On a slow news day, Ed McHale would murmur, “Where are the South Moluccans when you need them?”

We haven’t had any slow news days lately, so I don’t know why Ed’s question popped in my mind.

McHale was city editor when I was hired as a reporter in 1975. He was a journeyman journalist, having worked for newspapers large and small and for United Press International. Ed left Vicksburg for The Associated Press, which assigned him to New Orleans. From thence, he has gone to that great newsroom in the sky.

Anyway, because I have heard very little about the South Moluccans lately, I decided to check up on them.

The South Moluccas are part of Indondesia, about 150 islands in the Banda Sea. The big islands are Ceram, Ambon and Buru. While these sound like names from “Star Wars” or “Star Trek,” they’re not. Real places. Real people.

Charlie Mitchell is executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail.

The South Moluccans who were good for a headline on a slow day in the late 1970s, however, were not in the South Moluccas.

They were in the Netherlands, having arrived there pretty much as a consequence of the exploits of the Dutch East India Company and trading missions dating to 1605.

Along with goods, the Dutch seafaring merchants shared their faith. To this day, most South Moluccans are Christian, which continues to set them apart from most of their Indonesian kinsmen, who are Muslim.

As colonialists tend to do, regiments of South Moluccans were formed — native soldiers paid to protect the interests of the Dutch East India Company.

After a couple of centuries came World War II. The Japanese occupied the South Moluccas and treated the local regiments, at least for a while, as prisoners of war, given that they owed their loyalty to the Netherlands. But then the Japanese thought better of it and released them.

Big mistake.

The freed soldiers created one of the most effective underground resistance organizations in that part of the world, tripping up Japanese Imperial Forces every chance they got. They were, in a word, feisty.

After the war and colonial times ended, though, the South Moluccan fighters had the choice of disbanding or being folded into the mostly Javanese and mostly Muslim military of a newly independent Indonesia. Neither option was desired and push did come to shove. The Netherlands decided to relocate 12,500 South Moluccans and their families from their tropical islands “temporarily” to the almost-Arctic nation.

But instead of allowing them basic freedoms, the South Moluccans were kept in refugee camps. They were a homeless people. The Dutch didn’t want them and they couldn’t go back to their islands, either.

Year after year after year resentments grew until a generation of South Moluccans born in the Netherlands turned militant. They demanded creation of a nation of their own. When that wasn’t done, they commandeered trains, took hostages, even tried to kidnap Juliana, then queen of the Netherlands.

So from time to time, the international newswires would clatter about the latest outrage committed by the exiles. Even here in Dixie, the South Moluccans were good for a headline when we needed one.

The word today is that while their goal of a nation of their own wasn’t attained, the South Moluccans in the Netherlands do have autonomy, or self-rule. The situation is stable, and signs are it will stay that way.

It’s a big world. The population will pass 7 billion in a few months. Lots of people. Lots of cultures. Lots of situations. Lots of consequences.

If we do have slow news days, news organizations can no longer turn to the South Moluccans.

I guess we have Tiger Woods for that now.