Return to Tarawa

TARAWA, KIRIBATI (TR) – Sixty-six years ago, the Pacific island atoll of Tarawa was a World War II battlefield of billowing black smoke and death’s stench. Allied and Japanese forces blazed through its coconut trees and white sands, today a part of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, and turned it into a charred chunk of earth upon which roughly 6,000 lives were lost — making it one of the most gruesome battles in U.S. military history.

Former U.S. Naval Ensign Leon Cooper remembers that seventy-six-hour period as if it were yesterday. “I still have nightmares from to time,” says the 89-year-old. “A random smell reminds me of the stink of that time. A sudden loud noise makes me jump.”

But with the landscape of Tarawa, the capital of the nation’s collection of coral atolls that are spread over 1,300 square miles of ocean, now largely a rubbish pit, Cooper set his demons aside and returned, in February 2008. Read more

King copra

MAJURO – The continually hot and dusty conditions found on the Marshall Islands’ capital of Majuro can be rough on the interior of any car, explains Joe Heran as his brown 4-door sedan taxi rumbles down the main road from the airport.

“I fill this up with coconut oil – $2 a gallon,” he says, producing a spray bottle of light brown liquid from beneath the driver’s seat. “It helps to clean the inside of my car. I just wipe it down.” He then pats the dashboard just below the yellow fuzzy dice dangling from his rear view mirror.

Adding a little sparkle to a car’s interior is just one of the many uses for products coming from the coconut – its dried meat, or copra, has been a major source of income for many resource-poor nations in the Pacific over the last two centuries. Read more

Slots of fun in Vanuatu

PORT VILA – There is a knock at the door. Allan Palmer raises his head and greets a middle-aged housewife as she steps inside his office. He pauses from some work at his desk. After they exchange a few pleasantries in French, she then exits. A few moments later Allan’s secretary enters with a slip of paper. It is a marker.

“Her husband has asked me to stop her from playing,” says Allan, the heavy-set 48-year-old manager of Club 21, as he signs the marker. “But this is a free country, and the customer is always right. She is one of my best customers. What can I do?”

Club 21 is one of the four slot clubs in Port Vila, a place where the everyday pace is traditionally a relaxed blend of palm fronds twisting in the morning breeze and drinking straws twisting in evening fruit drinks. Read more

Shanghai’s Bund traders

SHANGHAI – Not one tourist is spared.

“Rolex?” questions a young, slender man in his thirties, tobacco-stained front teeth and hands moving through his outer jacket pockets.

It is an evening on the riverbank promenade of the Bund – Shanghai’s strip of historic art deco buildings aligned along the curve of the murky brown Huangpu River. Drink and film kiosks battle for customers busily snapping photos of the recently constructed towers and high-rises on the opposite bank. In between peddlers cruise the area in search of targets.

“Cheap, cheap,” he declares from underneath three layers of jackets, ostensibly necessary for the storing of his faux merchandise – his Rolexes, Breitlings, and Omegas, all shiny and attached to black plastic bands. The recommended Rolex rests in his palm. “Eighty yuan.” Read more

Museum Tour: The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

PHNOM PENH – It is estimated that during the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979) 1.7 million people lost their lives at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. During that time, radical left wing politics mixed with a complete lack of regard for human life to create one of the most vicious and despicable reigns of terror in the history of man.

Teachers, professors, farmers, engineers, students and skilled artisans were murdered. Entire populations of cities were either starved or forced out from their homes into collective farms.

Those who were deemed to be in opposition, or considered as posing a potential threat, to the Khmer Rouge Government (or Angkar) were brought to Tuol Sleng (also known as S-21, or “Security Office 21″), a former high school converted to a prison, in Phnom Penh. Here, amid what can only be described as pure madness, 14,000 prisoners were interrogated, tortured, beaten, and “exterminated.” Read more

The Alotau Canoe Festival

ALOTAU – As John Kaniku tells it, the appropriate beginning to canoe construction is simple enough: you have to choose a tree of quality timber.

The lush, jungle-covered landscape of Papua New Guinea’s Milne Bay Province, which includes strings of islands and the south-eastern section of the mainland, provides many options.

Canoe styles vary, with each region having a very distinct shape or decorative pattern – perhaps something akin to a trademark. But no matter the type, the construction procedure generally gets a little complicated after that initial selection. Read more

The Bomana War Cemetery

PORT MORESBY (TR) – Local birds on spindly legs dash between the marble headstones set within the manicured green lawn of the Bomana War Cemetery. The only sound is that of a very gentle wind ruffling the surrounding trees.

Caretaker James Kuk says that there is usually one reason why people visit Bomana, a nineteen-kilometer drive outside of Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby.

“Most tourists,” says the groundskeeper, “want to come here before going to the Kokoda Trail. Travelers will be asked by relatives in Australia to get a photo of a certain friend or family member’s grave.” Read more

John Swope: A letter from Japan

LOS ANGELES (TR) – John Swope (1908-79) probably had quite a story to tell Jimmy Stewart and his other celebrity buddies after returning from Japan, where he photographed the devastation at the hands of the Allied forces near the conclusion of World War II.

The Hollywood photographer’s assignment from the US Navy was to photograph the Allied prisoners of war as they were being released just prior to Japan’s surrender.

With his Rolleiflex 75mm, Swope walked through rubble and burned-out structures and befriended Japanese both young and old alike during his three-week tour at the end of August 1945. Read more

Vanuatu beef for the organic market

PORT VILA – Lunch break is over.

The first head of cattle enters the steel chamber. The stun-gun operator attempts to position the silver pistol-like instrument between the eyes of the jostling animal. Then…

Wham! It drops to the floor, hooves clanking against the sides.

Quickly, workers in white smocks stained in bright red attach a chain to its leg. The animal is hoisted up and then along a steel rail.

As one of the workers draws a thin, foot-long blade from his belt to slice the animal’s throat, the next head arrives inside the walled enclosure. An echoing moo then begins rolling through the slaughterhouse. Read more

Vanuatu’s disappearing coconut crabs

PORT VILA – The covered central market in Port Vila is the obvious choice for picking up a few coconuts or a bundle of bananas or any other foodstuff where freshness is a priority in the capital city of the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu.

But in recent years there has been a disappearance of one particular crab from the market’s tables. Looking like a blue alien creature bound tightly in twine, the coconut crab was once as common as the grilled fish being fanned by ladies in flower dresses.

The culprit: a dish of curry sauce, a couple spoonfuls of coconut milk, and a few slices of toast. Read more

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