They came in straight across the reef, through the tortured water that was turning red around them. Tiny black dots of men, holding their weapons high above their heads, moving at snail`s pace, never faltering. Some of them, miraculously, made it. Many others did not. . . . There began a terrible carnage which will always be associated with the name Tarawa.
-Maj. Frank Hough, ”The Island War,” 1947.
Today, a pale, translucent blue-green sea laps softly against the eye-blinding white of the beach on Betio, Tarawa atoll; the indifferent forces of wind and wave have eroded tanks and blockhouses and are working on memories. Where in 1943 machine guns crackled and sniper bullets cracked, a handpainted sign reads: ”Twisting, rock `n` roll, island nites.”
Tarawa. Butaritari. Jaluit. Pingelap. Truk. Mogmog: They are hardly household names. Nor are Nanumea, Funafuti, Pulap, Satawal, Ifaluk, Oroluk, Pohnpei (formerly Ponape).
Even the lands to which they belong-Kiribati (pronounced Keer-ee-bahss), Tuvalu, Micronesia-sound a mysterious litany, as if they were invented by the same people who gave you Oz and Never-Never Land and Gont.
In the days of World War II, Kiribati was known as the Gilberts, Tuvalu as the Ellis Islands, both floating outcrops of the United Kingdom.
During the last century, Micronesia has waved the flags of Spain, Germany, Britain, Japan and (as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands)
the United States. (Current political arrangements are too chaotic to be discussed here.)
Perfect as a cliche
Today, these remote dots are scattered across the vast blue from Fiji in the South Pacific beyond the equator and north to the waters of the Philippine Sea. They are as perfect as a cliche: By day, the palms nod lazily over the empty white beaches back of the cerulean sea; by night, one stands at the bottom of a bowl of stars.
How can you get there from here? With difficulty. I sailed aboard the world`s first expedition passenger ship (she was commissioned in 1969), the Society Explorer of Society Expeditions, displacing 2,398 gross tons and catering to 98 passengers who seem to have seen much of the world, be well-educated, and have a tolerance for the vagaries of adventure travel.
As usual with Society Expeditions Cruises (the Explorer`s sister ship is the 140-passenger World Discoverer), we sailed with a stellar crew of lecturers: Jack Grove as expedition leader, scuba and snorkeling guide, expert on fishes; Peter Harrison, an encyclopedia of avian lore; Karen Nero, anthropologist extraordinaire; and Douglass Hubbard, former naval officer, a director in the National Park Service, and now executive director of the Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Tex., hometown of the late Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz.
Adventure-cruise fan
If I had not been an advocate and enthusiast of adventure cruising before, Project Lost Islands would itself have converted me. Just re-reading my water-, beer-, and salt-stained notes transports me back to Pingelap, State of Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia.
On a glorious April morning, I padded along the jungly path to the local school, deserted and with a hastily scribbled notice on the blackboard: ”A big red ship has come.” Every one of the island`s 500 inhabitants had rushed down to the beach to ogle the strangers.
The roar of a small plane landing on a dirt runway disturbed my reverie. I joined the locals to behold this rare event.
Visitors from the sky
”It`s a very big day,” remarked a small boy who ran up to hold my hand. ”We have visitors from sea and sky.”
In memory, I also revisit . . .
Nanumea Atoll, Tuvalu, and take my place on a mat for the feast: suckling pig garnished with plumeria blossoms, taro, breadfruit, sweet potato steamed in coconut cream, banana fritters, irresistable (and unidentifiable)
delicacies as full of vowels as of flavor-fakalala, falifulata, faosi faolaoa. Too soon, the handsome thatched houses began to fade into tropical dusk, the drums quieted, the lagoon grew black, the tides swelled, and it was time to return to the ship. The birders had spotted 15 beauties and all of us had fallen in love with the Nanumeans.
I now fall forward to the sands of Pulap and Satawal, State of Truk, Federated States of Micronesia. They are islands of canoe-builders and navigators, those geniuses who sailed (and still can sail) by the stick-charts that made possible the long, treacherous Polynesian migrations as early as the 5th Century A.D. Tony, one of the islanders who acted as guides, showed off handsomely crafted, giant canoes like that in which he commuted for five days to Yap to attend high school.
Captivating kids
Naked children, cute as kewpie dolls, scampered about chanting, showing off, leading us to a cemetery where flowers stood in an old Johnson`s Baby Powder can, patting one chief`s big opou (stomach), singing ”Careless Love” (singularly appropriate, I decided), and hawking magnificent helmet shells.
(The price sank from $80 to $5 as we were about to depart.) My favorite new friends were a small hunk named Harrison and a dandy called General.
Diving, diving; perhaps I shall never return to Jaluit Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands, where the town is tawdry but from a never-never sand bar one slips underwater to commune with regal angelfish, feather stars, two-humphead wrasse, and (cautiously) black-and-white-tipped reef sharks.
These are not waters for serious studies of past architecture, for the coral blocks, wood, and thatch used wear away in a relatively short time and must be replaced.
An exception is the mysterious city of Nan Madol, island and State of Pohnpei, Eastern Caroline Islands, Federated States of Micronesia.
Long ago, so long that not even the oldest turtle remembers, people sailed from Kosrae in search of a new home and, following the advice of an octopus, came upon a tiny coral islet. Over the years, they built it bigger and bigger until it assumed the towering volcanic shape it shows today.
Ruled by kings
In ancient times, Pohnpei was ruled by a line of local kings, the Saudeleurs, who left as evidence of their power a city of giant basalt
”logs” built on 80 artificial islands.
How they were floated to the site is no puzzle to traditionalists who say that the great stones flew into place by themselves. Carbon dating sets construction between 1285 and 1485.
Our visit on this cruise, to Nan Madol and the capital, Kolonia, was all too short: I had been there before and stayed at American-owned The Village Hotel, a near-perfect meeting of the civilized with the rustic; I mean, can you go wrong with waterbeds in a thatched hut?
Looking back at that April is like recalling childhood or dreams: Some impressions are fuzzy and slide together like shades in a rainbow; others stand out with the clarity of an coral tidepool.
To my surprise, from first call on Rotuma (Fiji) through Tarawa to Ifaluk, the traditional dances and chants were as varied, as nonrepetitive, as different from one another as Fiji`s firewalking from Tahiti`s tamure.
The only constant was the physical beauty of the islands, the welcome of their people. (In some cases, we were the first tourists ever to call; only supply ships appear every three months or so.)
On many levels-scientific, sportive, humanitarian, historic-Project Lost Islands was Paradise Found.
