What is New Guinea?

An island in the South Pacific near Australia, New Guinea is where a NASA spacecraft makes an emergency landing. It is pictured as jungle inhabited by Stone Age tribesmen, whose leader, Big Sam, Yale-trained to fight the Japanese during World War II, prevents his followers from eating astronauts Forrest Gump and Maj. Janet Fritch. Sam does suggest that they sacrifice the orangutan astronaut Sue and help the natives learn to produce a cash crop—cotton.