“I know I am going to die, but before I die I want to tell you: the Japanese are landing at Aola.”
Spoken after Vouza escaped Japanese torture and crawled through the jungle to warn US Marines of an imminent attack during the 1942 Guadalcanal campaign, refusing to let his wounds stop him from delivering the warning.
— Sir Jacob Vouza, Solomon Islands
Source: Walter Lord, Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons (Viking Press, 1977); widely documented in accounts of the 1942 Guadalcanal campaign
More Proverbs from Solomon Islands
Friends to all, enemies to none.
The Solomon Islands Government's stated foreign policy stance, describing a sovereign right to engage multiple international partners without exclusive alignment.
We are all in the same canoe.
A shared-fate saying emphasizing unity and cooperation, invoked across the Pacific Islands region, especially in discussions of climate change and regional solidarity.
Solomon Islands is a nation conceived but never born.
Three-time prime minister Solomon Mamaloni's blunt verdict on the country's unfinished nation-building process and its long-running, unresolved unity-versus-federalism debate since independence.
Better I die 100 times than Marine friends die.
Vouza's own explanation, given after the war, of why he endured Japanese bayoneting and torture and refused to betray the positions of the US Marines rather than give up under interrogation.