| P-MAN IX Update #10
Hello BentProp Supporters! 24 February
We had a very long day of interviews. We only got 6 people in. However, it’s time first for your favorite section: lessons learned.
We had a reasonable starting time today. Tomorrow will be earlier. However, that hasn’t happened yet so I guess I better complete today’s story. Joe came to the hotel and off we went to interview some folks. We used to look for elders predominantly and hunters. We’ve found that the children of elders sometimes know their folks stories since Palau has a rich oral history heritage. Today we spoke with elders, their kids, hunters and fishermen and people they all recommended us to go talk to. We are definitely networking the Palauan way.
We got some great tips for where to search, and whom to talk to next. We might even have a guide to a new wreck site. In water! I might actually get to use my scuba gear!
We easily have 3 more days of interviews to get through if we choose to. You might be wondering when are these guys going to find something? Remember our time up on the island waiting for Simeon to return? Patience, everyone. Patience. We have found over the years, and it is a military maxim, you can never have enough intel. We’ll head back into the woods when we have a little more direction. That will be soon.
Rather than go over every interview with all of the folks, let me introduce you to some wonderful Palauans.
However, I must tell you about our first injury. It happened at our first interview site of the day. We were told to be there in the morning to chat with the nephew of the elder we spoke with two nights ago. He couldn’t make it and asked his sister to tell us to meet back at 7pm. That fit our timeline perfectly. On the way out, the dog that was friendly yesterday was a bit territorial today. One of our intrepid adventurers went to pet him, showing the back of the hand first so the dog could sniff, and got bit on the knuckle. Pat Scannon, MD went into action. A makeshift surgery was established in the cargo area of our van. Brown fluids showed up. So did a forceps. Gauze and bandages. An opaque gel. An assistant was recruited. When all was done, a call to the Minister of Health to check on the dog bite protocol for Palau.
The patient is not in any danger. Does not need a series of really painful shots (if they even do that anymore). And we pressed on minutes later. I tried to get a picture of the offending animal, but all I could find was the human. I even tried again tonight at 7pm. No dog to be seen.
On to our Palauan friends.
Bob interviewed a blind elder. He could barely see during the war but his friends told him a lot about what was going on around him. His eye issues are not a result of the war. What I learned from this gentleman was that in life, sacrifices are necessary. This man lost family members to U.S. bombs and bullets. However, he is happy to have his freedom and realizes his family's sacrifice was the price to pay for getting out of Japanese bondage.
This elder was forced by the Japanese to move off island to Papua New Guinea as a laborer. In fact, this is a common story in many Palauan family histories. He came back to Palau in 1946 when the war was over. He helped us locate some bridges that the Japanese had named, but are called something else today. It was interesting to learn that the Japanese did not name things universally. They were named by the local Japanese and these names really were not used outside of the villages or States. For example, the Yamato Bridge (Yamatobashi) was named by the local Yamato Japanese residents. But on the map drawn up by the Japanese government, the same bridge is just called ‘two lane bridge good for trucks’. I think the Golden Gate Bridge is known world wide.
This fisherman helped us find the B-24 that is being worked on by JPAC right now. We should have asked him about other things three years ago but we never met him until today. Pat was finally able to tell him how much his information has meant to the families of the crewmembers of the B-24. Tomorrow he and Joe are going by boat to check up on two leads he has for us.
Now that the tail section is uncovered, who can make an identification for us? Two clues: inverted V-12 engine, and only one of them. Previous thoughts were a Tony. See P-MAN III.
We took our lunch break at the Ngaremlengui pier, overlooking a beautiful section of ocean. We had the usual fare. A Palauan teenage girl pedaled up and started a conversation. Her story is that she was born in Corvallis, Oregon and moved here when she was around 10 years old. We were chatting back and forth amongst the seven of us when the obvious parental mother unit showed up. The next five minutes was all in Palauan, but we all knew the message by the Mom’s tone and stance: “These are strangers. You shouldn’t be talking with them. Come away with me now.” Now all you Moms and Dads, imagine the teenage posture that accompanies “But Mommmmmmmmmmm.”
Gloria, the Mom, switched to English and when we were done chatting about 15 minutes later, we were blessed by her and she went off. She had been in the U.S. going to college and at some point, decided to return home with her family. Then Joe let us know that he was related to them. The three were cousins.
For us, back to work. We drove from the pier back into the village.
Although it was great to see Dwight again, as he has a great attitude towards us, he had no new information for us.
Can a dog bite affect you in 3 hours? Actually, DOB set up the cute little girl in the next photo to take our pictures.
We visited with a chief whom we had first met five years ago. His health and memory have deteriorated a little bit, but he still filled us in on events in the area during the war. As did his wife. His daughter and granddaughters also filled in some local color, including a Palauan liquid refreshment.
Enroute to our last interview, the subject of guy movies and man movies came up. We certainly could have talked about something more pertinent, but we didn’t. It had been a long day. We have decided that any movie John Wayne was in is a ‘man’ movie. And although there are ‘guy’ movies by the score, not all of them, and probably not many of them, are ‘man’ movies. What exactly is a ‘man’ movie you ask? Well, if you have to ask, maybe you don’t watch many ‘man’ movies. They are thematic though. (The group took a vote. We would like to hear from all of you and hear what you all think a ‘man’ movie is. Especially Mike O’Brien, DOB’s brother.)
Our 7 p.m. appointment had some great information for us concerning bridge locations in Japanese times. Lucio is going to take us to meet a 90 year old Chief who he says still has great memory. We’re meeting up with him tomorrow morning while Joe goes out with the fisherman to check on his two leads.
Then it was out to a Thai dinner, buy groceries and more video tapes and then a quick digestion of what today’s events mean for us.
We’re amazed at how many interviews we’ve gotten so far. Normally it’s towards the end of the mission that the interview subjects come to the fore. This is a good sign. The more intel we get, the more effective we are in the field. And it strikes us funny that occasionally, someone will tell us that everything that can be found is already found, or that there’s no one else to talk with. Then the next day we get 4-5 more names to interview.
And now I’m going to bed. I stayed up past my bedtime to make sure I got the correct photographs into today’s missive. It’s an early get up and I don’t want to be dragging butt tomorrow. So, good night.
25 February
I stayed up way too late in order to type yesterday’s note to you. Thank goodness for the elixir of life: strong coffee.
Kudos to Bob Holler. As a Chief Master Sergeant in the Air Force, he always told his troops to “take care of your equipment and your equipment will take care of you.” Throw in a little command voice and you have it down pat. Well, Bob is treating us no different. Each morning, he gets up early, gets in some yoga, a run and then he checks the van out. He services the oil, transmission fluid and checks the fuel level. If he could lube the zerk (sp) fittings he would be in heaven. Then he comes in for breakfast.
We were out the door around 0745. We had to pick up Lucio at 0800 on another island. We were on time. Then he took us to the elder Chief he knows. We drove up to Babelthuap on the new good road, and then got off the road to Aimeliik to visit with the Rebluud. This is an honorific based on his Chief position.
As we rounded the corner to his house, we all realized we had been here just a few days ago. Well, not to waste an opportunity to chat someone up, we acted as if this was normal. The Chief must have looked at us and thought we were idiots. And we were not about to ask this as our first question: “have we met before?” Although we saw the women of the family laughing at us, the Chief and Lucio never let on that we had been here before. Pat wants to think that the Chief just thinks we had more questions for him.
And as it turned out, it was as if we had never interviewed him before. He never contradicted himself from the earlier interview, but he added things in that he had never talked about before. He even volunteered to show us around the sites we asked about. All told, he spent another 3.5+ hours with us including a drive all around our target areas.
In a nutshell, what we have called Police Hill over the past few years has been renamed to Pineapple Hill. It seems that there never was a Kempeitai (military police) presence at this area and in fact it was a pineapple farm and agricultural research center. At least the GPS nomenclature can remain the same.
He showed us the location of some bridges from Japanese times. Including one bridge area that had been filled in during recent construction. Instead of a valley with a bridge at the low point, they filled in the valley with a pass through for the river. However, this ‘bridge’ was a key point in the testimony at the War Crimes Trials.
We've received a few stories over the years about the location of the execution site of some American POWs and a group of Jesuit missionaries. The Chief’s memory was so good that he directed our driver to make all turns while driving to the sites. He would ask us to stop the van so he could get his bearings and then we would press on. Although he never saw anything of the executions, or where the prisoners were housed, he did show us the same area that others have shown us. So we have a pretty good feeling about making a search of this new area.
We have a map of this area from the war period. We also have current satellite photography and World War II bomb run photos. I think we can make a case to really search this area well, unlike the Taiwanese farm area where we have a single story about a Corsair going down somewhere in there. So into the jungle we will go. But not tomorrow.
After our whirlwind trip with Rebluud, we had lunch in town. We met up with Joe and he filled us in on his adventures. It seems he had troubles getting a functional boat. We he finally got one that would get him to his appointment, he and our fisherman headed out. They confirmed there is a wheel in the mangrove. This is new to us! And it might be one of the last remaining pieces of the B-24 to find. So this is good news. On the other hand, if this wheel comes from a single engine fighter, then this is a new wreck site to investigate.
They also checked out an area that a plane is reported in. They did not actually see the airplane, but the fisherman showed Joe where it was. We’ll have to go back with scuba gear to check it out. I think we’ll do that in a couple of days when we do our check out dives.
Then back to the hotel by 3 p.m. and we sequestered ourselves in the room to digest all this information. We compared photos from 1944 to 2007. We laid out testimony from the War Crime Trials and compared that to the real world. We were visited by Kurata-san and his daughter Emiko and chatted far into the night about his times as a Japanese soldier here in Palau. And as it turns out, as far as he knows, he’s the last remaining former I.J.A. soldier in Palau. And we shared a fine sashimi meal with them here in the ready room.
The most important question of the night was asked by me. I wanted to know where the sake cache was stored. I figured 63 year old sake must be pretty smooth by now.
Tomorrow’s plan is simple. We have a helicopter to play with. We going to send up some folks to look over the areas we are interested in and see if we can a) get lucky and find something and b) get a good look at the lay of the land. We have three areas to look at. The first is the overall area near the Taiwanese farm. Then up to a small peninsula to look for a Corsair that is down. Then back to this new area that we are calling the execution site. All told, we should be able to take up 3 of us and the pilot and video and look at all three areas in under an hour.
That will leave 3 team members on the ground. They will make some appointments with people we still want to see and maybe get some other logistics items taken care of. Of course they can also do some interviews, or take some naps. After all, we are getting older.
And that brings you up to speed. I hope all is well with you. And that it is getting warmer wherever you may live.
Blue SKies, Flip |
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