Word: islanded
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...Later, when Kennedy rejoined his crewmates on Olasana, he carved a message into a green coconut husk: nauro isl native knows posit he can pilot 11 alive need small boat kennedy. The skipper asked the two islanders to take the note to a naval base at Rendova Harbor, 60 km away. The pair sought out another scout, with whom they took the message to Australian Coastwatcher Reg Evans. Based on Kolombangara, Evans had been on watch the night PT 109 went up in flames. The U.S. authorities had all but given up hope of finding the missing...
Paddling a dugout canoe in the Solomon Sea, two near-naked islanders working for the Allies were carrying a message behind enemy lines to the town of Gizo. Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana had been ordered not to stop, but when they spotted a barge wrecked on a reef, they couldn't resist the temptation to scavenge for clothing. Their disobedient detour might fairly be said to have changed the course of history. According to his family, the ailing Gasa has grown weary of retelling his story. But sitting on the floor of a shaded verandah at his neat home...
...boat, bringing supplies of rice, bottled water and betel nut, Gasa thanked them for the gifts. Now, in a wavering voice, he recalls the war as the most terrible time of his life. "We could hear bombs all night until daybreak," Gasa says through interpreter Neboty Turukevu, a Solomon Islands police officer who is linked by marriage to the patriarch known locally as "the old man." "We were so lucky that not too many of our people were killed during the war," he adds. To this day Gasa harbors a hatred of the Japanese. "They came to our island...
...early hours of August 2, 1943, the American patrol torpedo boat PT 109, skippered by John F. Kennedy, was running slowly on one engine - to avoid detection - in the Blackett Strait, off Kolombangara Island. Its mission, like that of other PT boats, was to harass a fast-moving convoy of Japanese supply ships. On a moonless night, with little warning, Kennedy's 25-m wooden boat was rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. PT 109 burst into flames, two men were killed, and the 11 surviving crew members had to abandon the boat. Four hours later, after swimming almost...
...their canoe, Gasa and Kumana were on their mission to Gizo. "We saw a Japanese barge wrecked near Naru Island," says Gasa. "As we were almost naked, we decided to go to the wreck to look for clothes. We found fuel and bags of rice." A man called out to the pair from Naru's white sandy beach. "We thought he was Japanese, so we left him there," Gasa says. "We paddled a short way to Olasana to get coconuts." They later learned the man was Kennedy, who'd swum to Naru island to be closer to shipping lanes. "While...