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Posted By:
Nickens, Dan
Date Posted:
Oct 10, 2015
Description:
Back on Guadalcanal it was time to put the toys away. With guests gone and the wings folded, the SeaRey went back into SuRi's hangar. The ship then sailed for Australia. I went ashore to await the next commercial flight out.....no hurry. It wasn't until two days later.
Date Taken:
August 16, 2015
Place Taken:
Honiara, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands
Owner:
Nickens, Dan
File Name:
82 Stowing Toys 2081.jpg - Photo HTML
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Category:
Yacht_Tending_Solomon_Islands
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Read what others had to say:
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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With nothing to fly, I hired a local guide to show me around the island by car. We drove up to a quiet ridge overlooking a shallow river. "This is Bloody Ridge," I was told. "Impossible!" I thought. It was such an idyllic place.
The narrow grassy ridge is only about 1000' long. It runs parallel to the Lunga River. On September 11, 1942 Lt. Col. Edson moved his troops defending Henderson Field to the ridge. That's where he was expecting the attack to retake the airfield to come from. The commanding general didn't agree and instead chose to reinforce the coast. Edson ulitmately got approval to take 800 Marines to the ridge to "rest" from their recent combat.
On the night of Sept. 12 three thousand Japanese troops attacked with support from navy bombardment. They overran one platoon and forced the Marines to fall back on the ridge. There was, however, great confusion among the Japanese as to their position. The Japanese commander later said he had no control over his troops due to the "devilish jungle." At daylight the Marines got air and artillery support. The Japanese were pushed back into the jungle.
The second night saw the most intense fighting. The Japanese troops kept coming until 850 were killed. 150 Marines died defending the ridge. The Japanese gave up and retreated.
The defeat was a first for the Japanese troops and their commanders. Partially as a result of the defeat at Bloody Ridge, the Japanese high command ordered the attack on Port Moresby to withdraw to consolidate their forces. The result was the first fall back from Japan's push to Australia.
The hill now is restful, finally fulfilling Edson's deception. A small faded white plaque is the only evidence that anything memorable happened on the hill.
| | Attachments:
Bloody Ridge
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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The tour included many of the battlefields scattered around the town of Honiara. There wasn't much to be seen now. The scars have mostly healed over or are covered with dilapidated constructions. Nearing the end of the tour I was feeling a deepening disappointment at the lack of any real evidence that such a historic struggle had taken place on the island.
The tour guide drove far from town along a narrow road, finally turning off into the jungle on a rutted trail. After bumping along the poorly maintained gash in the jungle, it was a relief to find an opening with a small building.
"That's it?" I thought. "We drove for an hour to get to a shack?" At least there was a prop sitting outside. That was mildly encouraging.
| | Attachments:
Vilu War Museum
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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It took a while before someone came over to open the doors to the shack. We stood inside its sparse interior looking at the few old photos posted on the walls. It was a pitiful showing.
It was looking bleak until an enthusiastic young man burst in. "Welcome! Are you ready to tour the museum?"
Really? I've already seen the four old photos you have. Instead of saying that, I just said, "Sure."
That's when he opened the back door. Just outside the door was an awesome gun! "It was left in the jungle when the Japanese retreated."
"Why isn't this inside, protected from the weather?" I asked.
I got a strange look. "It hasn't been touched other than to move it here. We want to show it as it was left."
| | Attachments:
Big Gun
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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War machines were scattered around the open yard behind the museum. All were as they were found.
"If you are concerned about showing relicts as they were, why not leave them in place."
"Left in place they will be stripped and vandalized by souvenir hunters. That is the fate of the many still out there."
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P-38 Bones
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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"Thieves come at night and try to steal parts."
"Why?"
"Tourists will buy the relicts."
It's true. I was offered .50 caliber bullets by kids on the street. The tour guide told me kids have been found trying to sell hand grenades.
| | Attachments:
P-38 Cockpit
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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I was excited when told there was a seaplane among the scattered debris. It was, however, barely recognizable.
| | Attachments:
Kingfisher Form
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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Maybe my disappointment was visible. "Wait until you see our Wildcat! It is almost intact."
"Almost intact" might be considered a bit of an overstatement. The old plane was, however, an impressive sight. I'm told they moved it here from Henderson Field where it was abandoned at the end of the war.
| | Attachments:
Intact Wildcat?
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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To prove the Wildcat was "almost intact" I was treated to a demonstration of the folding wing. The museum guide took a stick out of the aluminum wing lock. His assistant grabbed the wing tip and moved it in a smooth, quiet arc to the tail section.
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It Folds!
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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The museum mixed Japanese and Allied pieces with no apparent rhyme or reason. Each piece was distinct, but the open setting was commonly shared. From the nose of a Japanese Betty bomber you could see the wing of an Allied Kingfisher.
I asked about the museum guide about visitors. He said the number of visitors get older and fewer each year. Not so long ago there were regular yearly visitors from Japanese families of fallen warriors. There was a surge of American warriors and their families on the fiftieth anniversary of Guadalcanal battles. The sixtieth was not as big. The seventieth anniversary was much smaller. The warriors and those that knew of them are fading away.
"Those of us who fought in the Pacific believed we would be remembered, that schoolchildren would be told of our sacrifices and taught the names of our greatest battles. But we didn't anticipate the velocity of postwar history; didn't realize the events would succeed one another more and more rapidly, in a kind of geometric progression, swamping the recent past in an endless flood of sensationalism; we didn't know that instant celebrities would glitter blindingly and then disappear overnight." From Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War by William Manchester 1979.
| | Attachments:
Looking Ahead
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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It was a bit depressing seeing the deteriorating condition of once mighty war implements. But then I noticed a tree growing out of a rotting aluminum wing section. It seems there is wisdom in leaving the relicts outside in the jungle. "I am the jungle. Let me work."
| | Attachments:
Life Grows On
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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There were two memorial stones on the museum grounds. The Japanese memorial says,
"THE REPOSE OF SOULS
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YOUNG MEN WHO FELL IN BATTLE SLEEP HERE. MAY THE TRAGIC EVENTS THAT OCCURRED ON THIS ISLAND DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1942-43) BE FOREVER INSCRIBED IN OUR MEMORIES. WAR BRINGS ALL SIDES NOTHING BUT DEEP GRIEF AND DISTRESS. IT MUST NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. TO THE SOULS OF THESE DEPARTED YOUTH OUR ONLY WORDS OF TRIBUTE ARE THE RENUNCIATION OF WAR. PEOPLE OF THE WORLD LET US TAKE THIS PLEDGE AND MAY THE BLUE SEA, THE GREAT EXPANSE OF SKY, AND THIS GREEN ISLAND BE A TESTIMONY OF ETERNAL PEACE.
SLEEP PEACEFULLY, FALLEN FRIENDS!"
A former Japanese soldier, August 1983
| | Attachments:
Japanese Memorial
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Nickens, Dan - Oct 10,2015
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The American memorial was inscribed with this,
"IN LOVING MEMORY
GOVERNMENTS CREATE WARS BUT YOUNG MEN ARE CALLED TO FIGHT IN THEM. THIS IS A HALLOWED AREA FOR IN WORLD WAR II THOUSANDS OF YOUNG MEN GAVE THEIR LIVES HERE - ON THE GROUND, IN THE AIR, AND ON THE SURROUNDING SEAS. SAY A PRAYER IN YOUR OWN WAY FOR THESE GALLANT MEN WHO SERVED SO UNSELFISHLY WHEN THEIR COUNTRIES CALLED, AND WHO FOUGHT AND FELL IN A DESPARATE STRUGGLE. THEY GAVE THEIR LIVES THAT PEACE MIGHT COME TO THESE ISLANDS AND TO THE WORLD. REMEMBER THEM ALWAYS OR THEIR SACRIFICE WILL HAVE BEEN IN VAIN. GOD GRANT TO US THE PEACE THAT THEY HAVE FOUND."
American Guadalcanal Veterans, August 1986
The request for remembrance could be a plea for meaning in lives taken far too quickly. They needn't worry. Their lives had significance far beyond the fifteen minutes of fame we give to our instant celebrities. Whether the guests I flew in a playful SeaRey over the battlefields remember or not, our lives are immeasurably better because these soldiers lived and died as they did. Remembrance is just a passing reward. Real significance is the meaning they earned.
I left for home happy and humbled.
| | Attachments:
USA Memorial
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Don Maxwell - Oct 11,2015
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Thanks, Dan. It would be nice to imagine that those memorial messages could persuade everyone to give up on fighting as a way of life and that there would be no more wars.
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