Natives and Exotics: World War II and Environment in the Southern Pacific (review)

Judy Bennett's Natives and Exotics is a superb piece of environmental scholarship that deserves a wide audience. Bennett has long established herself as the best environmental historian of the Pacific with her work on Solomon Islands forestry in particular. Her work is always characterized by meticulous research, precision of detail and expression, and an endearing honesty and modesty. Bennett wryly notes that her research and writing for this book took longer to complete than World War II itself. Her archival research incorporated records in San Bruno (California), College Park (Maryland), Washington dc, Columbus (Ohio), Oxford, Cambridge, London, Suva, Noumea, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Wellington, Waiouru, and Auckland. The result was well worth the wait. With this volume she not only cements her leading role in contemporary Pacific scholarship but also moves up a tier by producing a work that can also serve as a model for reconceptualizing warfare and its environmental restraints and consequences worldwide.

The outbreak of fighting in the Pacific in December 1941 ushered in a new era of warfare in which logistical and technological efficiency were decisive factors. The industrial power of the United States realized its true potential in the Pacific War and led to a new, nuclear age in the Pacific. Natives and Exotics provides the first environmental history of the Pacific War. Most of the numerous studies of the Pacific War focus on combat or the impact of the war on indigenous communities and race relations. The central question Bennett seeks to answer is "what impact this sudden foreigners' war had on the environment and its native inhabitants and how thousands of the military personnel reacted to them" (xix-xx).

The book is thematically organized with a logical progression of sections and chapters. The preface outlines debate in environmental history over approaches to conflict zones. Environmental historians have written little on conflict zones, perhaps because the destructive and aggressive intensity of warfare draws historians toward the myriad human dramas involved, and diverts attention away from the main focus of environmental history—the destruction, preservation, and rehabilitation of the natural environment. The prologue then shows how the war was part of a long process of engagement by diverse cultures with the unique Pacific environment across millennia.

Part 1 looks at how combatants' ignorant expectations left them unprepared for the challenges of the Pacific environment, including tropical disease, humidity, heat, and rugged terrain. Technology and resources alleviated much but by no means all of the resulting discomfort and challenges. Cures often led to unexpected and environmentally detrimental results, as with the widespread use of ddt-based insecticides to counter debilitating mosquito-borne disease.

Part 2 examines the logistics of the war, through both the exploitation of local resources and the massive importation of manufactured resources from Pacific Rim industrial economies to the neglected colonies of Pacific imperial powers. Political considerations competed with military considerations, as a number of the liberating nations in the Pacific on the Allied side were also colonial powers intent on returning to this status after the war.

Part 3 focuses on the legacy of the war in the islands and among their indigenous inhabitants. While the enormous cost of shipping equipment to war zones to ensure victory was acceptable during the war, the cost became less tolerable to the victors after the war had been won. Arguments arose over compensation for war damages and over the removal of munitions and equipment that was no longer needed. Many parts of the Pacific still live with the consequences of rusting and decaying World War II equipment.

Part 4 shifts the focus from material legacies to mental legacies in the form of memories and changing attitudes. Pacific environments were reimagined not only to make sense of or block out the past trauma but also to...