P-MAN IX Update #15
05 March 2007

Hello Again!

We really had a day off today. Well, sort of. We went hiking without any intention of looking for airplanes or POWs. Except we were confirming some bits of testimony from the Guam War Crime Trials. So maybe it was a work day. But it certainly was a great hike.

Lessons Learned

  1. Premonitions about tires can come true.
  2. Packing a lunch into the jungle is worthwhile.
  3. Brownies and beer at the far end of the hike can be worthwhile too.
  4. Sweet potato fries are different in Palau.
  5. Bob Holler is a task master when making PowerPoint presentations. But he's also correct.

The day began with our usual breakfast and briefing. We dashed out the door and picked up Joe at Neco Marine. We were driving north to meet Jolie for a hike today.

The plan was to put into the jungle in an area where the Kempeitei (Japanese Military Police) had a headquarters. We were going to walk to the Jungle Army HQ, then to the General’s Summer House and on to The Stone Grave Site. The purpose of this walk was to see some sites that we hadn’t seen before; take a real archaeologist with us to see if we had ancient sites mixed in with Japanese sites; check on times between points that were mentioned in testimony at The Guam War Crime Trials; let Jolie see places in Palau she hadn’t been to before; and borrow her GPS since we fried ours the other day.

Dan dropped us off at our let-in point. Then he drove the van to the exit point where Jolie agreed to meet us. They moved her cooler of beer to the van (her price for us to make lunch for her) and then drove her car back to us. Now we had wheels in both locations.

We set off to see what we could see. Initially, we followed some hunter trails and then we were following old Japanese roads. Mostly, we just walked through the jungle. We were in hilly/valley areas and we tried to stay to the high ground so we didn’t burn up too much energy. We stopped part way there because the GPS unit didn’t seem to be working properly. Dan and Bob fussed over it a few minutes when I chimed in. “Does the basic old compass mode work properly?” “No.” “Then turn it off for 30 seconds and then back on.” After a heading calibration dance by Dan (Two 360 degree slow turns as directed by the unit itself.) the GPS worked perfectly. My Airbus training proved valuable in the jungle: if it doesn’t work, reboot it.

We pressed on until we found Dan, Joe and Derek sitting down in an odd pose:

This was the first bit of structure we found for Jolie to look at. At first glance she thought it might be ancient but revised her conclusion as we left. She said the ancient peoples had straighter stone work. This was probably Japanese.

We walked on and got to a river with a waterfall. Joe didn’t even know there was a waterfall up here. In many different written sources, there is mention of a waterfall. We’ve always assumed that every mention of it meant the big waterfall near the road. Maybe some of the references were to this one which made good sense. We were very near the Jungle Headquarters of the 14th Infantry Division.

We knew we were there when we came across some caves.

 
Right photo by Jolie Liston.

There were four entrances and the tunnels were all connected. We found concrete steps that were installed in one to make it easier to go in and out. Although no people live here, there are some cave dwellers.


A bat just came out of the cave.

We looked around a bit and were still amazed that the Japanese cleaned up so well after themselves. Very little war debris. Peleliu, on the other hand, is littered with everything from rifles to unexploded mortar rounds and artillery shells.

We had lunch on top of the cave system and then looked around a little up there.


Batteries and sake bottle.

Then we headed on out through a valley and we found a lot of prepared trenches, dugouts etc. There were 30,000 Japanese troops garrisoned in this area. We’re pretty sure that even though we do not see them all, there are plenty of caves in the area.

We found a few interesting artifacts.


Gun mount


Burnt aircraft aluminum


Flower pot

We were now heading towards the General’s Summer House. This is what the Palauans called it. It may have been another headquarters or it really could have been his house. However, enroute we pointed out a Japanese trench built into the side of a hill. Jolie took one look and told us that this was an ancient crown. A high point that was developed into a defensive area against other clans. The top was actually a shallow depression with high sides at the top. A lot of years, and the Japanese occupation reduced the size of the top but you could imagine that without the jungle, this area commanded the high ground.

At the Summer House, we did find stacked helmets and prepared trenches.


One of many trenches we found.


Can you find Dan in all the green?
He’s near the top of The General’s Summer House.

We did not stay very long and walked towards The Stone Grave Site. According to Jolie, we were now entering an area with lots of ancient remains. There should be terraces and bais and all sorts of stone works.

We broke out into a savannah while Jolie was still in the jungle and yelled back at her “What’s this Aztec pyramid doing out here?”

 
Conqueror Bob

 
Conqueror Joe

She broke out of the jungle and gasped. It was a large crown with a very commanding view of the surrounding area. It had a trench built all around it as a protective device. The ancient Palauans would fill it with water or put stakes in the bottom of it to impale people. The tribes of Palau were not at peace with each other in the old days.

The Japanese had filled in the moat on one side and created a road to the top. I can only imagine that they had artillery pieces there for the defense of the island.

Here’s a major reason why we asked Jolie to go with us. She pointed out all of these ancient sites and told us what they meant. We’ve been walking in sight of this crown and just thought it was a treeless hilltop. Now we know better.


See the not-so-obvious bare areas?

We left the crown and pressed on for 5 minutes and we were at the large ancient bai that Jolie found last time she was out with us. That meant only 5 minutes to The Stone Grave Site. Since we were going to bring JPAC out here on Wednesday, we just passed through the area so we could exit to the beer and brownies. I mean to our car so we could drive back to Koror.


If there isn’t an existing trail through the tall ferns,
it’s going to be tough going. Photo by Jolie Liston.

We rested at the car and consumed said brownies and beer. Got our boots off and let the toes air out. I really needed to as I slipped and went into a river up to my knees. Saved the camera though. Pat also planted boot prints at the bottom of the river. But I think he chose to.

We loaded up the van and started to drive back to our starting point which is where Jolie’s car was parked. About halfway there, Bob stopped and asked Pat for a tire check. Sure enough, the tire was flat. Remember how we left the jack and spare tire loose in the cargo area? How fortunate for us. The tire change took less than 10 minutes with all of us pitching in:


Pat directed traffic


Derek loosened lug nuts


Bob directed all of us

Jolie installed the chocks on the rear wheel, and Dan cranked the jack up and down. The tire was replaced, no one got hit by a car and off we went. Except Jolie did not remove the chocks and we drove over the front one and flattened it. But hey! What are the odds of having another flat tire?

Dan is taking the van in to the tire shop in the morning to get a real tire put on. Seems the sidewall blew out on ours.

After cleaning up, we went to a restaurant that we had never been to before, To To To. Not sure what it means but we were told it had the best sashimi in town. The fish was pretty darn good and so was everything else we had. Except maybe the sweet potato fries. They came out looking like regular fries. But when you tasted them, they were sweet. Not sweet like a sweet potato but sweet as if they had sugar sprinkled on them. Not what I had in mind, but the menu did not lie. They were sweet.

Back at the casa, we all worked on various BentProp projects. Pat is giving a presentation tomorrow night for Wreck Week at Sam’s Tours so he was making some changes to his PowerPoint presentation. The rest of us worked on a justification proposal, ramrodded by Bob, to JPAC for possibly looking at our Stone Grave Site as the possible final resting spot for some American Airmen. Photos were flying back and forth for different purposes and now I get to finish writing to you.

That’s it. Get some sleep. I’ll write again tomorrow. Or the day after.

Blue SKies, Flip