| P-MAN IX Update #11 Hello Again, Everyone! 26 February So you must be wondering, "Now why don't he write?" Quote courtesy of a soon- to-be dead guy in Dances with Wolves. I'm trying a new tool. Please let me know if it works out for you. I'm trying Thunder bird as an email client. It does some things better than Outlook so in theory, my notes to you should get out quicker. We'll see about that. (Writer’s note. Practice before you try a new program. I’ve tried for a bit to get this out and it won’t send. It’s not the program, it’s just me. Back to Outlook until I learn.) Lessons Learned:
So there we were. Waiting in the ready room until 11am. At that time, the owner of a helicopter that is on island, John Walker, would be walking into the room for a flight briefing. John is an airplane nut. He owns a T-28 and a Beech Staggerwing just to name a few beyond his MD500 helicopter. He came to Guam a number of years ago to wrench on helicopters in the tuna fishing industry. Like all expats, there's always a story. Now he has a helicopter in Palau. And he volunteered to fly a spotting mission for us. We worked on our mission planning last night, and now we were getting some charts and photos together to show John the areas we wanted to overfly. With Google Earth, we can really make detailed charts of what we want. A great tool. We hashed out what we wanted to see. We had three target areas that were of interest: 1. an area south of Ngatpang Bay; 2. around the jungle headquarters of General Inoue of the I.J.A.; and 3. a peninsula north of Ngatpang that is surrounded by thick mangroves. Two of the areas may hold Corsairs and the third the execution site of American POWs and some Jesuit Missionaries. But who was going to go flying with John? There are only three passenger seats in the MD500 and there are six of us. Well, we certainly wanted Joe to go so we can get his jungle attuned eyes over the jungle. Although we've all ridden on helicopters before, and most of us have skydives from them, we all wanted to fly over Palau in a helo. We collectively decided that the guys with the most current experience looking for stuff on the ground should probably go. That meant Bob Holler who is a retired 30 year PJ from the Air Force and Derek Abbey who flies in F/A18s and picks up items on the ground in Iraq that require 'special attention.' That also meant that the old hands of the mission, me, DOB and The Boss would stay behind. Grrrrrrrr. I was going to be the next in the batter's box for this mission just in case Joe did not want to go. He'd never been in a helicopter before so he wasn't sure about all of this. However, he knew that morning he wanted to take this opportunity. We briefed with John and he basically said, "I'll do whatever you all want." Music to our ears. The helicopter is based at Neco Marine. Easy access for the tourists and quick getaways to see the beautiful Rock Islands. We drove over, loaded up the mission crew and off they went.
The ground pounders for the day tried to do some errands. One was showing the Director of Public Safety our map of mine fields in Palau. He thanked us profusely as there is going to be a lot of building going on in Palau over the next few years. This will be very helpful in reducing injuries due to UXO (unexploded ordinance). That burned up some time, so we went back to Neco and waited for our boys to return home. After the helicopter landed, everyone came out with big grins on their faces. I don't know how much good intel we'll get from this flight, but it sure was a different way to see Palau.
Joe liked his flight. Joe's job was to scan the jungle for what was not right. He did not see anything that did not belong. And before 15 minutes passed, the whole island knew Joe had been up. Bob reported that he had some great shots of his knee, the forward bulkhead and the seats of the helicopter. Seems as if the timer button got tripped so he would snap a photo, and then 10 seconds later, after the camera was put down, a photo would be taken. Bob's job was to snap stills and then scan the jungle. Derek reports he had a good time as well. His part of the mission was to use the video camera and try and get coverage of all of our target areas. And visually scan when Bob was shooting stills. We came back to the hotel mid-afternoon and then poured over maps, charts, photos and testimony from the War Crimes Tribunals. We did not get any actionable intel about the two Corsairs. However, we feel good about a site that could be a burial ground for our missing airmen, but we won't really know until we explore it. That's what we'll do tomorrow. Put boots on the ground with an archaeologist that the BentProp team met last year. Jolie Liston will be joining us to lend her experienced antiquity eyeballs to our cause. But first, dinner.
We tried a Korean restaurant for the first time. It’s been here longer than we’ve been coming to Palau but we never made it there for some reason. We finally went and we’re glad we did. We’re going to try and explore some of the hidden restaurants of Palau. I’ll let you know if we have much culinary success. 27 February The day started early as we had an appointment in the field. Jolie Liston, an archaeologist, was going into the woods with us today. she has been working along the Compact Road Project for 8 years. Her job was to check out and catalog ancient Palauan sites. If the road had to be rerouted, so be it. The Palauans want to save their history as much as anyone.
We wanted to show Jolie our sites and see if she could shed any light onto them for us. Although she thinks anything younger than 800 years is modern, she liked the idea of going out into the field with us. We were going to look at three areas on this trip. One was a possible execution ground as reported by a Palauan Elder. It seems that when the Japanese executed some civilians, Palauans were ordered along to observe. They never witnessed an American being executed, but they did witness Asian and Pacific Islanders being executed. The report was that about an hour's walk from a Japanese wartime hospital was the killing ground. Some stones were set up as an execution platform and that was what we were looking for. We had several people bring us to an area that seemed like a good fit for the distance from the hospital. We had already scoped out the area from a road, but hadn't gone into the jungle. We thought about a 100 meter arc from our entry point might be a good way to start. We made a sweep to the east and then started back the other way. Joe, who was on independent search duty as usual, called out that he found something. When we got there, Jolie was excited. It seems that ancient Palauans made platforms from stone for many functions. We were looking at a small platform that was used as a resting area ("iliud").
It’s said that these resting platforms were built at a distance from each other that corresponded with the time it took to drink the milk out of a coconut. I’m pretty sure that did not mean chugging. Then Joe called again and as we moved down into a little gully, Jolie let out a peal of delight. We were walking on an ancient Palauan path. More like a narrow causeway that crossed this particular gully. And wouldn't you know, the path led to the resting area. Jolie said she liked this concept of looking for airplanes but finding stuff her life revolves around. We found some Japanese debris in the gully. Looks like it could have been a communications center. We found what looked like radio cases, phone junction box, light bulbs and the ubiquitous 55 gallon drums. Nothing that we were really interested in, but it does confirm that the Japanese military was in the area.
Although we built a case for this area, we are not convinced we have the spot here. So it was on to site two. The second site we wanted Jolie's opinion on was something we found a few years ago. We did not think much of it then, but after reading the War Crimes Trial transcripts, we developed a hypothesis that what we called the stone graves site might be where Americans and a British national were executed and buried. Of course we can't just dig up stuff here in Palau. If we could, I would be telling you answers right now. However, Jolie was able to tell us that some of the 'stone graves' are Palauan ("bluks"), but most are not. She also told us that when the Japanese buried Americans, they might have buried them near Palauan graves. In Palau, a clan burial area is called an "odesongol." Clan life is probably the most important facet of Palauan society. We checked all the graves with a metal detector and only got hits on the non-Palauan graves. That is a very good sign.
She let us know that the area of Palau we were in was heavily populated way back when and this was the ancient city "Iksid." If you look around, even in the jungle, you can see terraces, fortifications and many stone structures. In the clear areas of the jungle, the terracing is very obvious. As an aside, the exposed terraces that you can see in Palau are all infertile. Only very hardy ferns can grow there. The soil is very acidic to begin with and when man started clearing land and farming thousands of years ago, they sealed the fate of these chunks of land. It seems even today you can only farm this land once cleared for 2-3 generations. Then the ferns rule. There have been studies and tests done and you cannot economically make the terraces usable again. Unless of course you can figure out a market for the fern that grows there. Salads, maybe? We walked further into the jungle looking for other signs. I was using the metal detector and heard Jolie cry out again. We found a huge platform. One of the biggest she's ever seen. This must have been a very important village. And there were 3 big stones at the corners of the platform. These are called "btangch" (pronounced "tongs"). Sometimes they are used as backrests and sometimes they are commemorative. They can be plain stone or carved. The ones we found were plain.
Jolie agreed that there was enough modern intervention in the site to warrant JPAC looking at this site. If they agree with us, then maybe they can do a mission to this site and see what they can find. It might not be anything other than piles of stones. On the other hand, we may be able to find 13+ people, missing since 1944. The third site was really just a 'reality
check' for us. What we don't want to do is create a hypothesis for a particular
idea that we fall in love with. If you do that, you have a tendency to not look
at other possibilities with an open mind. So we went to the new Japanese Memorial
When we got there we found that all around the site, the Compact Road crews had moved dirt. They piled it here, they piled it there. Jolie had previously looked in the area up to but not into the jungle. We decided we would not get anything useful out of a search here. So we parted company with Jolie and headed out to do another interview. We drove further north into a small village along the ocean. We were looking for Daniel. We had wanted to interview him since we got here and had missed him repeatedly. He has a farm up north, and a house on the west coast of Babelthuap as well as one down in Koror. We drove into the village and asked directions to his farm. Not to miss an opportunity, I walked out onto the beach and dipped my toes in the ocean while Joe was asking directions. We drove back south a little and found Daniel at his farm, getting ready to depart. He graciously took the time to chat with us.
He did not add any actionable intel to our list, but he did say that he would keep an eye out for us and look at some sites that might prove fruitful for us. One recurring theme from hunters is that they tend not to look at the ground while in the jungle as they are hunting for birds and fruit bats. Their game is up, not down. However, at 70+, he still hunts and now that he knows what we're all about, he'll look at the ground a bit. Came back to town and cleaned up. Debriefed the day’s mission. The bottom line is that we will contact the JPAC people who are here and make our case for an investigation into the stone grave site. If we have our ducks in a row, then JPAC might fit it into their schedule. Over to Kraemer's for all you can eat spaghetti night. Only one plate for me. Got too full on sashimi and poke appetizers. Came back to the apartment and made a promise to finish this update. Didn't happen. Fell asleep at the keyboard. So I'm finishing this up after a day of diving and finding stuff. However, you'll have to wait for the next update to find out what we found. Blue SKies, Flip PS If you do not like spiders, do not look at the following photo. In the jungles of Palau, there are not many dangers. However, one of the irritants is this large spider that tends to weave its web across our trails. If you're focused on the wrong thing, you might miss the spider and get a bite on the nose.
Blue SKies, Flip
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