8. The Spanish Flu ravaged the Pacific Islands
Several islands of the western Pacific had been German territories prior to World War One, occupied by New Zealand during the war. Ships from New Zealand traded with the islands of the Dutch West Indies (today’s Indonesia) as well as several other islands of the South and Western Pacific. When the pandemic broke out in Australia and New Zealand, the government of the former imposed strict policies to prevent the Spanish Flu from being carried across the sea. New Zealand did not. Ships from New Zealand carried the Spanish Flu to the islands, with often devastating results, as most did not have adequate medical care facilities, nor doctors with the knowledge and training to deal with the illness.
Formerly German Samoa was particularly hard hit, and saw 52% of its adult population which contracted the flu succumb. Just over 90% of the entire population of Samoa contracted the disease. As occurred elsewhere, the majority of the dead had been previously healthy young men. American Samoa was largely spared from the disease thanks to the imposition of a blockade of all shipping by its forward-thinking governor, John Martin Poyer, a naval officer who was awarded the Navy Cross for his action. Although his action drew the ire of the New Zealanders because of the restriction of trade, Poyer ensured that American Samoa was one of the very few areas across the world which incurred no deaths as a result of the pandemic.