Sokehs Rebellion

Sokehs rebellion
Pohnpei: Sokehs Island and tribal area
Date 18 October 1910 – 22 February 1911 Location Caroline Islands, German New Guinea Result Restoration of order
Belligerents
German Empire German New Guinea	Sokehs tribe
Commanders and leaders
Hermann Kersting Karl Kammerich	Samuel
Strength
c. 200 - assault team of sailors and Melanesian police 3 light cruisers 1 survey ship/transport	<50 armed rebels

 German Empire

Sokehs rebellion was an uprising of the Sokehs tribe against local German rule that started on Sokehs Island off the main island of Pohnpei in the Eastern Caroline Islands in 1910/1911. The German district commissioner, Gustav Boeder, three other German officials and five islanders were killed by the rebels before German naval units arrived and restored order.

Land ownership on Pohnpei was the exclusive domain of chiefs who would assign parcels of land to their indigenous tribal subjects in sharecropping fashion. Beginning in 1907 the German colonial administration began land reforms and required newly created owners to perform 15 days of labor per year for public works in lieu of taxes.

A group of Sokehs was detailed to roadwork on Sokehs Island on 17 October 1910. One young laborer refused work instructions of his overseer and was ordered flogged for his transgression, the punishment being carried out by a Melanesian policeman. That same evening, Samuel, a lower ranking section chief (Sou Madau en Sokehs [master of the ocean]), persuaded all in this work gang to refuse further labor. The next morning, 18 October 1910, when work was to commence, the Sokehs group threatened the two German overseers on the island, Otto Hollborn and Johann Häfner, who then fled to the Capuchin mission compound on Sokehs Island.

District commissioner Gustav Boeder was informed of the incident and together with his assistant Rudolf Brauckmann and two translators had his group rowed to the island by six Mortlock Islands boatmen to 'reason' with the laborers. As Boeder approached the Sokehs workers, he was shot and killed by rifle fire from a concealed position. In short order the rebels then killed Brauckmann, Häfner, Hollborn and 5 oarsmen; only the 2 translators and one oarsman escaped. After the news of the massacre reached the main settlement Kolonia on Pohnpei, Max Girschner, the colony's medical doctor and now senior official, requested the chiefs of the other 4 tribes on Pohnpei to provide men for defending Kolonia. The chiefs offered 600 warriors of whom several were then armed with rifles and bayonets in addition to their own weapons - but no attack on Kolonia occurred; the rebellious Sokehs merely barricaded themselves at a defensive mountain hideout.

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