Welcome to
The South Pacific WWII Museum
From the birthplace of Tales of the South Pacific and the service of three American Presidents – including a First Lady from another – and the heroic actions of young aviators, soldiers, and sailors that became legendary, emerges a forgotten wartime history that many have overlooked and others are unaware of.
Base Button, located on the peaceful island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, transformed tranquil coconut plantations into the largest military base in the South Pacific during World War II. This base hosted over 500,000 service men and women throughout the war.
Now, we are sharing this history with the descendants of those who supported the Allied war effort in the Pacific. Our plan is to expand into a new world-class museum building, preserving and passing on the remarkable history of the region formerly known as New Hebrides to future generations of Ni-Vanuatu and visitors from around the world.
Honouring the many
Latest news from the Museum project.

Museum secures expansion grant
The South Pacific World War II Museum is thrilled to announce the generous grant of 800,000 Vanuatu Vatu (VT) from the New Zealand High Commission in Port Vila. Read all about our plans here.
News in brief






June 3 — This month’s newsletter is full of stories with links to Santo. From the earthquake that caused the Coolidge’s swimming pool to drop out of the ship, to the compass rose on Turtle Bay Airfield and the amazing photographic collection of Camp Elrod, there’s plenty of great reading — and photos. We’re also very excited to have had Andy Werback’s scratch-built model of one of the floating dry dock pontoons finally delivered — you’ll get what we’re talking about after reading the story. All in our May newsletter you’ll find here.




We’ve created a new Million Dollar Point gallery, featuring the work of award winning underwater photographer Chris Hamilton. You’ll find the gallery here.
Jan 11 2023
Great news today. Moreno Aguiari from VintageAviationNews.com has done a fantastic piece on the Museum in their Aviation Museum News section.
Moreno has done an amazing job detailing the history of the Museum, what we’ve been up to and where we’re heading. We can’t thank him enough for his support and we’d be grateful if you’d take a look at the story for yourselves – it’s the least we could do for Moreno.
You’ll find the story at:
http://bit.ly/3HaBSqo