Wednesday, August 5, 2009

An Ironic Memorial

We observed PNG Remembrance Day/WWII Memorial Day here last Friday (The actual holiday was Thursday, July 23, but school administrators correctly assumed that if you gave students a Thursday off, they’d take Friday too.) It’s one of three veterans’ days PNG celebrates partly in honor of American troops. On the mainland, I understand the reverence shown to troops since they held the Japanese at bay and supposedly modeled the first racially integrated troops in PNG, but on Karkar, the display of respect is terribly ironic.

The Americans bombed Karkar’s coast relentlessly and indiscriminately in their attempts to route out the Japanese from the caves and bush of the island, killing hundreds, if not thousands. Not that Japanese occupation was better alternative. I can’t even fathom what Karkar Islanders must have thought or how they attempted to explain a sudden bath of bombs and blood on their, by that point, relatively peaceful island. Pop’s has referred me to his uncles who were just boys in 1942 for a more detailed account, but his own tales of bloodied hands hanging in the mango trees at Tabel, a relative tortured on account of suspected spying, a boat of missionaries and Karkar native POWs being bombed at sea are enough to make anyone’s stomach turn. He says you can still see the bullet holes and remains where bombs detonated in coconut trees in the plantation at Kulkul (my family’s home). Rolaine says cousins found the tail fin of and American airplane at the beach once, it’s USA marking still visible.

And a recent addition to local folklore is the well-known story of a prominent Karkar woman’s burial during the war. Villagers had been warned to stay in their houses or the caves many took to hiding in for the duration of the daytime. Only at night would they leave the refuge of the bush to hunt, fish, and cook. But one day the death of a major village figure required them to abandon their stealth to provide the woman a proper burial. As the pall-bearers were carrying the coffin to the grave, fighter plans flew overhead and detecting movement, drops a barrage of bombs on the funeral assembly. All dove for cover, dropping the casket as they ran. When the pall-bearers returned, the casket was no where to be found. The bomb had detonated in the ground next to it and buried the casket completely.

It’s stories like these and others of the terrors of the war that have some on Karkar—or at least my host parents—talking of compensation for their losses. Stories of Japanese war reparation payments for some abused women and widows of the war have filtered through to PNG. Before he died, Pop’s father drew from memory a precise depiction of the boat the Japanese had his maintain and use for their war effort. Pop’s has some hope that some day an appeal (as of yet, theoretical) to the Japanese government to compensate the decedents for their contribution to the war cause will bear a fat paycheck. Given the rate of anything getting done around here, I’m sadly doubtful a suit would ever be filed, and even then it would be little more than a gesture, though an important one. At least as an American, I feel like my history classes completely neglected mention of the sacrifices made by Pacific Islanders during the war.

Today’s respect for America here comes as the repercussion of yet another powerful country: Australia. I’ve heard time an again that the US is willing to give aid to PNG without strings attached (for example, sending a hovercraft marine mission to refurbish Gaubin Hospital here last year) whereas Australia has required the hearts, minds, and labor of PNG in return for its aid (which, for the record, currently accounts for 1/3 of the GDP). Ambassador Leslie Rowe worked tirelessly and successfully to increase American aid and investment here, and I am hopeful that in the future America will better prove to be the ally she is revered to be.

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