Island, December 11, 1949, A6122, 273, NAA. By 1958, only three were still working in the industry: Fujii for Bowden; Mana for Whyalla; and Brisbane-born Kakichi Yagura, son of a Japanese father and English mother, for Hockings. Yagura was educated in Japan and considered “a typical Japanese,” Nagata, “Okinawan contract pearl-shell labourers,” 63. He was employed as a carpenter for Bowden before the war, Japanese - Thursday Island, BP242/1, Q30511, No. 465, NAA.

17. “All pearling luggers were impressed in the early months of 1942 by either the Army or the Navy . . .,” W.J.F. Riordan, MP, Brisbane, to Rt Hon. J.B. Chifley, Prime Minister, October 10, 1945, A461/8/E350/1/9, Part 1, NAA.

18. Annual Report of the Department of Native Affairs (hereafter cited as ARDNA), June 1947, 2. The Torres Strait pearling fleet began to operate again on January 1, 1946, and during the first six months collected 53 tons of pearlshell and 301 tons of trochus to the value of £66,000. Toward the end of the year, graded shell was bringing £600 to £700 a ton, ARDNA, June 1946; Northern Miner, October 18, 1946, 5.

19. Sir Leslie Orme Wilson to Lt-General V.A.H. Sturdee, July 5, 1944. A similar proposal in 1911 to train Torres Strait Islanders as deep-sea divers in order to break the Japanese monopoly was never acted upon: “It would no doubt be possible to train the Torres Straits Islanders to do that work, for they are sufficiently intelligent and courageous to do all that is required in that industry, if under white supervision. . . . It only requires the Government to go a step further and provide a properly fitted out boat with a competent master to start the natives in working the diving dress. In a few years the industry might in this way be chiefly worked by Islanders that are British subjects,” Report from Queensland Governor to Colonial Secretary, July 20, 1911, PRE/A530, QSA.

20. ARDNA, June 1947, 2. See also Anna Shnukal, “The Torres Strait divers’ and tenders’ school on Thursday Island: a case study in early post-war Indigenous industrial training,” The Great Circle 40 (2018): 84–105.

21. Arnold Charles Cooper Lock, Tropics and topics (Sydney, 1949), 282.

22. Three councilors (then always male) were elected from each island and the decisions taken at the conference were thus both representative and influential, ARDNA, June 1948, 22; Director of Native Affairs, to Department of Health and Home Affairs, October 16, 1947, Native Affairs - TI - Alien labour, 1948, A/69510, QSA.

23. Bach, “The pearling industry of Australia,” 171.

24. See Ganter, The pearl-shellers, 68–88, for a history of the Torres Strait company boat system.

25. “Pearl shell industry. Shortage of vessels and men. Retarding development,” Cairns Post, March 16, 1949, 5.

26. Queensland Premier and Chief Secretary's Department to State President, Demobilised Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen's Association of Australia, Brisbane, July 15, 1949, Employment of Aliens in Pearlshell Industry in Torres Strait, TRE A/13838/51/11559, QSA.

27. Notoriously competitive in the early days, the master pearlers had formed the association in 1885 as a cartel to reduce the wages and conditions of their “colored” employees, mostly “Asiatics,” although not all the pearlers belonged. “Anticipated riots at Thursday Island,” The Queensland Figaro, April 25,1885, 515.

28. John Dunwoodie to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, December 21, 1957, J25, 1958/1441, NAA.

29. Rees and Rees, Coasts of Cape York, 117–8.

30. Martinez, “The end of indenture?” 140.

31. See John Lamb, Okinawans reaching Australia; Anna Shnukal, “The return of Japanese and Okinawan indentured labour to Darwin 1955-1958,” Northern Territory Historical Studies 29 (2018): 22–37.

32. Manfred Douglas Cross, pers. comm., 2009.

33. This fleet provided employment for 255 Islanders, with a further 850 Islander and Aboriginal men employed directly or indirectly in the marine industries, ARDNA, June 1958, 12.

34. Rees and Rees, Coasts of Cape York, 81. Dunwoodie also told the Reeses that he had led the master pearlers’ efforts to import Japanese divers after the war. Born on Thursday Island, Dunwoodie became Bowden Pearling Coy's managing director in 1924 and later mayor of Thursday Island. John Orrell, pers. comm., 1982, who lived on Thursday Island for six months in 1947, claimed that Dunwoodie was then “king of the island” and in 1949 he was reputed to be probably “the most influential business man on the Island,” CPA [Communist Party of Australia Activity and Interest in Thursday Island], December 11, 1949, para. 115, A6122, 273, NAA. In 1955 Bowden Pearling Coy alone “operated 17 or 18 luggers and managed four others”, Memorandum from Assistant Secretary, Department of Immigration, May 19, 1955, A518, F140/3/5, NAA.

35. Ganter, The pearl-shellers, 126. The diplomatic situation is set out in a memorandum from the Commonwealth Department of External Affairs, July 18, 1958: “Although the Ryukuans [sic] are Japanese nationals in that residual sovereignty over the Ryuku Islands rests with Japan, the United States by virtue of Article 3 of the Treaty of Peace with Japan exercises all powers “of administration, legislation and jurisdiction” over the Islands and their inhabitants. Consequently, the United States is the country that, in our view, should appropriately exercise consular jurisdiction over the Ryukuan divers,” A452, 1958/2679, NAA.

36. George M. Taggart, Chief of Fisheries, Naha, Okinawa, to F.F. Anderson, Sydney, April 8, 1955, Introduction of Japanese divers to pearling industry, F423, S13, NAA. John Lamb, pers. comm., 2016, also tells me that “quite a few” of the salvage divers in Okinawa “were being blown up in salvage accidents!”

37. Evidence of diver Seiichi Uehara, July 2, 1958, inquest into death of Chusei Gushi, JUS/N1324/420/58, QSA.

38. Toshio Fukuda, Keiko Bussan Co Ltd Importers, Exporters and Manufacturers’ Agents, Tokyo, to Messrs Haritos Bros Pearling Coy, Darwin, n.d. [stamped Immigration Department, March 18, 1955], Introduction of Japanese divers to pearling industry, F423, S13, NAA.

39. The Otto Gerdau Coy, New York, to Department of Industries and Agriculture, Canberra, March 8, 1955, Introduction of Japanese divers to pearling industry, F423, S13, NAA.

40. Cunningham, “On borrowed time,” 99–100.

41. Sub-Collector of Customs, Thursday Island, to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, November 20, 1957, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

42. Okinawa is the largest of the Ryukyu Islands. “Ryukyuan” is the term almost invariably used in Australian official correspondence, although it is sometimes crossed out and either “Okinawan” or “Japanese” substituted. On other occasions “Japanese” is replaced by “Okinawan.” Pre-war Japanese indents often included a small number of Okinawans: In 1939, for example, there were seventeen Okinawans among the almost four hundred Japanese residents of Thursday Island; Nagata, “Okinawan contract pearl-shell labourers,” 63.

43. A standard fathom measured 6 feet (1.83 metres); a Japanese fathom 5 feet (1.52 metres); 1 ton weighed 1.02 tonnes.

44. Signed as part of “conditions applicable to Ryukuan pearling specialists admitted to Australia for employment at Thursday Island” by Bowden Pearling Coy, February 4, 1958, J25, 1958/1441, NAA.

45. “Local reaction to Okinawan divers believed favourable,” Cairns Post, February 28, 1958, 7.

46. Kemuel Kiwat, pers. comm., 1981. The numbers of Okinawans taken by each company are as follows: Bowden Pearling Coy Pty Ltd, manager Jack Dunwoodie, (72); HO and RN Hockings Pty Ltd, principals Harold Ormsby Hockings and Reginald Norman Hockings, (30); AE and WJ Duffield, principals Arnold Ernest Duffield and William James Duffield, (24); Whyalla Shell Coy Pty Ltd, manager Jack Zafer, (18); Burns Philp & Coy, manager William Mortley Dupain at Cairns, (12); and Cape York Pearling Coy, manager Boris Alexander Norman (six).

47. Ashley Hill, “The last of the trochus divers,” North Australian Monthly 6 (1959), 5.

48. Seamen's Engagement Register, Thursday Island, June 14, 1951–June 9, 1964, SRS5379/1, QSA.

49. Evidence of tender Katsukichi Kohama, June 8, 1958, inquest into death of Wasaga Miskin, JUS/N1327/483/58, QSA.

50. Torres Straits Pilot and New Guinea Gazette, January 25, 1902.

51. George, “Pearling industry,” 27.

52. Hockings’ dormitory, situated at the corner of Milman and Hargrave Streets on a half-acre block bought for £500, cost £4,600 to erect. On July 9, 1958, soon after repatriating their indents, Hockings offered the building for sale to various government departments but were refused; Director of Native Affairs to Health and Home Affairs, Brisbane, April 1, 1959, SRS505/1/2622, QSA. It was later bought by a developer and turned into flats, says Vic McGrath, pers. comm., 2017, who lived for a time in one of them.

53. “Local reaction to Okinawan divers believed favourable,” 7.

54. ARDNA, June 1958, 46.

55. Henry Gibson (Seaman) Dan, a postwar Duffields diver, pers. comm., 2017. Four marriages with local women took place between 1959 and 1962 and an unknown number of ex-marital children were born to the Okinawans.

56. “Local reaction to Okinawan divers believed favourable,” 7.

57. Inquest into death of Chusei Gushi on April 7, 1958, JUS/N1324/420/58, QSA.

58. Kyozo Hirakawa, interviewed on January 18, 1987 by Ganter, The pearl-shellers, 126–7.

59. In a rare case, on the day of his death, Chusei Gushi was tended not by a countryman but by Peter Bagie from Banks Island, an experienced pearlshell diver but not a licensed tender, who had signed on simply as crew. Maki Rattler, also from Kubin, was the licensed middle tender, JUS/N1324/420/58, QSA.

60. Ganter, The pearl-shellers, 126.

61. Henry (Seaman) Dan, pers. comm., 2017.

62. Mara William to Regina Ganter, “Oral history of human use and experience of crown of thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef: a report submitted to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority,” Brisbane: Institute of Applied Environmental Research, Griffith University, Brisbane, 1987, 111.

63. ARDNA, June 1959, 39.

64. Handwritten notes by Fr Sidney (Tom) Dixon, based on conversations with Francis Sabatino, n.a., n.p., October, 23, 1984, Box 0740/DIXON/1, Missionary of the Sacred Heart Sacred Heart Archives, Kensington, NSW: “Government wanted Okinawa Japs to come and teach locals how to dive. Bowden employed but after 3-4 years all went back! Francis had to teach them!”

65. George, “Pearling industry,” 27.

66. Statement by William James Duffield on August 25, 1958, quoted in George, “Pearling industry,” 29.

67. “Okinawan divers inexperienced,” Cairns Post, May 1, 1958, 7.

68. Inquest into death of Chusei Gushi, JUS/N1324/420/58, QSA; Inquest into death of Zenjiro Chinen, JUS/N1324/419/58, QSA; Inquest into death of Choshun Yara, JUS/N1324/422/58, QSA. I have followed standard Australian practice of surname last, whereas Japanese usage has surname first. Chusei Gushi is reported as Gushitada Kiyoshi in Torres News, Nagata, “Okinawan contract pearl-shell labourers,” 64. Four Torres Strait Islanders also died in similar circumstances in 1958: Inquest into death of Paul Bowia, JUS/N1324/418/58, QSA; Inquest into death of Wasaga Miskin, JUS/N1327/483/58, QSA; Inquest into death of Michael Asai, JUS/N1331/575/58, QSA; Inquest into death of Kailu Mataika/Sambo, JUS/N1332/595/58, QSA.

69. The pearling industry “is experiencing a recession that is threatening the very existence of the industry and the future of Thursday Island as a town,” because of the widespread move to plastics. “The result has been a steep down grading of pearl shell resulting in a proportion, previously marketable, being now discarded as unsaleable and a consequent drop in revenue to the producer. Added to this is the desire of dealers and manufacturers for a reduction in production. These factors have severely militated against the success in the industry during the year under review and the prospects are by no means bright, particularly for the Master Pearlers who employ on their fleets Ryukyuans and Torres Strait Islanders,” ARDNA, June 1958, 12.

70. George, “Pearling industry,” 27.

71. Department of Health and Home Affairs, to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, January 21, 1960, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

72. “Take of pearl shell,” Cairns Post May 28, 1958, 5. Dr Noble was Minister for Health and Home Affairs.

73. Queensland Premier to Prime Minister of Australia, June 3, 1958, A452, 1958/2679, NAA.

74. “More concerned for pearlers,” Cairns Post, May 29, 1958, 7.

75. Sub-Collector of Customs to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, July 31, 1958, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

76. Sub-Collector of Customs, Thursday Island, to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, August 11, 1958, J25, 1958/9618, NAA. Yuriko Nagata, pers. comm., 2017, tells me that the ex-divers she interviewed in Okinawa in 2016 complained of their bad treatment by Hockings and Duffields, which were under the most severe financial stress and had stopped the indents’ pay and allotments. Unlike the longer-established companies, both were founded after World War II by younger men with family connections to the industry but perhaps without the necessary reserves of capital or practical experience and certainly more highly leveraged. Harold Ormsby Hockings and Reginald Norman Hockings were the third generation of Thursday Island-based master pearlers, being the grandnephews of Reginald Augustus Charles Hockings OBE, who registered Wanetta Pearling Coy in 1903. Reginald Hockings was one of the names “synonymous with T.I. history” and the most respected of the master pearlers. He was unmarried and made partners of his nephews, Harold Norman Hockings and Francis Edgar (Frank) Hockings, in 1929; retired from the company in 1930; and died in Makassar, Indonesia, in 1932. The firm was struck off the Register of Firms from January 31, 1942, but after the war was re-registered by his nephews in May 1947. His grandnephews, Harold Ormsby Hockings and Reginald Norman Hockings, registered their own firm in September 1949. Among their luggers were Candia, Charm, Nadine, Panton, and Trixen. Both Hockings companies had their station and boat slips at Hockings Point on the southeast shore of Thursday Island. The brothers Arnold Ernest Duffield and William James Duffield were the sons of Ernest James Duffield, who in 1937 was appointed maintenance engineer of the Bowden Pearling Company, and they completed their schooling on Thursday Island. After the war Duffield Sr founded Active Pearling Coy and his sons registered their company, Cape York Pearling Coy Pty Ltd, on Thursday Island in April 1952, apparently taking control of their father's luggers. In 1957, they registered eight boats: Active, Ernest James, Envy, Hespia, Jennifer Jill, Jenny, Laura, and Nobby II. Their application to the Queensland government for financial assistance in 1959, by which time their fleet was reduced to four vessels, was refused. It should be noted, however, that these master pearlers continued to operate in the pearl culture industry until the late 1960s. George, “Pearling industry,” 31, reports that a reorganization took place at the end of 1959, when, with a few exceptions, all the Thursday Island boats “were bought by pearl culture interests or were contracted from now on to supply pearl shell oysters to the new Australian-Japanese pearl culture projects, soon to be established.” Hockings became manager of the Goods Island farm of Australasian Pearlers, a Melbourne company with Japanese participation; Duffields became part of the Cape York Pearling Coy with British and Iranian participation.

77. Sub-Collector of Customs to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, August 14, 1958, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

78. Ibid., September 3, 1958, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

79. Ibid., Brisbane, August 18, 1958, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

80. Ibid., August 25, 1958, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

81. Unidentified newspaper article, received on October 3, 1958, by the Department of Immigration, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

82. George, “Pearling industry,” 27.

83. Ibid., 29.

84. Queensland Premier to Australian Prime Minister, June 3, 1958, A452, 1958/2679, NAA.

85. Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, to Department of Immigration, September 18, 1959, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

86. Bowden, Thursday Island, to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, December 16, 1959, J25, 1958/1441, NAA.

87. Acting Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, to Sub-Collector of Customs, Thursday Island, January 13, 1960, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

88. Sub-Collector of Customs, Thursday Island, to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, January 1960, J25, 1958/1441, NAA. Of the thirty-three repatriated indents, twenty-two were from Bowden, eight from Burns Philp, and three from Cape York Pearling. Of the fifty-seven still employed, forty-nine belonged to Bowden, and four each to Burns Philp and Cape York Pearling.

89. Cabinet Decision No. 2164, taken January 19, 1960. The 105 men requested—72 for Bowden, 21 for Cape York Pearling, and 12 for Burns Philp—would add to the 57 already employed; Queensland Department of Health and Home Affairs to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, January 21, 1960, J25, 1958/1441, NAA.

90. Sub-Collector of Customs, Thursday Island, to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, March 7, 1960, J25, 1958/1441, NAA.

91. Ibid., March 22, 1960, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

92. Bowden employed 48, Burns Philp five and Cape York Pearling three.

93. Inquest into death of Hiroshi Arakawa, JUS/N1372/286/60, QSA; Inquest into death of Teigi Miyagi, JUS/N1373/314/60, QSA.

94. Ganter, The pearl-shellers, 126–7.

95. Yuriko Nagata, pers. comm., 2017.

96. Bowden employed twenty-three, Cape York Pearling nine, and Burns Philp eight.

97. The minister told parliament that the economic measures were introduced in November 1960 and since then the pearling season had not been open, Cairns Post, May 15, 1961, 5; May 17, 1961, 1.

98. ARDNA, June 1959, 43.

99. John Dunwoodie, reported in The Brisbane Courier Mail, June 23, 1960, J25, 1958/9618, NAA.

100. Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, to Assistant Secretary, Department of Department, June 2, 1961, J25, 1958/1441, NAA.

101. Commonwealth Migration Officer, to Sub-Collector of Customs, Thursday Island, March 9, 1962, Kazuo Nakichi, J25, 1962/516, NAA.

102. The Okinawans were reported as regretting “that the venture had failed,” Sub-Collector of Customs to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Brisbane, August 14, 1958, J25, 1958/9618, NAA. However, both Yuriko Nagata and John Lamb have expressed reservations to me about labeling the experiment a “failure,” pers. comm., 2017.

103. George, “Pearling industry,” 29.

104. Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Fisheries in Queensland for 1958, quoted in George, “Pearling industry,” 29.

105. See John Bailey, The white divers of Broome: the true story of a fatal experiment (Sydney, 2001), xiv–xv, 286; and the account of the death of Kristos Kontoyiannis on May 24, 1956, which concludes that the Greek project's “dismal failure” embarrassed the Australian government, which had financed the scheme, Leonard Janiszewski, and Effy Alexakis, “White gold, deep blue: Australian pearling's Greek contribution,” Neos Kosmos, May 13, 2015, http://neoskosmos.com/news/en/White-Gold-Deep Blue.

106. George, “Pearling industry,” 225–6; Director of Native Affairs to Queensland Director-General of Education, July 30, 1965 re Pearling and Pearl Culture Activities, Torres Strait Area, SRS505/2, Supp. 1F/532, QSA. The Australian Pearl Coy Ltd was the parent body of the Cape York Pearling Coy, Cape York Pearl Culture Coy, and Cape York Shell Transport Coy.

107. Quoted by George, “Pearling industry,” 29.

108. Queensland Premier to Australian Prime Minister, June 3, 1958, A452, 1958/2679, NAA.

109. George, “Pearling industry,” 27–8.

110. Geoff Smale, pers. comm., 2017, who married Heather Dunwoodie, niece of Jack Dunwoodie, on Thursday Island in 1957. They left the island in 1959.

111. Ganter, The pearl-shellers, 126.

112. Cunningham, “On borrowed time,” 101–2, contrasts the Torres Strait pearlers’ lack of care with the successful importation of Japanese and Okinawans into Broome and Darwin.

113. Many experienced Torres Strait Island divers and crew were recruited as laborers by railway construction firms in mainland Western Australia and Queensland, George, “Pearling industry,” 30.

114. Telegraph (Brisbane), August 14, 1953, 9.

115. “Squeeze ‘kills’ Pearler,” Cairns Post, May 15, 1961, 5.

116. Ganter, The pearl-shellers, 126.