''Tales of the South Pacific'' is a

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

-winning collection of sequentially related short stories by

James A. Michener James Albert Michener ( or ; February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997) was an American writer. He wrote more than 40 books, most of which were long, fictional family sagas covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and ...

about the Pacific campaign in World War II. The stories are based on observations and anecdotes he collected while stationed as a lieutenant commander in the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...

at the

Espiritu Santo Naval Base Naval Advance Base Espiritu Santo or Naval Base Espiritu Santo, most often just called ''Espiritu Santo'', was a major advance Naval base that the U.S. Navy Seabees built during World War II to support the Allied effort in the Pacific. The base ...

on the island of

Espiritu Santo Espiritu Santo (, ; ) is the largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, with an area of and a population of around 40,000 according to the 2009 census. Geography The island belongs to the archipelago of the New Hebrides in the Pacific region o ...

in the

New Hebrides Islands New Hebrides, officially the New Hebrides Condominium (french: link=no, Condominium des Nouvelles-Hébrides, "Condominium of the New Hebrides") and named after the Hebrides Scottish archipelago, was the colonial name for the island group ...

(now known as

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of no ...

). Written in 1946 and published in 1947, the book was loosely adapted in 1949 as the Broadway musical '' South Pacific'', which itself formed the basis of two films dating from

1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third ...

and

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

Book

The stories take place in the environs of the

Coral Sea The Coral Sea () is a marginal sea of the South Pacific off the northeast coast of Australia, and classified as an interim Australian bioregion. The Coral Sea extends down the Australian northeast coast. Most of it is protected by the Fre ...

and the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capita ...

. Michener as narrator gives a first-person voice to several of the stories as an unnamed "Commander", performing duties similar to those that he himself performed during World War II. The stories are interconnected by recurring characters and several loose plot lines. One plot line in particular is the preparation for and execution of a fictitious amphibious invasion, code-named "Alligator". The focus of the stories is, however, the interactions between Americans and a variety of colonial, immigrant, and indigenous characters. The chronology of the stories begins with the building of an airfield on

Norfolk Island Norfolk Island (, ; Norfuk: ''Norf'k Ailen'') is an external territory of Australia located in the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and New Caledonia, directly east of Australia's Evans Head and about from Lord Howe Island. Together with ...

before the

Battle of the Coral Sea The Battle of the Coral Sea, from 4 to 8 May 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and naval and air forces of the United States and Australia. Taking place in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, the batt ...

, in 1942, and goes through the early 1944 invasion of one of Michener's fictional islands. Although the stories are primarily about the U.S. Navy, most of the action is shore-based, and none of the stories concerns ships larger than a

Landing Craft Infantry The Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) were several classes of landing craft used to land large numbers of infantry directly onto beaches during the Second World War. They were developed in response to a British request for seagoing amphibious assault s ...

Adaptations

Musical

The highly successful

musical play Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement ...

'' South Pacific'' by

Rodgers and Hammerstein Rodgers and Hammerstein was a theater-writing team of composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), who together created a series of innovative and influential American musicals. Their popu ...

, which opened on Broadway on April 7, 1949, was based on the stories in ''Tales of the South Pacific.'' In particular, the stories used were "Fo' Dolla'", about Bloody Mary, Liat, and Lieutenant Joe Cable; and "Our Heroine", about Nellie Forbush and Emile de Becque. Characters from other stories, such as Bill Harbison, Bus Adams, and Luther Billis, play minor or supporting roles. Some of the characters from the stories were merged and simplified to serve the format of the musical. For example, the

coastwatcher The Coastwatchers, also known as the Coast Watch Organisation, Combined Field Intelligence Service or Section C, Allied Intelligence Bureau, were Allied military intelligence operatives stationed on remote Pacific islands during World War II t ...

in the musical is an American Marine (Lt. Cable) assisted by an expatriate French plantation owner (Emile de Becque). In Michener's short story "The Cave" the coastwatcher is an English expatriate assisted by native islanders, and is a disembodied voice on a short-wave radio identifying himself only as "The

Remittance Man In British history, a remittance man was an emigrant, often from Britain to a British colony, supported by regular payments from home on the expectation that he stay away. In this sense, remittance means the opposite of what it does now, i.e. mo ...

". He is never seen by the other characters in Michener's short story until a search-and-rescue party finds his head impaled on a stake. The character of Liat, Cable's lover in the film, is a much more sophisticated and intelligent young woman in the book, but is reduced to a childlike caricature in the movie. The character of Emile de Becque in Michener's short story has eight mixed-race daughters by four different women, none of whom he married, when he meets the nurse Ensign Nellie Forbush; in the musical, he has two children (one daughter and one son) by a Polynesian woman whom he had married but who had died.

Films of the musical

The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ''South Pacific'' was made into a feature film in 1958 with scenes shot on

Kauai Kauai, () anglicized as Kauai ( ), is geologically the second-oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands (after Niʻihau). With an area of 562.3 square miles (1,456.4 km2), it is the fourth-largest of these islands and the 21st largest island ...

. It was adapted as a made-for television film 2001 filmed in

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

and

Moorea Moorea ( or ; Tahitian: ), also spelled Moorea, is a volcanic island in French Polynesia. It is one of the Windward Islands, a group that is part of the Society Islands, northwest of Tahiti. The name comes from the Tahitian word , meaning " ...

Television

American television producer Bob Mann wanted Michener to co-create a weekly television

anthology series An anthology series is a radio, television, video game or film series that spans different genres and presents a different story and a different set of characters in each different episode, season, segment, or short. These usually have a differ ...

from ''Tales of the South Pacific,'' with Michener as narrator. Rodgers and Hammerstein, however, owned all dramatic rights to the novel and did not give up ownership.Hayes, John Michael. ''James A. Michener: A Biography''. Bobbs-Merrill, 1984. pp. 158–159. Michener did lend his name as the creator of a different and unrelated television series, '' Adventures in Paradise,'' in 1959. The series had nothing to do with World War II, but rather followed the fictional adventures of a current-day

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoon ...

sailing around the South Pacific.

References

External links

Photos of the first edition of ''Tales of the South Pacific''
{{authority control Short story collections by James A. Michener Pulitzer Prize for Fiction-winning works 1946 short story collections American short story collections World War II short stories Oceania in fiction Pacific theatre of World War II Books about Oceania Guadalcanal Campaign Macmillan Publishers books American novels adapted into films