It was tempting for the men to believe they were as far from war as it was then possible to be. For Jones though, 400 kilometres to the north was Jaluit, a strategic naval and air base for Japan, and part of their Marshall Islands territory. The Marshalls were one of the earliest places in the Pacific to be visited by Europeans - Spaniards made landfall in 1526. In 1878 Germany created a coaling station on Jaluit. Eight years later the Marshalls became a German protectorate. With the Great War Japan occupied the Marshalls (and the Marianas and Carolines). After the war the League of Nations gave the mandate over the Marshalls to Japan which set about to isolate the islands from the world.
By 1935 the Americans believed Japan was fortifying the Marshalls. Japan's major naval base was constructed, beyond worldview, at the enormous Truk (now Chuuk) atoll. Kwajalein had an airfield put on it and a garrison. As war neared, airfields and military bases were added to Maloelap, Wotje and, significantly for the Gilberts, to Mili, 400 kilometres north of Makin. In 1927 New York millionaire publisher Vincent Astor set up an informal intelligence group known as "The Room". He counted President Franklin D Roosevelt a close friend. Astor took his yacht, Nourmahal, across the Pacific, using its direction finder to locate Japanese radio stations. He later advised Roosevelt that Eniwetok was Japan's "principal navy base in the Marshall Islands", Bikini was their second string base and Wotje had a new airfield and submarine base.
The coastwatchers did not write many letters because there was no way of knowing when a ship would call. The letters that were sent were often hasty affairs, written as news raced through a village that a ship had been sighted. They told of men who, for the most part, seemed to cope well with the entirely different world they found themselves in. Private Reg Jones of Grey Lynn wrote to his friend Wilf Jones soon after he was settling down on Kuria.
‘To put it colloquially, I have been a very busy woman ever since (we) arrived,’ he wrote, apologising for the lack of mail. He said a Scotsman who had married a local woman had lived on the atoll but he had died some years earlier. His son was the only person on the atoll who had ‘a decent understanding of Europeans:
I am residing on a tropical atoll just a few miles north of the Equator. After one month kicking around the South Seas in a ship of about one thousand tons we arrived at my destination. There are three of us here and about two hundred Gilbertese islanders. They are treating us very well although they have not much themselves. Their diet is comprised of coconuts, poultry and pawpaws which are a kind of tree melon. They also have pumpkin, fish and a few pigs. We have been here a week now and they have given us two legs of pork, three roosters, two crayfish, several lots of fish and pawpaws until we are sick of the sight of them. Our own stores are having a bit of a rest in consequence. We are living in a native thatched house which is certainly cooler than a wooden house would be....
We have two men who have appointed themselves our servants and we are in a bit of a fix to know how to repay them. A few cigarettes seems to be all they require, but even that is a bit embarrassing to us, who have brought, roughly, sufficient to do us nine months. We were told to take enough for six months to nine months. Anyhow, work for us they will and as neither of them speak English there is a lot of waving of arms and nodding of heads goes on. One chap has appointed himself cook and butler and the other scullery man, while we lounge around like lords of the manor, at least some of the time. Unlike the natives of a lot of the islands these have had very little traffic with the outside world and consequently are living next to nature. They wear grass skirts or lavalavas and some of the women have frocks.
The climate was appealing. Reg Jones believed with the thermometer hovering around 30 degrees C night and day, moderated by a steady breeze:
In fact it is a better climate than Suva and we are told there is not very much change all the year round. Our house is about thirty yards from the water's edge and about a quarter of a mile out there is coral reef which forms a lagoon when the tide is in, incidentally this empties when the tide is out. The water affords us a good swim and is quite tepid. There is also a total absence of mud about these islands. Everything is just plain sand or solid coral. Not the feathery stuff we are familiar with but rocklike masses, consequently the clarity and colouring of the sea is amazing. When we were on the ship and at anchor at a place called Beru I could see the bottom thirty fathoms down. Altogether I have experienced a very interesting time but believe me old Ak. (Auckland) will look pretty good to my eyes next time I see it... I sincerely trust all is well with you all there. Personally I am Al at Lloyds.
Soldier Jack Nichol wrote to his family from Suva and later Nonouti. Most of his comments were about his friends in the same camp and the letters were censored. One day the family received a notice that he had been put into the ‘radio location service’ and would be sent to the islands. There were only two villages on Nonouti, he wrote, and yet when he went for a walk the chiefs got worried he would get lost so they sent people looking for him. Nichol was puzzled too at the way the people had no conception of an animal larger than a pig. Sometimes he wrote of the weather and the unusual nature of a storm. One day the lagoon did not drain at low tide and as the residents saw this they ran round preparing for the worst. When the tide came back in the water piled into the full lagoon and flowed over the atoll. Even the chickens and pigs had got themselves secured for the torrent. It may have been the result of a small tsunami, or it could have been a ‘dodging tide’ – a normal occurrence that would have disastrous consequences later on Tarawa. The paucity of clothing worn by women fascinated the men. Jack Nichol did not write about it to his family, but did to friends. John Jones reckoned seeing near naked women was interesting for around a day and then in the heat of the place, it ceased to attract attention.
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