Another link to famous Pacific dynasty, Carol Schultze, dies.

By Max Uechtritz

Another link to a famous, colourful bygone era of the Pacific has been lost with the death of Carolina (Carol) Schultze, the last European baby to be born in New Ireland before the Japanese invasion of WW2.

Carol (pictured left with sister Doff) died at Westmead Hospital, Sydney, on January 7 aged 84.

Carol was descended from the renowned Coe family of Samoa. Her grandmother, also named Carolina, was the niece of the pioneer Coe sisters in New Guinea, “Queen Emma” (Coe) Forsayth and Phebe (Coe) Parkinson.

Her great grandfather was William Pritchard Coe, brother of Emma and Phebe and the first US Governor of Guam. The siblings’ parents were the US Consul in Samoa Jonas M. Coe and Joana Le’utu Taletale from Samoa’s royal Malietoa family.

Willie Coe may be less known in PNG but also lived a rich, eventful life. He was decorated with a valour medal by US President Ulysses S Grant for rescuing dozens of American sailors during a hurricane in Apia harbour, Samoa. Willie sailed with notorious buccaneer Bully Hayes before joining his sisters in Herbertshöhe (Kokopo) in what was then German New Guinea in the mid 1880s.

But Willie clashed with German officials and had to flee New Guinea. They wanted to arrest him for insulting the German flag. They were furious when he refused to fly their ensign over his property. Willie eventually raised the flag – over his new latrines (toilets). After a tip-off from sister Emma, he sailed away, never to return. But the USA thought very highly of Willie and appointed him the first governor of Guam after it was ceded by Spain to America in 1899 after the Spanish-American War.

Willie had left his three young daughters to be raised by Emma and Phebe in New Britain. One of them was Carolina (“Carrie”) Rosminia Coe who as a teenager famously survived a massacre of Europeans at Varzin plantation in 1905. Carrie Coe was struck by an axe but her long Samoan hair tied in a bun protected her neck from the blow and she managed to crawl under the house and escape. Willie’s daughters Ettie, Carrie and Emma pictured top left, Queen Emma in middle and Phebe Parkinson bottom right.

Carrie’s life however would end in tragedy when she died of malnutrition in a Japanese prison camp on New Ireland only days before the end of WW2. Her aunt Phebe Parkinson perished in the same camp. Carrie’s sister Emma Kapple was also interned there but survived.

Carrie had married Curt Schultze, the German vice-consul In Brisbane who went to New Guinea in 1901as secretary to German Governor Albert Hahl. When the pair married they took over Lebrechtshof, a plantation near Kavieng gifted to Carrie by Queen Emma.

One of their sons was Bob Schultze who married Goulburn woman Doris Best. Their first daughter was Carolina Alice Ellinor Schultze, born November 7, 1941, exactly one month before the attack on Pearl Harbour changed the world.

There was little doubt Japan would attack New Guinea. When the last women and children were being evacuated from New Ireland to Rabaul then Australia in December, Carrie decided to stay on, thinking the Japanese would leave an old woman alone.

As descendants of Phebe Parkinson, my family is blood related to the Schultzes. The late Carol and her surviving sister Dorothea (Doff) are our cousins. Some years ago, I wrote the of the heart-shaped jade brooch that baby Carol was given by her grandmother Carrie on their fateful last farewell.

“DREAD and foreboding gripped Carrie as she helped her loved ones onto a wooden schooner about to make a dash across New Guinea waters to escape the Japanese invasion in 1942.

As her son’s wife and infant scrambled aboard with other evacuees, Carrie took a stunning jade stone necklace from around her neck and thrust it in the hands of her daughter-in-law. In the mist of teary goodbyes, she explained it was for her baby granddaughter.

“Carrie” was Caroline Rosmina (Coe) Schultze of the pioneer American-Samoan Coe family and niece of the legendary sisters Queen Emma Forsayth and Phebe Parkinson who established the first plantations in New Guinea in the 1880s. As a teenager, she famously survived a tribesman’s tomahawk blow to her neck. But she wouldn’t survive WW2. 

Carrie died of starvation in a Japanese prisoner of war camp near Namatanai on New Ireland on August 10, 1945, only five days before Japan surrendered unconditionally in what’s known as Victory in the Pacific (VP) Day in Australia and Victory over Japan (VJ) Day elsewhere. 

The jade heart is a treasured memento for my cousin relative Carolina “Carol” Schultze, the infant girl on Namatanai wharf, New Ireland, that day in 1942 . It was remodelled as a brooch by her father, and Carol will wear it at a special Last Post at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on September 6 to commemorate the surrender of Japanese forces at Rabaul.

“I never knew my grandmother, but she knew me. She would have held me in her arms for the first few weeks of my life,” said Carol yesterday. 

“My mother and I were evacuated when I was six weeks old due to the advancing Japanese invasion force. My grandmother gave my mother the green jade heart to be given to me when I was old enough. 

I treasure that jade heart, as I consider that it’s a tangible link between her heart and mine.”

Men weren’t allowed to be evacuated, so Bob Schultze (father of Carol and Doff) also remained on New Ireland.

After the Japanese invasion, Bob became one of the many heroic figures in the various escapes by civilians and Australian soldiers from occupied New Britain and New Ireland. He and others commandeered a plantation boat called the Gnair. Using only a map torn from a National Geographic magazine, Bob commanded Gnair and  piloted it through treacherous reefs to the Solomon Islands from where the men were evacuated to Australia just ahead of the Japanese.

The family returned to Lamagan, New Ireland post war but moved to Brewarrina, NSW, where Doff was born.

Sisters Carol and Doff have been active and popular members of the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia (PNGAA) for some years, attending many functions in Sydney and Canberra. They made a visit to Samoa to connect with family roots. 

My sister Rita and myself have been privileged and delighted to get to know our cousins after we “discovered” each other later in life. Below is the four of us at a PNGAA Christmas luncheon.

A memorial service will be held for Carol at Pitt Town Anglican Church near Windsor on February 20^th.