Historical Authority in the Solomons

The Battle of Guadalcanal remains in the American narrative about WWII, and dozens of monuments are scattered about the island today, testimony to American heroism. Guadalcanal is a place of tragedy for the Japanese, and their more modest monuments convey mourning. Monuments about Solomon Islanders are harder to find. Two such monuments exist, but both represent these individuals concerning American needs. Neither represents the Solomon experience of the war as deserving of attention in its own right.

World War II (WWII) was formative to Solomon Island's national identity. On the eve of the war, the Solomons were a protectorate rather than a colony; the British exploited its resources without creating unifying structures like an education system. Many cultures existed in the archipelago, but a common difference was between people who lived on the coasts, surviving on fishing and trade, and those who lived in the bush, surviving on farming and hunting. During the war, coastal people fled inland. In addition, men heard about the pay provided by Americans and migrated to Guadalcanal, acting as stevedores and scouts. As Solomon people from different islands mingled, they formed their first sense as a collective nation with its own identity. After the war, the village of Honiara on Guadalcanal became the country's capital because of the wartime infrastructure built by Americans. Foreign investments followed, and people from surrounding islands migrated to find work in Honiara.

World War II memorials intertwine with World War II tourism, especially in the Pacific. Countries like the Solomons had minimal tourism in the 1970s when veterans began returning to remember war experiences. As air travel improved and cruise ships began landing in the 1980s, organized WWII tours arrived, hospitality services expanded, and major anniversaries brought monuments. Vicky Reynolds-Middagh, the president of one of the oldest WWII tour companies, stated that the field emerged just as WWII veterans reached retirement age and had leisure time. Few WWII memorials existed then, particularly in the Pacific. The Philippine government approached her company about a partnership to promote veteran tours, and the company organized groups of 100 veterans or more to visit Bataan. Veterans complained that there were no monuments. Thus the company began working with the Philippine government, fund-raising to develop mile markers and other monuments along the route of the Death March. On visits to Guadalcanal, veterans on tours complained that Japan planted many memorials. Still, Americans had few, and the company began lobbying the American Battlefield Monuments Commission and fund-raising for the United States. As veterans passed away, WWII tours shifted to serving their children and history buffs.

World War II tours have become less central to Solomon tourism in current times. Bunyan Sivoro, the Director of Tourism for the Solomon government, explained by email that even if travelers come for another purpose, more than half participate in a battlefield tour. Scuba divers come for the coral reefs and explore the wrecks of sunken battleships. The tours mostly revolve around the capital of Honiara, but a few have arisen in outlying islands. WWII monuments in the Solomons may be transitioning as historic lands pass into private hands. An Australian bought the tiny islet that John Kennedy first swam ashore after the sinking of PT-109. Today Plum Pudding Island, also known as Kennedy Island, has a dock, a barbecue pit, and a small monument for motorboat tours. In addition, a Honiaran acquired the site of a minor WWII landmark with plans to build a tourist café there.

Historian and anthropologist Geoffrey M. White points out that in the Solomons, the WWII memorials tend to be binary, with the story of a conflict between Japan and the United States dominating and pushing aside dissonant memories of colonial conflict. As mentioned, only two memorials recognize Solomon Islanders. The first is of Jacob Vouza, a local constabulary who refused to talk as the Japanese tortured him for carrying an American flag. For Americans, Vouza symbolizes Solomon loyalty. Unveiled during the 50th anniversary of the Guadalcanal landing, a statue shows Vouza as a plantation laborer, wielding a machete and wearing a loincloth. In fact, Vouza was a policeman before the war, not a laborer, and constantly donned his uniform and medals when receiving foreign visitors. Some local leaders see the Vouza monument as a pointed reminder of their former status as a colony. The second monument also represents Solomon people concerning Allied needs. The Pride of our Nation Memorial arose in 2013 to "recognize the crucial role played by the people of the Solomon Islands during the most fateful days of WWII." The white European coast watcher stands upright, binoculars raised, scanning the horizon. Three local scouts in loincloths surround him to assist.

Building a Memorial
When I first traveled to the Guadalcanal in 2016, honoring my late father's service there as a WWII Marine, I had thought little about the Solomon experience. Still, when I traveled to Vella Lavella, a remote island where my father had landed, I found a war site distant from tourist memorials. I decided to return to Vella Lavella in 2018 to erect a monument that honored my father and the Marines who landed there in 1943 and the Vella Lavellans. The goal of an inclusive monument proved complicated. On Guadalcanal, all WWII monuments are either in English or Japanese, and I learned from a local historian that locals often vandalized them, their brass plaques plied off and sold. It was a colonization of Solomon history; outsiders imposed messages in their language on Solomon landscapes.

I worked with Mr. Tony Kubai-Kansipitu, the village chief, Vanunu, who had built a guest house and was eager for a monument that might draw tourists. Mr. Kubai-Kansipitu agreed to the monument design, and I obtained approval from the American Battlefields Monument Commission and the Solomon government to erect it. I wanted the monument to be in the local language and English, which became the first complication when I could not get the translation done before I left. The second complication was the monument's location and maintenance. It became a complicated negotiation between villages while trying to avoid jungle growth that would have covered the monument within a year. We finally agreed that the best location would be in Mr. Kubai-Kansipitu's village, near his guest house, where he could maintain it, and tourists could see it. The decision about location occurred in a language other than my own, shrouded in local politics and cultural considerations.

My context for the monument was written history, but Vella Lavellan's history is oral, with WWII memory handed down in song and story. A few times, we were able to join our two streams of history. A village chief pointed out the beach where the Allies, including my father, first landed but could not be sure of the exact spot. I remembered a news article saying that the Marines' landing craft got hung up on coral that day, and Seabees had come in with tractors to break up the coral and shape it into ramps for the landing craft. Walking the beach, I found a ramp still there, submerged and invisible, unless one knew what to look for.

I wanted to learn about the Vella Lavellan experience of the war, but I was the first American -- and for some, the first white man -- they had talked to. The workers who built the monument were hesitant to speak with me. To get local history, an outsider needed more than a few days to build trust and comfort. Moreover, WWII had little relevance to their present lives. Almost all locals who had experienced WWII firsthand, even as children, had passed. The Vella Lavellans were grateful that I had come so far to remember something that happened on their island but looked to me for historical information.

Under Mr. Kubai-Kansipitu's supervision, local men laid the concrete and finished the monument over several days. It held one brass plaque with an inscription in English and had a blank space for a second plaque in the local language, awaiting my return. We celebrated our accomplishments with a large party that included surrounding villages. On my final day, Mr. Kubai-Kansipitiu's mother translated the plaque inscription into M'bula. A second brass plaque now sits in my garage, my return trip on hold until the pandemic lifts. Mr. Kubai-Kansipitu says that people stop by to look at the monument, and they remember and talk about my visit.

As White suggests, war memory does not sit in places but resides in moments of encounter where personal, family, national, and transnational memory mix. For the sons and daughters of World War II veterans, travel is memory work, a co-experiencing of history that becomes real through "encounters with people, artifacts, and landscapes," usually in transcultural exchanges. The exchange that most connected my experience with Vella Lavellans' came when I handed out dozens of balsa wood gliders to the children in Vanunu. With their parents watching, the children discovered a new toy, slinging the airplanes into the air and watching them fly about in crazy loops. For twenty minutes, we all seemed together in the present and the past – me and the villagers, my father's memory, and the US history of the airfield. We were layering a new memory upon the past.

If historical authority is to be shared, it must align with the local community's interests. For Vella Lavellans, the monument was a curiosity, but its commercial potential to draw tourists was what engaged them. Since 2018 several developments have opened the possibility for a broader memorialization that could realistically attract tourists. First, the long-abandoned WWII airfield on Vella Lavella is undergoing repair, a project of the local minister to support the local area's economic development. My trip from California to Vella Lavella was an arduous four-day journey that included four flights and a motorboat. Flying directly from Honiara will make Vella Lavella much more accessible to tourists.

Secondly, the Scout and Coastwatchers Trust expanded its focus. It funded a local graduate student to write a Solomon history of the war. Its strategic plan aims to introduce local WWII history into school curricula and "to offer training for young people in enabling them to seek tourism employment opportunities as battlefield tour guides." Oral histories from the Western Solomons done by a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1980s are being translated and broadcast by radio. With the Trust's larger focus on education, the binary narrative of the war is opening to other memories.

Mr. Kubai-Kansipitu and I continue to work together on ideas, including exposing young Vella Lavellans to their history while building on the commercial interest of attracting tourists. Among the projects we are considering are recording memories of the elders on the island whose parents lived through the war, using these memories to train young adults as tour guides, and developing formal local tours. Such projects would help the Vella Lavella Monument to move from fixed history to an act of remembrance as described by White,"…embedded in social relations and activities, activities of people constructing meaning in the present, using the tools of history to fashion desired futures."

(edited by Brad Poss & Laura Bailey)

Location

Metadata