Qualla: Gizo, Solomon Islands

Gizo, Solomon Islands: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. One of the two men who pulled Lieutenant John F. Kennedy out of the water lived on Gizo. His name was Eroni Kumana. When Robert Ballard - the same oceanographer who found the Titanic - arrived on Ghizo Island to make a National Geographic special about the wreck of PT-109, Gizo was where he staged from, and the islands where the shipwrecked American sailors had taken shelter in 1943 lay just to the southeast. Plum Pudding, Olasana, Naru. The kind of names that should belong to a children's story, and in a way do. Seven thousand people live on Ghizo today. They have survived more than most towns their size.

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Image: Public domain

Gizo, Solomon Islands: An Island That Became State Property

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:(WT-shared) Burmesedays, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection Solomon Islands maps, CC BY-SA 3.0. Gizo sits on Ghizo Island, roughly 380 kilometers west-northwest of Honiara, tucked into the Western Province of the Solomon Islands with a small landing strip on the neighboring islet of Nusatupe. What makes Gizo administratively unusual is a consequence of a dark local history....

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Image: User:(WT-shared) Burmesedays, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection Solomon Islands maps | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gizo, Solomon Islands: The Mission and the Mahaffy Station

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Msdstefan, CC BY-SA 3.0. Colonial administration arrived in January 1900, when Arthur Mahaffy - Deputy Commissioner to Resident Commissioner Charles Morris Woodford - set up a government station at Gizo with orders to suppress headhunting in New Georgia and the neighboring islands. Two years later, in 19...

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Image: User:Msdstefan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gizo, Solomon Islands: War Came and Went

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pohopetch, CC BY-SA 3.0. Imperial Japanese troops occupied the islands in 1942 and held them into the autumn of 1943. The fighting that ended that occupation happened mostly offshore, in the sea passages between Ghizo and Arundel and Kolombangara - night battles, barge evacuations, bombing raids. The Jap...

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Image: Pohopetch | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gizo, Solomon Islands: The Morning of the Tsunami

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, CC BY 2.0. On 2 April 2007, the sea withdrew. It always does, in the minutes before a tsunami. An 8.1 magnitude earthquake had occurred only 25 miles from the town, and because the event happened in daylight and because the tide's retreat gave warning, many people understood what was about ...

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Image: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade | CC BY 2.0

Gizo, Solomon Islands: Gizo Now

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pohopetch, CC BY-SA 3.0. Tourism is the quiet economic engine these days - the reefs around Gizo are among the finest diving in the South Pacific, and a generation of backpackers and serious divers have found their way here on the little flight from Honiara to Nusatupe. You can take a boat out to Kennedy...

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Image: Pohopetch | CC BY-SA 3.0