PONAPE: A NUT TO CRACK

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 11, 5 June 1944, Page 28

PONAPE: A NUT TO CRACK

By WiLLARD Price in Asia and the Americas In the days before Pearl Harbour, Willard Price spent several’months in the Japanese mandated islands, then jealously guarded from outsiders.

One morning, shortly before these lines were in print a radio voice announced, “ American planes have bombed Ponape.” Ponape, not far from Truk, attacked three days later by strong American forces, is as little known to-day as Guadalcanal or Bataan before we collaborated with the Japanese to make them famous. But even before the war Ponape was less know than perhaps any other island of equal size in the Pacific, because it lay within the forbidden waters of the Japanese mandate. Ponape is the largest single island of the 1,400 fragments of land composing Japanese Micronesia. It is in some ways, not all, the most important. It is the most prolific. The Spaniards called it

“ the garden of the Pacific ” and made it their Micronesian headquarters. It is a strong defensive base, perhaps fully the equal of the more publicized Truk, which lies 400 miles to the west; and far superior to Kusaie, 400 miles east, bombed by American planes in January. But in all probability it will not, like the Gilberts, be a brief meteor in the newspaper-reader’s sky. The fight for this rain-soaked, bug-infested, canyoncut confusion of cliffs and jungle may be long. Few foreigners have seen Ponape since Japan rang down the curtain a quarter of a century ago. Foreign ships were then barred. Foreigners could not be forbidden passage on Japanese ships, for the terms of the mandate required free access, but they -could be, and

were, discouraged. The discomforts of travel in the Nanyo, as the Japanese called their mandated South Seas, were enlarged upon. Moreover, when you had won the privilege of getting on the boat, it was another thing to find a way to get off; for the Japanese captain at every port would suggest that you would be much more comfortable if you remained on board the ship. To stop over from one ship to another was still harder ; so it is with some slight sense of achievement that my wife and I look back upon our four months’ stay in the islands in 1935. At Saipan and Yap we sneaked off the boat. At Palau we got away with the help of a German missionary. At Truk we were befriended by a Native. At Ponape it is doubtful what success we should have had if we had not acquired a princely patron.

A young man in amber glasses and golf pants asked us to join him in a game of deck golf. He spoke English surprisingly well. When I remarked on it he said that he had spent some time in England. It was only later that we learned he had been educated at Oxford. He had a frank, friendly manner, quite different from the clamlike inscrutability of many Japanese. He did not play deck golf with consummate skill, and Mary soon put him in the “ pool.” She was called “ nasty ” for her pains. When he had gone to his cabin, the steward came to tell us rather breathlessly that he was Prince Saionji, grandson of the last of the Genro, the elder statesmen who guided the policy of the nation until the militarists seized power. His grandfather was the most influential man in Japan, hardly excepting the Emperor. The young prince, not yet thirty, occupied himself in the treaties department of the Japanese Gaimusho, or Foreign Office. He was distinctly proAmerican and pro-British, and loved to talk with any one acquainted with Europe or America. He had various fine plans, one of them to establish a university like Oxford in Japan. We soon found that we had gained a powerful ally. We were, of course, the only American passengers on this ship,

as we had been on all the others, and the closely enveloping Japanese atmosphere had sometimes been very oppressive. Now the lowering brows lifted, and suddenly nothing was too good for us. Land on Ponape ? Why, of course. A radiogram was sent to the Governor, and he radioed back that a house had been placed at our disposal. Ponape is impressive as one approachesit by way of the twisting channel through the reef to spacious Ponape Harbour. The island is mountainous and wildly picturesque. It plays its role as an island of mystery. Its appearance is more ominous because of the inky clouds that habitually roll across its ranges. Lightning crackles and thunder roars around the mighty Rock of Chokach overlooking the harbour. This huge natural fortress, two-thirds the height of Gibraltar, drops away in basaltic cliffs so steep that they can be scaled only in one place where the Japanese have constructed a dangerous trail. Without doubt heavy batteries are mounted on the flat crown.

More than once in the past this rock has been used as a stronghold. lit German times a Governor noted for his. harsh methods came to Ponape to put down a local rebellion. When he had the King arrested and flogged, the islanders retaliated by assassinating him. his secretary, and all of his higher officials. Then they fled to Chokach and pulled themselves up by lianas to its summit. But German soldiers trained in wall-scaling tactics climbed the precipice and captured the islanders. Some were executed, others deported to Palau. Lofty Ponape attracts the storms. Kain descends in torrents as we draw near looming Chokach. A severe rainstorm is almost a daily event in Ponape. It has the dubious distincton of being one of the best-watered islands in the Pacific. Anything will grow here, including mould and madness. Under thumping rain, a launch takes us on a half-hour trip through shallow passages between islands to the docks of the town. Busy streets, teeming with Japanese, climb the hillside to a high point crowned by a shicho, government building. It is a frame structure

in German style. Genial Governor Fushida shows us about the humming •offices where heavy-spectacled, eager young Japanese brush columns of ideographs into ledgers and chatter in highkeyed self-importance ; then walks with us down a street of bustling stores a mile long (“ There was nothing but jungle here a year ago,” he says) to our home-to-be.

It is a two-room German house with .a verandah commanding an astounding view of the island-studded harbour, -towering Chokach and the gleaming white reef. Fruits of every description droop from the trees around the cottage. Rain is still coming down relentlessly. A man is slashing out some jungle undergrowth that is encroaching upon the garden. “It comes in at the rate of a foot or two a day,” says Governor Fushida. “ And perhaps you haven’t believed the stories you’ve heard about Ponape telephone poles sprouting branches. Well, look at that one. Sure enough, the pole before our house was rapidly reverting to type. “ But I’ll tell you something stranger than that,” he went on. “ The director ■of our experimental farm stuck his walking stick into the ground. It was made of green wood. That was two years ago. Now it’s a tree. An early visitor described the island as ‘‘of a prodigious and inexhaustible fertility. Sago-palms, bananas, mangoes, ■orange and lime trees grow in greatest magnificence. Great beds of wild ginger ■carpet the ground, sending up a pungent aromatic reek from their trodden leaves . . . There is no lack of food in the land, for yams and taro are zealously cultivated.” That was in Spanish times before the Germans and Japanese began the agricultural development of the island. Now extensive plantations of tapioca and rice, as well as scientifically cultivated coconut groves and oil-palms, have been added to the natural products of Ponape. A remarkably efficient government experimental farm has brought in two hundred and thirty-six fruits and vegetables from all over the world and acclimatized them for use on the island. Ponape is a treasure chest.

But its chief significance at the moment is strategic. Like a castle surrounded by a moat, Ponape is circled by a lagoon walled by a coral reef. The lagoon is from one to four miles wide. Much of it is a shallow and almost impassable mangrove swamp. The mangrove has a peculiar habit of sprouting what look like branches, but turn out to be roots, descending through the air until they reach the mud. These interlacing stilt-roots are hard to climb over or through. A mangrove swamp is not adapted to animals that walk on their hind feet ; one must return to primordial serpentine habits to squirm through this muddy, slippery lattice as difficult as a barbed-wire entanglement. Where the shallow lagoon is not choked with mangroves it is studded with reefs of live coral growing so rapidly in some places that charts, even if available, would be useless if not new. Violent cross-currents caused by the tides add to the difficulties of navigation. Not all of Ponape’s moat is shallow. In six places harbours pierce the reef and swamp and provide access to the shore or shelter for defending ships. These harbours are Ponape, Chokach (or Jokaj), Ronkiti, Mutok, Lot, and Metalanim.

The first two of these harbours are in effect one harbour, since they join to form a magnificent fleet basin fully ten miles long and from one to two miles wide. In the heart of this stands Chokach Island with its 900 ft. clifffaced rock. Also the harbour is commanded from heights on the main island. Ranged like carefully-placed sentry-boxes along the shore of the fleet basin are four summits, the lowest at the western end, 800 ft. high, the highest a mountain of 2,000 ft. overlooking the best part of the fleet basin on the east. Moreover, all harbours around the island and the seas beyond them are commanded by the central peak of Ponape, Totolom, with an elevation of 2,579 ft. From this peak the distance to all parts of the reef averages less than eight miles, well within the range of big guns. The several dozen rocky islands in the lagoon afford good protection for ships from sea attack. Ships of the greatest

draught can be accommodated. The depth of the basin averages 20 fathoms; and in some places exceeds 40 fathoms. Bitter land fighting may be expected in Ponape, for no other Micronesian island is so replete with “ natural fortifications ” in the way of deep ravines, high peaks, precipices, and jungle. The Ponapeans have a superstitious dread of the interior, but the Japanese have penetrated it to start plantations and, doubtless, install armaments. Because of the difficult terrain, there are only 40 miles of roads as contrasted with, 17 1 miles on much smaller Saipan. Streams of any kind are almost unknown in Micronesia, but there are rivers on Ponape, tumbling down to the sea from upland lakes. American whalers used to come to Ponape for fresh water.

The basaltic cliffs are honeycombed with caves, which were used by the islanders to withstand the German siege in 1901, and will doubtless now be found faced with concrete and converted into forts and machine-gun nests.

Forts of the traditional sort are not built by the Japanese, but there is one on Ponape left over from the Spanish regime. It is still in good repair and will probably be used. It stands on a hill overlooking Ponape Harbour. Several acres are enclosed within a high stone wall 6 ft. thick, on top of which defenders may crouch protected by a 3 ft. escarpment. There are two heavy iron gates. Inside the compound is an old Spanish roundhouse, solidly built with gun-ports framed on the inside by the brass ports of some Spanish ship. Also within the fort is a school facing a large playground. From the veranda of the school we viewed a tribal war dance. Stout Ponape youths removed their straw hats, Osaka-made shirts and pants, smeared themselves with oil and daubs of paint, and adorned themselves with wreaths of the lovely fragrant white flowers with yellow centre called on Ponape the Pomaria, or “ Smell of Mary.” Their well-oiled, naked, brown bodies

flashed in the sun as they fought with staves to the rhythm of a shouting chorus. The chants of songs were stirring. The performance without a change would be a sensation on the New York stage. The dance was in honour of Prince Saionji. His face wore a strained, almost horrified expression as he watched the blood-chilling ferocity of the savage dance and the very evident relish these head-hunters would have for real battle. “ Good men, if they are with us,” he remarked. ‘‘l’d hate to have them against us ! ” The fort of Pon ape was built for the express purpose of protecting the Spaniards from the islanders. It wasthe only island of the Carolines on which the Spaniards found a fort necessary. In the old cemetery near the fort a gigantic mango tree broods over the graves of Spaniards and Germans killed in island uprisings. Granite stones commemorate the German governor Gustav Boder and three of his aides killed by Ponapeans on October 18, 1910. The Japanese dead are buried elsewhere. It is interesting that the first white men to take up residence on Ponape were missionaries of the American Methodist Mission and they came in 1850.

The next visitors were also Americans, but not bound on so holy an errand. They were New England whalers, coming ashore to raise hell with Ponape women. But they met their match in the warriors of Ponape, and soon chose easier conquests on other islands. Therefore the Ponapeans do not remember Americans with bitterness, but rather with a certain degree of affection since the missionaries did them no harm and some good. The third visitation was also American. During the Civil War certain Union ships fled to the refuge of Ponape Harbour. The Confederate cruiser “ Shenandoah ” caught them there and burned them to the water’s edge. So the Spaniards were comparative latecomers. It was not until 1886 that the Spanish flag was raised at what was called Ascension Bay, now Ponape Harbour. The Spanish Capuchin priests did not get on well with the Methodists from Boston. In 1887 Mr. Doane, head of the Methodist Mission, was deported to Manila. Two weeks later the. resentful islands rose in a massacre of Spanish soldiers and their Filipino mercenaries, captured the fort, and killed Senor Posadillo, the Governor. In 1890 the Ponapeans again rebelled. The Spaniards took revenge by burning villages and slaughtering the inhabitants. Believing that the American missionaries had encouraged the people to resist Spanish oppression, they ordered the Methodists out. The American corvette “ Alliance ” exacted 17,000 gold dollars as compensation for the expulsion of the Americans, then took them to the Island of Kusaie. That did not end the trouble. Eight years later, when the American War broke out, a Ponape chief friendly to the Americans and head of the mission schools inherited from the missionaries, led a revolt. He was promptly imprisoned, but his followers carried out a terrible massacre of Spaniards. Perhaps the Spaniards, having suffered so many bitter humiliations in Ponape at the hands of savages, were not too sorry to lose the island to the United States at the close of the Spanish-American War. But when the United States

refused to accept the fruits of victory, Spain sold Ponape, along with the rest of the islands, to Germany. Rebellions continued under the Germans, the most savage being that of 1910, already mentioned. It occurred on Chokach Island, in the shadow of the great rock. A young German overseer in charge of a road-gang struck one of the men with a whip. In ten minutes he was dead. When the news got to headquarters, the Governor and a squad of soldiers boarded a sloop and came across the bay to Chokach. It was assumed that the Ponapeans had no firearms. But guns captured in Spanish days had been concealed, and the Governor had no sooner set foot on shore than he fell with a bullet through his head. A general massacre followed. Not one German was left on the island. A few weeks later a German warship happened to call at Ponape. The only foreigner the crew could find was a London gypsy called “ Joe of the Hills,” who lived with the people. He was forced to tell the story of the massacre. German vengeance followed. The inhabitants of Chokach were rounded up, the ringleaders shot, and two hundred deported to the bleak Island of Angaur to work in the phosphate mine. The same fates, death and deportation, have been meted out by 'the Japanese, but rebellions continue. The indigenous population is now probably about ten thousand as against six thousand Japanese. In the Town of Ponape the Japanese are in the majority and are safe enough. Strolling along the main street of Ponape one might think himself on Tokyo’s Ginza. But let a Japanese step two miles out of town and he will be courting trouble, if not death. The Ponapeans are not a soft people. They cut their arms and burn holes in their chests to prove their endurance. When reaching marriageable age they endure the mutilation called lekelek, the excision of the right testicle. They cut their flesh in elaborate patterns with knives and keep the wounds open until ridged cicatrices result. Some of these designs are quite artistic, and all of them are evidence of considerable physical courage.