Tidbits about Nikumaroro
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Ene Edward Etuati from Tuvalu worked on the police force in the 1960s. He was stationed on Canton for 3-4 months in 1967. They would check the other Phoenix islands by ship. They saw some Americans there--probably the rocket group? Perhaps four were in the party.
One time, they landed on Nikumaroro and found a pistol and a pocket knife. They took them to Canton. There was an officer in charge of the group. Edward does not remember what kind of pistol it was. He will come tomorrow to show us where they were found on the island.
Edward transfered to Christmas Island later in 1967. One night in a bar, he met some Americans who were looking for the wreck of AE's airplane in the Line Islands and the Phoenix islands. Many planes had crashed on Christmas Island. He only saw them the one time and didn't hear of them again. He does not remember their names.
Ene Etuati came to visit this afternoon. He is a close relative of Tofiga from the same home island, Vaitupu in Tuvalu.
Eni Etuati
Alapi Side
Funafuti
Tuvalu Is.He was on Nikumaroro only once. As the ships approached from Tarawa, they would send a boat ashore and also send a boat around the island. It was on his single visit that an old gun and knife were found on the beach somewhere between the blasted channel and the village. He thinks the gun may have been a .38 revolver. Both the gun and the knife were"all rotten." Some of the men thought the gun was just a toy.
Roger says that EE spoke about WG-20, WG-21, WH-21 and WH-22 as the likely area for the gun and knife to have been found.
Some stayed in the village and ate coconuts. Some walked around the island on foot (distance uncertain).
There were many footprints on the beach. No one should have been there. The fishing boats are prohibited from coming ashore on the islands. But whenever anything was out of the ordinary on the uninhabited islands,"We just blame the fishing boats."
Then they went to another island where there was only an airstrip and a beacon (Hull?).
Pan Am and the Americans were at one end of Canton; he and the British were at the other end.
EE was in the police from 1959 to 1972.
There was a native woman, Nane Afu, from Tarawa on the same boat that brought him out to Christmas Island. She had worked as a house girl in Tarawa and wanted to find Amelia Earhart's plane because there was "big money" to be made. "Maybe her father was offering a reward."
There were lots of wreck sites on Christmas Island. There were many people on the island in the early 60s for the bomb tests.
When EE met the American in the bar, the American was surprised that EE already knew about the possibility of Earhart coming down in the Line Islands or in the Phoenix Islands. EE introduced the American to the native woman who had told him the whole story.
EE was born in 1940. He was 27 in 1967. He thinks the woman may have been 40 or so at the time. She was a tomboy who went out all alone with her dog on Christmas Island and would search for two or three days at a time. She returned to her home island and disappeared one night when she went fishing by herself.
- SP says that the Gardner had a higher ratio of
poisonous fish than other islands, especially during
the hot season. When the coral breaks up, either
naturally or because of military activity, a different
kind of algae grows on it. The fish that feed on
the algae become toxic to those who eat the fish.
Deep water fish are OK, as a rule. There is no way
to tell the difference between a poisonous reef fish
and one that is not poisonous, except by eating the
fish.