P-MAN X Update #06 - Tune-up hike
26 February 2008 - Tuesday

This morning Joe joined us in the ready room shortly after breakfast, and we spent some time reviewing the data that we have on the area in Ngatpang that we want to re-visit. We have a fair number of WWII-era photos of this area, and a couple of years ago we spent the better part of a day exploring it. New information that's come to light through tribunal testimony recently discovered at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) by Mark and Katie has renewed our interest in this area as a possilble location of some executions and burials. The other evening at dinner we discovered that JPAC's Rich Wills has independently become interested in this same area, and we're planning to go up there Thursday morning with Rich and a couple of other members of his IT (Investigation Team).

We spent most of the morning reviewing our data. Before lunch we headed into town to get some copies made and to drop off our wireless router that's been the focus of a lot of irritation in our attempts to get connected to the Internet. By late afternoon they confirmed what we'd begun to suspect: the router's radio has died.

After lunch we stopped by Mason Whipps' garage (Mason has lent us the van that we're driving) to look at a book owned by Mason's chef mechanic, "Muj." Turns out that most of us have already read the book.

We decided to drive up to the area of interest in Ngatpang and just scout out its perimeter and various access points in anticipation of our visit with JPAC on Thursday. When we got there we discovered that the road in has deteriorated a bit and we couldn't safely get all the way to the top of the hill, so we parked the van and hiked up to the top. During the parking and hiking, we were subjected to a driving rain squall, so by the time we geared up and made it to the top of the hill we were all thoroughly soaked.

At the top of the hill, there's a road that runs southward along the ridge. We walked to a point along the ridge road from which we'd previously entered this area (two or three years ago) and headed down along the south boundary of this relatively small wooded area. We wanted to introduce Grover to the area, so at about the mid-point of the southern edge of the area we ducked into the jungle. It's completely unchanged from the last time we visited - it's a kidney-shaped forest arrayed roughly SW-NE along a westward facing slope, almost from the ridge down to the main road. We were able to re-locate some of the key landmarks and artifacts that Pat, Joe, and I remembered from the previous visit, including some flat-sided rectangular holes and some distinctive equipment that we believe may be water-purifying pumps and filters and some medical debris. By the time we entered the jungle the rain had stopped.

We spent a couple of hours just exploring and re-orienting ourselves to the site, then headed back to the top, exited onto the ridge road, and walked back to the van.

On the way back to Koror we called the Civic Action Team's office to see if anyone was available for a quick courtesy call, but had to leave a message. We stopped by the Airai house of an individual we want to interview, but he wasn't there. We stopped by the computer store and retrieved our router whose radio they confirmed is dead. We stopped by Neco and had a brief chat with a guy whose brother is the one who wasn't home in Airai, and at least got his phone number. We discovered that they had some breathtakingly fresh sashimi at the Dropoff (small eatery adjacent to Neco) and confirmed that it was, in fact, breathtakingly fresh.

Back at the room we confirmed that the Internet connection, although alive, was painfully slow. We cleaned up and dried off and headed over to Kramer's for dinner, where we had a long visit with Tangie Hesus, the Oracle of Peleliu. Tangie may have a couple of leads for us - it'll take a couple of phone calls for us to decide whether the leads will justify traveling down to Peleliu.

Tomorrow we have meetings with the American Charge d'Affaires, the Vice President, and the governors of four states.

- Reid
 

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