Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Honiara The American development of Honiara as an army base and war depot turned Honiara into the new capital for the British Solomon Islands. The Catholic population tripled between 1947 and 1957, from 1000 to 3000. The first Holy Cross Church, built in 1947, was replaced by a much larger structure in 1957. The statues of the Blessed Virgin and St Joseph, which had somehow survived the Japanese air raids of the Battle of Guadalcanal, were positioned outside the 1957 church. These statues were re-positioned once again outside the 1978 cathedral; damage caused by bullets can be easily seen on both.
Honiara Solomon Islands College of Higher Education change; the institutions brought under its purview as a College of Higher Education are the Islands Teachers College, Public Administration Training School, Ranadi Marine Training School, Honiara Nursing Training School, and Honiara Technical Institute which have all been reconstituted as the School of Education (SOE), the School of Finance & Administration (SFA), the School of Marine & Fisheries Studies (SMFS), the School Nursing and Health Studies (SNHS), the School of Industrial Development(SID) and the School of Natural Resources (SNR). With revision of the Act in 2008, which also authorised the college authorities to introduce any schools in other disciplines, the