The story
Samoa Independence Celebrations in Apia/Nationwide
Samoa Independence Celebrations mark 1 June each year, the date Samoa observes as its independence day even though formal independence from New Zealand trusteeship took effect on 1 January 1962. Nationwide festivities center on Apia, with flag ceremonies, church services, traditional sport, and cultural performances marking the Pacific's first island nation to gain independence.
Samoa's road to independence ran through German colonial rule, a period of New Zealand administration first as a wartime occupying force and later as a League of Nations mandate and then a United Nations Trust Territory, and a sustained, often costly independence movement known as the Mau, whose peaceful 1929 demonstration in Apia ended in the killing of paramount chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III and several others in an event remembered in Samoa as Black Saturday.