During WWII, the United States top-secret “Manhattan Project” was based on the theory that land invasion of Japan lay ahead and consequently American manpower and material was poured into the Vanuatu region. Construction was very rapid and in just weeks the locations were transformed into bustling American military hubs. Both bases processed half a million soldiers. (In comparison, the entire native population of Vanuatu at the time was 60,000).

As it turned out, however, the South Pacific theatre had been oversupplied for its brief stint in the war, and combat-based military activity on Vanuatu was short-lived. Action quickly moved north toward Japan, and barely six months after the bases' completion, Vanuatu comprised the extreme rear of the American line. Although both bases performed important roles in the battles of Guadalcanal—Efate had the chief hospital, and Santo, which possessed the southernmost American airstrip, received wounded soldiers and combat equipment—they were primarily utilised as holding grounds and outfitting stations.

When the war ended, the Vanuatu holdings constituted a daunting pile of poorly organised, mislabelled crates. To compound the problem, four years in the jungle had deteriorated some of the material; shipping costs were expensive, and only a handful of soldiers remained on the islands to sort and distribute the cargo. The storage on Vanuatu was never touched again, and at the end of the war, sometime between August 1945 and December 1947, the US military interred some nine million tons of material, supplies, equipment, and vehicles, valued at nearly four billion dollars, under water. This dumping or scuttling consisted of jeeps, bulldozers, ships, trucks, cranes and even supplies of coca cola.

The huge task, known as Operation Roll-Up, was hindered at all levels by the logistics of immense disposal and was strained by the pressure to bring American troops home. According to demands from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the United States donated some supplies to South Pacific islands to aid post-war reconstruction but only when efforts at redistribution and sale failed. 90% of the property however was destroyed or dumped into the sea.

Today this “monument” to WWII remains as one of Vanuatu’s most popular dive sites with a range of depths for viewing of between 5 and 30 metres. Along with the nearby Coolidge site, Million Dollar Point