Coast watcher children - ‘best for her’

Swimming with Sharks Chapter 6.3

Trying to find the coast watcher children, Bataroma led me through the maze of lean-tos, shacks and traditional houses as we looked for one or two of the old people who were there in 1942. 

Rap music blasted out and near naked children with sores and running noses, yell i-matang or white man. Dogs barked, chickens cluck and the odd mother whacked a child. Kids and adults piss anywhere while nearby, open wells show that the brackish ground water upon which they depend is not far from the surface.

One old man, with a full crop of crew cut white hair, surrounded by green tins of ‘Gallaher's Irish cake tobacco’, told a war story but Bataroma was doubtful. People want to say what they think the listener wants to hear. 

Bataroma and one of the Parker clan.

District officer David Wernham had been the only official to look into the children. He had ended his days as a schoolteacher in Hamilton. He had died a couple of years before I started investigating, but his reporting was in the newly developed Kiribati Archives. Soon after liberation, Wernham investigated the children. 

A boy was called Leo B Speedy while a girl was known as Nei Tiare.

 ‘Both these infants are obviously half-castes, and there does not appear to be any doubt that they are the issue of Private Speedy and Private Owen respectively.’