Yacine Benhalima is French-Moroccan of Tahitian descent. He is a PhD candidate in history at the University of French Polynesia and Victoria University of Wellington. His current research focuses on the Free French in the Pacific during the Second World War, with an emphasis on Tahiti and French Polynesia. He graduated with a double BA in history and modern literature from Paris-Est Créteil University in 2018 and with a Masters in history from École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in 2020, writing a master’s thesis on the Pacific Battalion which was later published (Le Bataillon du Pacifique 1940-1946, L’Harmattan, 2021).

At the outbreak of World War I, Col. Sir Samuel Augustus Pethebridge took command of the Australian North-West Pacific Expedition, raised to occupy German islands north of the equator. Before the expedition could sail, the British government decided to allow the North Pacific islands to be left in the hands of their Japanese occupiers. Pethebridge suggested that his unit, known as Tropical Force, might be used to relieve the expeditionary force led by Colonel W. Holmes which had captured German New Guinea in the first weeks of the war. This was accepted, and in January 1915, Pethebridge succeeded Holmes as administrator at Rabaul. In January 1917, he contracted malaria which forced his return to Australia, where he died a year later.