thedrifter
04-05-07, 08:35 AM
WWII heroism in the Solomons
Article Launched:04/04/2007 10:07:13 PM PDT
Having written so much recently about World War II, and knowing there is yet another column to come next week, I hesitate to take up the subject of the war again.
But two things prompted me to do this column. One was that I recently came across my notes from a 1985 trip that photographer Leo Hetzel and I took to war sites in the Pacific. Second, one of the places we visited, Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, took a tough hit this week from an earthquake and tsunami.
I hope the Bush Administration can find its way clear to give the Solomon Islands a bit of financial help, as other nations are doing. The Pacific country, after all, has been a good friend to America.
"If you want to visit a place where the United States is still loved, go to the Solomon Islands," I wrote after Leo and I returned from that trip.
The above is by way of leading up to the profile of an amazing man, a tough, wiry Solomon Islander named Jacob Charles Vouza.
This is his story.
Not talking
In early 1942, Japan invaded the Solomons. The U.S. followed later in the year, with Marines landing Aug. 7 on Guadalcanal.
On that same day, Vouza, a retired sergeant major from the Solomon Islands Constabulary, rescued a naval pilot from the USS Wasp. The pilot had been shot down in Japanese territory.
Vouza escorted the pilot to safety and, in so doing, met U.S. Marines for the first time. He immediately volunteered to scout behind enemy lines for them.
Three weeks later, Vouza was captured and found to be carrying a small American flag in his loincloth. Having it on his person was foolish, he knew, but he could not bring himself to part with this tiny memento of the country he so admired.
He was tied to a tree and tortured for information. But he said nothing, not even after he was bayoneted repeatedly; arms, face, throat, shoulders, legs and stomach. His tormentors finally gave up, leaving him tied to the tree, where they assumed he was sure to die.
Vouza did not die. He chewed through his ropes, fled the enemy, and walked miles through the jungle to reach our Marines. Nearly dead, he nevertheless refused medical help until he was able to tell the Americans that hundreds of Japanese were headed their way. The resulting clash, known as the Battle of the Tenaru (River), was a U.S. victory.
After the war, Vouza served in various leadership capacities in the Solomons, and was a sort of tribal leader of the village in which he lived, several miles from Honiara, the capital.
Over the years, visitors, including many Marines who fought on Guadalcanal, could always tell when Vouza was at home by the American flag flying from a pole near the entrance to his settlement. After a 1968 visit to California as a guest of the First Marine Division, he had renamed the place California Village.
Honors came to him. The Marine Corps presented him with a Silver Star. In 1979, Queen Elizabeth II granted him knighthood. (The Solomons had been a British protectorate.)
Arriving too late
When Leo and I reached Guadalcanal in 1985, the first question we asked our guide was whether he could arrange a meeting with Sir Jacob Vouza. We were too late. He had died months earlier at age 84.
Shortly before his death, the 1st Marine Division Association had invited him to a reunion in the U.S. He declined, sending them a message which said this: "Tell them I love them all. Me old man now. And me no look good no more. But me never forget."
Nor will be the Marines who fought on Guadalcanal.
We drove out to California Village, and met with Irene Vouza, his widow, and Betty Ririgo, their daughter. The widow at that point was beyond communication. Ririgo, however, talked about her hero father and about how frightened she was as a girl of 10 when she heard he had been captured.
We sat in the main room of their thatched-roof home, the mother and daughter on one side, Leo and I on the other. As we talked, I noticed a framed map above the couch on which they sat. Thinking it might be a map that played a vital role in the battle for Guadalcanal, I vowed to get a closer look before we left.
We said our good-byes, and as we started outside, toward the little grave where Sir Jacob is buried, I took a close-up glance.
It was a map of Disneyland.
Tom Hennessy's viewpoint appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He can be reached at (562) 499-1270 or by e-mail at Scribe17@mac.com
Ellie
Article Launched:04/04/2007 10:07:13 PM PDT
Having written so much recently about World War II, and knowing there is yet another column to come next week, I hesitate to take up the subject of the war again.
But two things prompted me to do this column. One was that I recently came across my notes from a 1985 trip that photographer Leo Hetzel and I took to war sites in the Pacific. Second, one of the places we visited, Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, took a tough hit this week from an earthquake and tsunami.
I hope the Bush Administration can find its way clear to give the Solomon Islands a bit of financial help, as other nations are doing. The Pacific country, after all, has been a good friend to America.
"If you want to visit a place where the United States is still loved, go to the Solomon Islands," I wrote after Leo and I returned from that trip.
The above is by way of leading up to the profile of an amazing man, a tough, wiry Solomon Islander named Jacob Charles Vouza.
This is his story.
Not talking
In early 1942, Japan invaded the Solomons. The U.S. followed later in the year, with Marines landing Aug. 7 on Guadalcanal.
On that same day, Vouza, a retired sergeant major from the Solomon Islands Constabulary, rescued a naval pilot from the USS Wasp. The pilot had been shot down in Japanese territory.
Vouza escorted the pilot to safety and, in so doing, met U.S. Marines for the first time. He immediately volunteered to scout behind enemy lines for them.
Three weeks later, Vouza was captured and found to be carrying a small American flag in his loincloth. Having it on his person was foolish, he knew, but he could not bring himself to part with this tiny memento of the country he so admired.
He was tied to a tree and tortured for information. But he said nothing, not even after he was bayoneted repeatedly; arms, face, throat, shoulders, legs and stomach. His tormentors finally gave up, leaving him tied to the tree, where they assumed he was sure to die.
Vouza did not die. He chewed through his ropes, fled the enemy, and walked miles through the jungle to reach our Marines. Nearly dead, he nevertheless refused medical help until he was able to tell the Americans that hundreds of Japanese were headed their way. The resulting clash, known as the Battle of the Tenaru (River), was a U.S. victory.
After the war, Vouza served in various leadership capacities in the Solomons, and was a sort of tribal leader of the village in which he lived, several miles from Honiara, the capital.
Over the years, visitors, including many Marines who fought on Guadalcanal, could always tell when Vouza was at home by the American flag flying from a pole near the entrance to his settlement. After a 1968 visit to California as a guest of the First Marine Division, he had renamed the place California Village.
Honors came to him. The Marine Corps presented him with a Silver Star. In 1979, Queen Elizabeth II granted him knighthood. (The Solomons had been a British protectorate.)
Arriving too late
When Leo and I reached Guadalcanal in 1985, the first question we asked our guide was whether he could arrange a meeting with Sir Jacob Vouza. We were too late. He had died months earlier at age 84.
Shortly before his death, the 1st Marine Division Association had invited him to a reunion in the U.S. He declined, sending them a message which said this: "Tell them I love them all. Me old man now. And me no look good no more. But me never forget."
Nor will be the Marines who fought on Guadalcanal.
We drove out to California Village, and met with Irene Vouza, his widow, and Betty Ririgo, their daughter. The widow at that point was beyond communication. Ririgo, however, talked about her hero father and about how frightened she was as a girl of 10 when she heard he had been captured.
We sat in the main room of their thatched-roof home, the mother and daughter on one side, Leo and I on the other. As we talked, I noticed a framed map above the couch on which they sat. Thinking it might be a map that played a vital role in the battle for Guadalcanal, I vowed to get a closer look before we left.
We said our good-byes, and as we started outside, toward the little grave where Sir Jacob is buried, I took a close-up glance.
It was a map of Disneyland.
Tom Hennessy's viewpoint appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He can be reached at (562) 499-1270 or by e-mail at Scribe17@mac.com
Ellie