NOTEBOOK in hand, I struggled to ascend the famous hill that has hosted the Nasonini gun battery since the 1940s.
With each forward stride, sweat trickled down my forehead.
It was almost 10.30am and the Suva sun pierced through the green canopy with dazzling light, leaving no chance for the morning breeze to cool the air.
I caught my breath, anxious thoughts drifting from my fatigued pair of legs to the possible military commotion that the hill I was scaling may have witnessed during WWII.
At the first fortified gun emplacement, rusting steel pieces that once made up the state-of-the-art artillery installed some 80 years ago to guard the passage into Suva Harbour, lay silent and idle.
“This is it, the site of the first gun,” said the guide, who doubled as a historian of sorts.
My research had told me the installation was in anticipation of what was then a real threat of invasion by the Japanese imperial army. That risk did not get a chance to penetrate the Fiji Islands.
While the battery lawn had been crudely manicured, the concrete structure that squatted on it bore the typical makings of an abandoned ruin, its wall tattooed by graffiti and scarred by old age and clusters of moss colonies.
From the firing area, where the horizon sparkled in a distance, an 18-step stairway led to an underground tunnel dug out of soapstone.
This type of rock is reviled by gardeners but they provide the perfect condition for underground bunkers and bomb shelters because it is easy to carve, durable, heat-resistant and had a high heat storage capacity.
The emplacement had a series of concrete arms cache that once stored shells transferred from the underground storage rooms via a hoisting device.
It was only one part of an extensive installation at the gun site. The others included magazines and systems to deliver ammunition from the magazines to the guns.
After WWII, improvements in mobile artillery and precision guided weapons limited the use of fixed gun batteries and today, they are mere remnants of a time long gone.
According to historical literature on WWII, there were three fixed artillery positions installed at the Nasonini site, Suva. Others were set up at Momi, Vuda and other parts of the Suva peninsula (Veiuto, Flagstaff and Bilo).
The gun emplacements were within at least one hundred meters, located at different levels on a single hill. Each enjoyed a slight aerial vista of the Suva Harbour. The general exterior of the second emplacement looked similar to the first. However, it had an entire wall dedicated to what looked like an elaborate ordnance manual, with sketches of artillery parts and their individual names.
Today, the gun battery is nestled within the Pacific Islands Fourm Secretariat compound along Ratu Sukuna Road, one of Suva’s premier residential neighbourhoods. In the 1970s, PIF inherited the war ruins when it acquired the property.
Fiji Museum says only one gun remains. However, this has been dismantled into several pieces, and one of its three emplacements has been demolished to accommodate the building of the High Commissioner of New Zealand ‘s residence.
In the 1940s, Nasonini guns represented the most cutting-edge military apparatus guarding Viti Levu’s coastlines.
During a speech delivered on June 24, on the occasion of the Pacific National and Regional Security Conference held in Suva, PIF secretary-general, Baron Waqa remarked that the Nasonini gun battery was built in 1942 after the “devastating effects of armed conflict found its way to the peaceful Pacific region”.
He said the Nasonini casements had three six-inch guns and complementary radar detection system for focusing those guns on specific targets.
“Those guns, now thankfully long-since operational, serve as a reminder of the mess we can find ourselves in when foreign powers use our region as a theatre for their grievances,” Waqa said.
Inside the arched and poorly ventilated tunnels of Nasonini battery, storage spaces, bunkers and power lines can still be seen. Certain parts of the tunnels have been blocked off but during WWII these would have a series of interconnected underground burrows.
The tunnels give an indication on what life was like during that time in Fiji’s history and showed excellent planning and engineering craftsmanship that took place in the construction of the bunkers.
The clear movement of World War II activities in the Pacific away from Fiji prompted the deactivation of all of Fiji’s coastal gun constructions in 1944.They were never used but they were not protected well enough either.
According to the website www.tracesofwar.com the Nasonini coastal battery was operational from 1942 to 1944.
Not too far from Nasonini gun battery is the Veiuto site, located on a hill on Vuya Road, within the premises of the former Parliament House.
One historical account suggested that in December 1939 guns for Suva’s battery sites were brought into Fiji from Britain on the naval warship, HMS Leander.
The heavy military equipment were installed under cover of darkness.
In an article in the publication Suva Stories, titled Methodist Schools in Suva in the Colonial Era, author Christine Weir noted that both gun batteries of Nasonini and Muanikau hills were probably part of a single process of fortification and developed together.
The two batteries were tasked to protect different parts of the Suva Harbour and its approaches.
Weir wrote “a blackout was observed within the Suva vicinity” so that the heavy artillery could be transported to its proposed site to “avoid the enemy’s knowledge of its location”.
Weir added that to accommodate the gun at Muanikau, the first Ballentine Memorial School for girls, which used to occupy the site, was moved together with about 200 students to its current location in Delainavesi.
Today, like other battery locations, the Nasonini site’s evocative ruins remind every visitor within its boundary that life is fragile and fleeting, and we are mere fragments in a fragmented world.
It is true the Nasonini gun battery has a lot of potential of becoming a public and tourist attraction within the capital city’s precincts. But it will require sustainable funds, political will and stakeholder support to restore it to a better state that we can be proud of, not necessarily because of its links to what could have been a devastating war on Fijian soil but because of its place in efforts to stop destruction and bring about peace in the world.
- History being the subject it is, a group’s version of events may not be the same as that held by another group. When publishing one account, it is not our intention to cause division or to disrespect other oral traditions. Those with a different version can contact us so we can publish your account of history too — Editor.
