| This is fascinating. I am presuming this was the late 1960's, early '70's? Very cool, a kid's dream. Here in Massachusetts we used to play in forests, pretenting they were a Pacific island, and you had the real thing. |
Time spent on Kwaj was during 1974 and 1975 time period. It was a great place to live, but you had to get used to a few things. No cars, no TV and only fresh milk after the supply ship came in. There were several movie theaters on the Island and all were free. My favorite was the Richardson theater, it was an out door theater and great place to hang out with your friends (If it started raining, there were umbrellas sprouting up everywhere.). As far as WWII stuff goes, Kwaj proper only had a couple of bunkers on it, one being what is still called Bunker Hill (Just down the street from where I lived) and the other was on the northwestern side of the island. You could still find spent rounds and casings on the reef right around Kwaj though. The fun islands to go to were Roi namur and Beije. Roi Namur still had quite a pill boxes and blockhouses left, I had a lot of fun on that Island. Beije had to be another one of my favorite islands to snoop around on. That island still had some AA guns in the jungle with ammunition still next to them. There were also some oil storage tanks that had been destroyed during bombings of the island, and you had to be kind of careful around them, kind like one big tar pit. I was fortunate to make it to quite a few of the islands and saw some neat WWII items. When I first got there it was real exciting finding a spent WWII round, after a few of the islands the excitement diminished. One section of reef off of an island I visited had corroded live ammunition all up and down the ocean side of the reef. We were heavily cautioned about messing around with the live stuff. Kwaj did have its share of WWII aircraft wrecks, and not just the stuff that was dumped after the war. There were a couple of Mavises, a Jake and a Rufe off of Ebeye. Went snorkeling on the Rufe, shallow water, but also nasty, Marshallese had no real sewage system at the time, so just a one time thing. Also saw some wreckage on Roi namur that was said to be that of a Zero. Best place though was I on the Island of Wotje in the Wotje Atoll. This island was actually bypassed and still had airfield with some fairly intact aircraft left. I have see if I can find some of the photos from that trip, have one nice shot of a Zero cowling sticking out of the jungle. Island also had some other neat things like a concrete Pagoda style command post. Similar type structure on Roi to if I remember. Probably the most important thing about Kwaj was that the beach was just a 3 minute walk from my house and the water was bath tub warm. During school we had an hour off for lunch and sometime a few of us would go for a swim in the lagoon instead of going home for lunch. Oh and watching the ICMBs coming in from Vandeburg AFB was fun too.