P-MAN X Update #23 - Peleliu
14 March 2008 - Friday

Today was planned to be a Peleliu day, and it actually happened pretty much that way.

We've made two solid MIA-crash-site finds on Peleliu, both of which have led to JPAC recovery missions. Remains returned from the first site (in 2005) have not yet been identified. No remains were recovered from the second site, although the identity of both aircraft has been confirmed.

Our friend Tangie Hesus, the go-to guy on Peleliu and the man responsible for the WWII museum there, mentioned to us a couple of weeks ago that a man he knows on Peleliu had identified a "new" underwater site. We planned to meet him at the north dock at 9:00. We were almost on time, and Kent was there to meet us. He's very articulate, and his description of the site (actually, a couple of sites) was so good that we were able to determine that we've already cataloged these sites. So we didn't go diving.

But we had assumed that we'd be able to spend a large portion of the day interviewing elders, so we brought the video gear. We've never interviewed Palauan elders on Peleliu before.

We interviewed a male elder who had seen an aircraft go down off the western shore of the island, and whose brother may have more information about it...the brother is now on our list to track down.

We interviewed two Palauan ladies, one of whom is Tangie's grandmother.

We interviewed a male elder.

And we interviewed another elder lady, who spoke excellent English.

All of their stories were remarkably similar: shortly after the war started here (i.e., in late March 1944, when U.S. bombing of Japanese positions all over the country began), all of the Palauans who lived on Peleliu were rounded up and moved a few miles north to Carp Island.

Within a couple of months, the next wave of American attacks prompted the relocation of the Palauans either to another island a bit north of Carp, or to Babelthuap. Many of those who went to Babelthuap were dropped in Ngatpang state, and forced to walk many miles north to the state of Ngaraard. Many of these people were forced to move in with relatives - for the duration of the war.

Imagine having three or four families of distant cousins dropping in to live with you for a couple of years. And imagine that the farms that the Ngaraard families used to work were taken over by the Japanese, along with ALL of the agricultural products that used to feed the Palauan families. So there they were, with many more mouths to feed, and the means to produce the necessary food was taken over by an occupying army that was cut off from supply by Tokyo and was beginning to go hungry.

The Palauans spent quite a bit of time truly foraging for nuts and berries just to stay alive. Not only that, but they were essentially isolated from the Japanese, and received little or no direct or indirect knowledge of day-to-day goings-on with the war. They heard very few stories of Americans shot down or captured or paraded around the island or executed...all stories that are much better known by Palauans who lived farther south during this time.

Eventually, after the war ended, the displaced Palauans were allowed to return to Peleliu - which, by that time, had been practically bombed into a coral-sand desert. It took them a long time to re-establish farms and businesses and normal family living conditions. By that time the military action was over, so the people whose lives followed this path during the preceding two years just didn't witness enough of the war to have information that's of much value to our effort to track down MIAs. But that's okay - every interview adds an increment of information that represents a piece of the puzzle.

We'll stick with it until those MIAs are home...

- Reid
 

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