The Americans in New Caledonia during the Second World War changed everything.  The French created the colony of New Caledonia in the 1850s.  They created a penal colony, importing French prisoners to work in the nickel mines and agriculture.  That wasn’t enough labor.  They also imported workers from other French colonies like Viet Nam and Japanese workers.  Indigenous Kanuks became a minority in their own country.  They were subjects not citizens, with no vote, and were forced to work as conscripted labor for little or no wages.

When the Americans came in a “friendly occupation” which often conflicted with the French authorities, who themselves were split between loyalty to the Free French and the Vichy collaborationist government, they hired Kanaks at wages much higher than the French conscript wages and they spread ideas of democracy.  They also left an economic infrastructure of roads, airports, and harbors.  When the Americans left in 1946 things in New Caledonia had changed forever.

This story is told in two different museums we visited in Nouméa.  The City Museum, located in the old town hall, and the World War II Museum, built in a giant quasit hut.

At the end of the occupation the Kanaks were stronger, economically, than they had ever been.  The Japanese had been removed to internment camps in Australia and at the end of the war repatriated TO JAPAN where several of them had never been, even those with New Caledonian wives and kids, and the Vietnamese were quite taken with the anti-colonial fervor  represented by Ho Chi Minh in their home country.  The World War II museum tells this story.

At the end of the war Kanaks were granted French Citizenship but not the right to vote.   That came gradually.  First those who had “earned” it by serving the allies during the war. Only in the fifties were they granted universal suffrage.

The City Museum recounts the ups and downs of the Kanak struggle for rights in their own country.  Sometimes more rights and autotomy were granted, and sometimes they were taken back, largely dictated by world events including the Algerian and Viet Nam wars and the student uprisings in France in 1968.  The Museum had work sheets where visitors can fill in blanks outlining this progress and regression, in both French and English. 

Displays show the differing attitudes toward independence or union with France.

Outside the museum, in Coconut Square, in a section called the Place de la Pais (Place of Peace) is a statue of two men shaking hands. They are Jean-Marie Tjibaou, a prominent pro-independence Kanak leader, and Jacques Lafleur, a leading anti-independence politician.  They had reached a compromise.   

That compromise was furthered by the 1998 Nouméa accords which set a framework for the future of the country.  They included 20 years of development aid for the Indigenous Kanaks.  Along the way there would be three referendums on independence.  The first two the public voted to remain French by decreasing margins (53% in the second vote.)  The third vote was boycotted by the Kanak community claiming that they had not finished the mourning period after COVID.  The vote was held and pro France got more than 90% of the vote but there was only a 44% voter turnout.  Pro French leaders say the boycott was really because independence forces saw they would not carry the day.  Pro independence leaders say holding the vote during the COVID mourning period disrespected their culture.

Currently New Caledonia is a French Overseas Commune, rather than an overseas department, with considerable autotomy in domestic affairs but under French control concerning defense and foreign affairs.  It is not part of the European Union, does not use the Euro and its citizens are citizens of both France and New Caledonia.  There are two co-equal flags, the French tricolor and the New Caledonian flag.  Somehow, I think the story is not finished.

What follows is a gallery of photos from Nouméa.