the citizenship of either power and were officially stateless; to travel abroad they needed an identity document signed by both the British and French resident commissioners. Many called the condominium the "Pandemonium" because of the duplication of laws, police forces, prisons, currencies, education and health systems. Overseas visitors could choose between British law, which was considered stricter but with more humane prisons, or French law, which was considered less strict, but with much worse prison conditions. In their book, Vanuatu by Jocelyn Harewood and Michelle Bennett, is this memorable passage referring to the 1920s: "Drunken plantation owners used to gamble... using the 'years of labour' of their Melanesian workers as currency. Islanders used to be lined up against the wall, at the mercy of their employers' dice. Long after America's Wild West was tamed, Vila was the scene of the occasional gunfight and public guillotining." Starting in 1921, French plantation owners let Annamese workers from the Gulf of Tonkin come to the New Hebrides under 5 years contracts. They were 437 in 1923, 5413 in 1930, then after the crisis 1630 in 1937. There was some social and political unrest among them in 1947. In 1949 the plantation owners wished to replace Annamese by "more docile" Javanese. However, a French scholar suggested in 1950 a renewal of Annamese migration, but this time as settlers in villages of their own. A proposal because "It is difficult, indeed, to count on the natives. They live (...) a still wild life". Challenges to this form of government began in the early 1940s. During the Second World War, approximately 10,000 Ni-Vanuatu men served in the Vanuatu Labor Corps, a labor battalion of the United States Armed Forces at Espiritu Santo Naval Base. They provided logistical support to the Allied war effort during the Guadalcanal Campaign. The mass participation of Ni-Vanuatu men in the Labor Corps had a significant effect on the John Frum movement, giving it the characteristics of a cargo cult. Today, John Frum is both a religion and a political party with a member in Parliament. Decolonisation Perhaps the final political impetus towards independence was the central issue of land ownership which arose during the 1960s. The ancient customs of the Ni-Vanuatu meant that land was held in trust for future generations by the current custodians; Europeans viewed it more as a commodity and owned about 30% of the land area. This