Editing South Pacific (musical) (section)

== Background ==
{{main|Tales of the South Pacific}}
Although book editor and university instructor [[James Michener]] could have avoided military service in World War II as a birthright [[Quaker]], he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in October 1942.  He was not sent to [[Asiatic-Pacific Theater|the South Pacific theater]] until April 1944, when he was assigned to write a history of the Navy in the Pacific and was allowed to travel widely.  He survived a plane crash in [[New Caledonia]]; the near-death experience motivated him to write fiction, and he began listening to the stories told by soldiers. One journey took him to the [[Treasury Islands]], where he discovered an unpleasant village, called Bali-ha'i, populated by "scrawny residents and only one pig".<ref>Lovensheimer, pp. 35–39</ref> Struck by the name, Michener wrote it down and soon began to record, on a battered typewriter, his version of the tales.<ref name = "L39" /> On a plantation on the island of [[Espiritu Santo]], he met a woman named Bloody Mary; she was small, almost toothless, her face stained with red [[betel nut|betel juice]].  Punctuated with profanity learned from [[G.I. (military)|GIs]], she complained endlessly to Michener about the French colonial government, which refused to allow her and other [[Tonkin]]ese to return to their native Vietnam, lest the plantations be depopulated.  She told him also of her plans to oppose colonialism in [[French Indochina]].{{#tag:ref|Michener later reflected, "I would often think of her&nbsp;... when American troops were fighting their fruitless battles in Vietnam, and I wondered if our leaders realized that the enemy they were fighting consisted of millions of determined people like Bloody Mary." See May, p. 20|group= n}} These stories, collected into ''[[Tales of the South Pacific]]'', won Michener the [[1948 Pulitzer Prize]] for fiction.<ref name = "L39">Lovensheimer, p. 39</ref>

''Tales of the South Pacific'' comprises nineteen stories. Each stands independently but revolves around the preparation for an American military operation to dislodge the Japanese from a nearby island.  This operation, dubbed ''Alligator'', occurs in the penultimate story, "The Landing at Kuralei".  Many of the characters die in that battle, and the last story is titled "A Cemetery at Huga Point". The stories are thematically linked in pairs: the first and final stories are reflective, the second and eighteenth involve battle, the third and seventeenth involve preparation for battle, and so on. The tenth story, at the center, is not paired with any other.  This story, "Fo' Dolla'&nbsp;", was one of only four of his many works that Michener later admitted to holding in high regard.  It was the one that attracted [[Rodgers and Hammerstein]]'s attention for its potential to be converted into a stage work.<ref>Lovensheimer, pp. 39, 191</ref>

"Fo' Dolla'&nbsp;", set in part on the island of Bali-ha'i, focuses on the romance between a young Tonkinese woman, Liat, and one of the Americans, Marine Lieutenant Joe Cable, a [[Princeton University|Princeton]] graduate and scion of a wealthy [[Philadelphia Main Line]] family.  Pressed to marry Liat by her mother, Bloody Mary, Cable reluctantly declines, realizing that the Asian girl would never be accepted by his family or Philadelphia society.  He leaves for battle (where he will die) as Bloody Mary proceeds with her backup plan, to affiance Liat to a wealthy French planter on the islands. Cable struggles, during the story, with his own racism: he is able to overcome it sufficiently to love Liat, but not enough to take her home.<ref>Lovensheimer, pp. 39–40</ref>

Another source of the musical is the eighth story, "Our Heroine", which is thematically paired with the 12th, "A Boar's Tooth", as both involve American encounters with local cultures.  "Our Heroine" tells of the romance between Navy nurse Nellie Forbush, from rural Arkansas, and a wealthy, sophisticated planter,  Frenchman Emile De Becque.{{#tag:ref|The "De" was changed to lower case for the musical.  See Maslon, p. 115.|group= n}}  After falling in love with Emile, Nellie (who is introduced briefly in story No. 4, "An Officer and a Gentleman") learns that Emile has eight daughters, out of wedlock, with several local women. Michener tells us that "any person&nbsp;... who was not white or yellow was a nigger" to Nellie, and while she is willing to accept two of the children (of French-Asian descent) who remain in Emile's household, she is taken aback by the other two girls who live there, evidence that the planter had cohabited with a darker Polynesian woman. To her great relief, she learns that this woman is dead, but Nellie endangers her relationship with Emile when she is initially unable to accept Emile's "nigger children".<ref>Michener 1967, pp. 126–127</ref> Nellie overcomes her feelings and returns to spend her life with her plantation owner.<ref>Lovensheimer, pp. 43–44, 191</ref>

Additional elements of ''South Pacific'' had their genesis in others of Michener's 19 tales. One introduces the character of Bloody Mary; another tells of a British spy hidden on the Japanese-controlled island who relays information about Japanese movements to [[Allies of World War II|Allied forces]] by radio.  Michener based the spy, dubbed "the Remittance Man", on Captain [[Martin Clemens]], a Scot, who unlike his fictional counterpart, survived the war.  The stories also tell of the seemingly endless waiting that precedes battle, and the efforts of the Americans to repel boredom, which would inspire the song "[[There Is Nothing Like a Dame]]".<ref>Lovensheimer, pp. 49–50; and May, pp. 24–25</ref> Several of the stories involve the [[Seabee]], Luther Billis, who in the musical would be used both for comic relief and to tie together episodes involving otherwise unconnected characters.<ref>Lovensheimer, pp. 52–53</ref> A 2001 article in ''Islands Magazine'' states that Michener renamed [[Ambae Island|Aoba Island]] Bali-ha'i. The author interviewed the proprietor of a resort on [[Espiritu Santo]], who claimed that Emile was modeled on his father and that the "real Bloody Mary" lived on Espiritu Santo for many years after the war and lived to the age of 102.<ref>Gibbs, Tony. [https://books.google.com/books?id=Fyg0LmVMZlAC&pg=PA84 "A Tale of the South Pacific"], ''Islands Magazine'', Islands Media, [[Carpinteria, California|Carpenteria]], California, Vol. 21, No. 1, Jan/Feb 2001, pp. 88–89</ref>