Weathercoast

By Alan Thornhill

We now have the capacity to turn our abundant earth into a dead planet. To avoid that risk, we need to examine the often unrecognised impulses that drive us to war. This book sounds that alarm. Although a work of fiction, it deals with real events in the sometimes less than peaceful Pacific. It is set in the sublimely beautiful Solomon Islands which, for most of us, are very remote. But some passions are global. This book examines why we go to war and why some, so readily, urge others to do so. It seeks to explain, not just to record.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan Thornhill
• Release date: Aug 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311076038

Book preview

Author’s Note

We now have the capacity to turn our abundant earth into a dead planet. To avoid that risk, we need to examine the often unrecognised impulses that drive us to war. This book sounds that alarm. Although a work of fiction, it deals with real events in the sometimes less than peaceful Pacific. It is set in the sublimely beautiful Solomon Islands which, for most of us, are very remote. But some passions are global. This book examines why we go to war and why some, so readily, urge others to do so. It seeks to explain, not just to record.

A Tribute

I must, however, pay due tribute to seven men of peace and God. All died for peace. They are martyrs, in the deepest sense of that honourable, but lately much abused word. If they confessed to missions they did not, in reality, undertake, they did so simply to preserve that greatest gift of all, that of Life, itself.

These brave men were all members of an Anglican brotherhood, in the Church of Melanesia. Their order is known locally as the Tasius.

As the historian Jon Fraenkel notes, in his account of the so-called tension troubles in the Solomons, The Anglican Melanesian brothers (Tasiu) earned a reputation for fearlessness and great humility, placing themselves in the line of fire on many occasions and rescuing several kidnapped hostages.

Their seven martyrs were:

Brother Nathaniel Sado

Brother Patterson Gatu

Brother Tony Sihiri

Brother Ini Paratabutu

Brother Francis Tofi

Brother Reuben Lindsay and

Brother Alfred Hill.

May they rest in peace.

Chapter 1

In Their Thrall

The dead had captured Samuel Oka, just as they hold us all in their thrall. Samuel’s village, Laovi, on the wild, wet, Weathercoast, on the southern, windward side of Guadalcanal, an island in the South Pacific, might fairly be reckoned among the most beautiful—and most remote—places on earth. Laovi was one of a string of small villages trapped between narrow strips of beaches and dark green jungles, backed by towering mountains.

The Weathercoast has very few of the facilities that are commonly associated with modern civilization. Even in the 1970s, though, it had a few small schools. These included a Catholic primary school in Laovi run bravely by a Salesian nun, Sister Mary Bernadette, with the help of a young assistant and two village women. It was a lively place with common, as well as uncommon, challenges.

That boy lives in his mind, Sister Mary Bernadette had declared, many times, in exasperation, as she reviewed the seven year old Samuel’s written assignments.

"He’s bright enough.

If only he’d concentrate.

This quiet nun, who had brought the words of Jesus to Laovi, quickly recognised Samuel’s intelligence.

But there is something odd about that boy, too. she often thought, in exasperation.

It’s not just that he is easily distracted, she had told her assistant, at one, particularly trying, time.

Samuel was, indeed, easily distracted. He would retreat, at times, into a world of his own. More than once, his teacher had caught had caught Samuel raising his hands above his rough, wooden desk, to trace dual flight patterns in the air, when he should have been reading. At one such time, Sister Mary-Bernadette, had slapped the wooden pointer she had been using, onto the desk of a girl in the front row, producing a sharp crack that commanded attention. The girl, Kapa, had jumped, wincing, in fright.

Whatever are you doing, Samuel? the teacher had demanded angrily, of the small boy, several rows back.

Nothing, Sister, Samuel replied meekly.

He’s playing fighters, Sister, Kapa called out, informatively.

Oh, shut up, Samuel whispered sibilantly to the girl, barely moving his lips as he did so.

Samuel liked this girl, who came from the next village, but he knew, only too well, that she could be a nuisance, at times like this. Kapa was right, though. Samuel had, once again, been re-living the great air battles of the Pacific campaign of World War II, in his imagination.

Sister Mary-Bernadette had diligently taught her class about the death of Jesus and His glorious resurrection. It was not Jesus, though, who had seized Samuel’s imagination, but Major Lofton Henderson, the World War II Air Ace, who was killed in the battle of Midway in 1942. Samuel’s grandfather, Luke, had told him many wonderful tales about this great warrior of the skies. These were tales that Luke, himself, had learnt from the friends he had made among the US Seabees, when he worked with them upgrading a captured Japanese airfield and wharf near the town now called Honiara the capital of the new—and sometimes troubled—nation of Solomon Islands.

In his early school-days, Samuel’s mind was often high above his desk in Sister Mary-Bernadette’s tiny thatched pandanus grass classroom. While the boy appeared to be reading his Catechism, his spirit, would be often be the clouds with that of his hero, Lofton, hunting the enemy at 25,000 feet. Together Samuel and Lofton would tail, attack and down Japanese Zeros, by the score.

Luke had told Samuel many stories about the time before.

When I was a young fella, he would say, whispering to command Samuel’s attention. Luke would then start one of his many stories. Most were about what he had seen in World War II. Samuel would sit cross-legged in the clearing, between the village huts, listening intently, to his white haired granpa.

"This Japanese soldier, Colonel Obara, brought 2,500 men onto this island, Luke had said, one time.

A friend tell me, when that fella left, only 45 could walk.

Luke told Samuel about the Japanese invasion, too.

We knew what to expect, when the Japanese came in their flat boats, he had said.

"They had captured church-man, John Barge, in East New Britain before they got here.

Told him they would get medicines, but took him outside and killed him. Cut off his head.

Holding his right hand vertically, Luke brought it sharply down onto his left wrist, to illustrate that event.

We went back into the bush, when they came here, he said.

Then the Americans came. They push the Japanese back into the hills. So we went through the mountains, over here to Weathercoast.

Luke’s command of English was workmanlike, not polished. Samuel, though, was fascinated.

Americans give everything code names, Luke continued.

"Honiara, Cactus.

Tulagi, Watchtower.

The British had administered the Solomon Islands from Tulagi Island, in the broad channel between the Florida Islands and Guadalcanal, a stretch of ocean now known as Iron Bottom Sound. They had evacuated their administrative post, though, as the Japanese advanced from their bases in Rabaul and East New Britain, north of the Solomons.

Even now many modern tourists, who visit Honiara, mostly on large cruise ships, wonder why this beautiful, broad, blue tropical waterway was given this strange, spectral name. They soon learn that it was earned the hard way. There were several major sea battles, including the Battle of Guadalcanal, in these now peaceful waters, during World War II. So many Japanese, American, Australian, and other ships were sunk there that the compasses, on those luxury liners, still stray from due North as they cross these waters.

History was no dry, academic subject, for the then seven-year-old Samuel, as he listened, eagerly, to Granpa Luke’s war stories, at times like these. Samuel never felt more intensely alive than he did then.

Granpa brought two worlds together, for me, Samuel was to tell his own son, Teki, and daughter, Soiaki, many years later, when they, in turn, were, also, primary school students.

"Village life.

And the new ways.

We should not be surprised by this insight. Samuel came from a proud warrior people. His ancestors had paddled great war canoes between the many islands in the Solomons both in war parties and in headhunting missions. So greatly feared were these raids, in the old days, that, wherever possible, the Solomon Islanders of those times lived inland, as far out of the reach of likely invaders as possible. With good reason, too. Cannibalism was widely practiced in those days. Many missionaries, before Sister Mary Bernadette, had simply disappeared in the Solomons.

Sister Mary-Bernadette’s stories of the new ways, though, had also touched Samuel’s soul. She had come to the Solomons from a place that mystified this spirited boy. A place she defiantly called Croatia, even though it had still, actually, been part of Yugoslavia, at that time. All Samuel knew, though, was that Croatia was deep in great land, called Europe and that his teacher told her class that her homeland was controlled by invaders, as she called the Russians.

Evil people, Communists, Sister Mary Bernadette said, quite often.

They are godless, she sometimes added, in a tone that betrayed her deep contempt for them.

The good sister also told Samuel of many wonderful things that he had not seen. She was fond of talking about huge animals, called horses, for example. She told Samuel, too, that the ancient Romans had used horses, with carts called chariots, in their battles. Sister Mary Bernadette also said her father had a draught horse, called Ike, on their farm, near the Postojna caves, south of Zagreb, when she was a small girl.

My father used to harness Ike to a plough to plough our orchard, this teacher had once explained to her students.

Samuel had allowed himself to dream about wonders like Ike, then, too. These dreams were the young boy’s life. They liberated him from the tight restrictions set by geographically constricted village of his birth.

Mama and Papa might not want to see beyond this narrow strip, between the sea and the mountains, Samuel often thought, as he spent hours, while he was growing up, sitting on a rock ledge outside his village, staring at the sea.

"But I do.

In my mind.

Samuel knew that he had a good mind. Sister Mary Bernadette had told him so. He would have known it, anyway.

That’s what having a good mind means, he had told himself, more than once.

Even then, Samuel had understood, very well, that there was a whole world he barely knew beyond the sun-glinting Solomon Sea, which stretched out before him. He had to accept, though, that the small canoes his people used, both for fishing and transport, would be too frail to take him to any of it. Samuel, though, was determined to find out much more about these places.

Seeing his grandson’s growing frustrations, at his narrow horizons, when the boy was just 13, Luke, decided to surprise Samuel with a birthday present. While on a rare visit to Honiara, on the other side of Guadalcanal, the old man bought the boy his first piece of electronic gadgetry. It was a big, black transistor radio that did not require a steady stream of replacement batteries to keep it working. Instead it had a permanent, internal battery that was refreshed by a tiny generator, attached to a wind-up handle. That eagerly received device soon became Samuel’s private window on the world. With Sister Mary-Bernadette’s help, he had mastered English well enough to understand most of the BBC news broadcasts that his radio picked up, quite clearly. Without maps and other aids, Samuel’s understanding of those reports remained less than perfect. He was fascinated, though, by what he heard, in those bulletins. Especially the stories of great battles throughout the world. Luke watched Samuel with pride, as his grandson listened, obsessively, to those BBC World Service reports.

The boy needs to know more about the world, than he can learn here, Luke thought, idly, one time, as he watched Samuel cleaning the fish he had caught, earlier that day, for his family’s main meal that night. The five flathead that Samuel had speared, from the edge of the Laovi reef, on the day of the neap tide, would feed eight people that night, when grilled over the charcoal fire, which was still hissing and spitting, on the beach, in front of his village.

Samuel had decided, even then, that he wanted to be a soldier.

People need protection, he had thought, to himself, many times, as he mulled over his decision.

"They can’t protect themselves.

Naturally, he would have preferred to become a military pilot, like his hero, Lofton. Samuel, though, knew there was no chance of that in the Solomon Islands. These islands had become a nation, by then. That nation, Solomon Islands, had celebrated its independence in 1978, when Samuel was just thirteen years old. The Solomons, though, didn’t really have an army, let alone an air force. Just a police force, charged with a secondary military function. Those police would double as soldiers, if another enemy was to invade the Solomons, as the Japanese had in 1942. Samuel knew, though, that even his chance of joining the Royal Solomon Island Police Force was remote. That force, Samuel understood very well, was dominated, at that time, by men from a nearby island, Malaita. They would never accept him.

Samuel knew, too, that Malaitans had been flooding into Guadalcanal, for years, attracted by the capital’s bright lights, its jobs and its opportunities. Almost 30,000 had arrived that way. At first, there had been little trouble. The broad plains, around Honiara, had accepted the initial influx comfortably.

Slowly, though, that began to change, as much through a clash of cultures, as through land pressures. Oddly, perhaps, inheritance issues were an early sticking point. The Gualese had traditionally passed property down through patrilineal lines. The Malaitans, though, did so through matrilineal lines.

They do not respect our customs, Samuel’s uncle, Walter Oka, thundered at a meeting of disaffected Gualese, at the White River settlement, outside Honiara one oppressively warm, still night, in September 1998.

They take our jobs, too, a surly youth, Uli, called out from somewhere in the body of the crowd that had gathered, to hear this charismatic speaker.

Uli knew that it wasn’t just the jobs that were scarce, though. There was something else, too, that his rising manhood would not allow him to mention. He—and his friends from the Weathercoast—were also missing all that went with regular employment. Money. Self-respect. Women. Even the Weathercoast girls, who had come to Honiara, preferred men with money and prospects. In Honiara that, too, meant Malaitans.

Gualese youths, like Uli, did really face discrimination, when they sought jobs. In their own homeland, too. That hurt. The Malaitans, who controlled most businesses and, consequently, most jobs, regarded the Gualese as lazy. The Gualese, in turn, saw the Malaitans as arrogant.

This is what independence has brought us, Walter was saying, in his deep, rolling voice.

Walter, too, had been educated in a Catholic Primary school, outside Honiara. He had also listened regularly, in his teenage years, to radio evangelists, like Billy Graham, who spoke regularly in a program called Hour of Decision. So Walter, also, knew how to work a crowd. Especially as he had mostly been raised by a distant relative of his mother. That is by Seda, a traditional village shaman.

We have become outcasts, in our own land, Walter was saying, at one village meeting, outside the capital, Honiara.

"On our own, sacred island.

"The island that our brave ancestors fought for, and held.

"We were better off under the British.

The bloody British, Walter thundered.

Will you accept this insult? this latter-day shaman shrieked.

No, the crowd called out loudly in response, almost as one.

An insult that is not just to us, but to our brave ancestors as well? Walter called, theatrically.

No, the crowd replied, again almost as one.

Then we must act, Walter declared.

Act like brave men, once again, Walter concluded, triumphantly.

Walter gave a small, secret signal, with his downcast left hand, which he had held behind his back. Suddenly three men, who had been standing inconspicuously behind him, launched a powerful glissando, on kundu drums, which they held between their legs, as they wailed an ancient chant. Like religious authorities everywhere, Walter knew that music will usually touch even the hearts of those who cannot be reached, any other way.

However three youths in the crowd, did not respond. At least not overtly. Uli—and two of his friends—stayed sitting, sullenly on the ground, angrily stabbing the dirt in front of them, with short sticks. They had certainly heard Walter’s message. Perhaps, though, they had already known that the humiliation they suffered every day was simply too much to bear. Perhaps they had already known, also, that the time to act had arrived.

That seems likely as, in the weeks that followed, the grass huts of many Malaitan families, living on the broad Guadalcanal plains, were torched. These attacks all came in the still dark, early hours of morning, after the arsonists had lubricated themselves well with a local hooch, called kwaso. These attacks were soon occurring with increasing frequency. Although most of the victims had time to escape, at least with their lives, a nine year old crippled girl, Jenni, and a four month old baby boy, Holoti, did not. Both were suffocated by the smoke and died before they could be found.

Walter left Honiara abruptly, after that meeting. Word of this treasonous assembly had soon reached the Royal Solomon Islands police force, through a network of informants. These spies reported directly to the most senior Malaitan in the police force, its Commander, Inspector Alista Barrett. They not only told Barrett about that assembly. They also told him that Walter had returned to the Weathercoast, where he was recruiting a private army that he was calling the Guadalcanal Freedom Movement, or GFM. Inspector Barrett, who had long suspected that something of that kind was in the wind, decided to put a quick end to it. He picked up the black telephone in his office, dialed a number, paused for a moment, then spoke.

Festus, he said softly, "I need a few volunteers.

For a little job at Visale.

A cleaner, who happened to be walking down the passage, outside Barrett’s office, heard the police chief speak and shuddered. He immediately understood what was happening. Alista Barrett was asking Festus Hetimoa, the feared head of the Malaitan Militia, for help.

That is how the PB2, an armed patrol boat—one of two that the Solomon Islands neighbour, Australia, had given that new nation, as an independence present—a came to be despatched to Walter’s home village, Laovi, on the Weathercoast. The boat sailed with a crew of Malaitan militants on board. Hetimoa’s instructions to the patrol boat’s Malaitan captain, Yoshi Lakota, were simple.

Teach that treacherous bastard Walter Oka—and his whole village—a lesson they will never forget, he said.

And don’t come back till that’s done.

Captain Lakota and his crew carried out Hetimoa’s orders to the letter. The Australian government had given its tiny Pacific neighbour those two armed patrol boats to help it protect its vast, valuable fishing grounds from poachers. Australians, though, saw the PB2, on their television screens, later that week, firing its 50-calibre Browning machine gun, at random, into the defenceless Weathercoast village of Laovi. Twenty three men, women and children were killed in that attack. Many more were seriously injured.

Walter Oka’s recruitment campaign, for his private army, had been barely working, until then. Weathercoast villagers had simply been too busy to respond, as they had to work hard, at their fishing and gardening just to stay alive. Rainwater, trickling across gardens built on steep slopes, leaches their fertility. That must be constantly restored. This is heavy work. So, until this threat appeared, very few Weathercoast villagers found themselves with enough energy, at the end of the day, to take an active interest in politics, let alone join a private army.

News of the attack spread rapidly along the Weathercoast, though, after that raid. Frightened villagers quickly decided that it had left them with no real choice. Their men, of military age, would have to join Walter Oka’s Guadalcanal Freedom Movement.

Walter’s nephew, Samuel, was ecstatic. His most deeply held vision had suddenly been realised. No, not realised. Exceeded. For he was not to be just a soldier, but a commander. That was the role Walter had offered Samuel, who was then 34 years old, and still close to the peak of his physical strength and intellectual acuity, in the older man’s new army, the GFM.

We will protect the Weathercoast people," Walter had said, as he made that offer, the day after the PB2’s raid on Laovi.

We will drive the invaders from our sacred island,

Samuel had never expected anything like this. Indeed, until that day, he had been haunted, increasingly, by despair. Samuel had not known what he was to do with his life.

Suddenly, though, all that had become clear.

Chapter 2

Seeking Peace

Constantine had been a serious boy. While just two years old, he had heard his mother, Sarah Kiloku, urge his older brother, Taliki, to work hard in the family’s garden, outside the village of Ula, near Auki, on the island of Malaita.

If you don’ work, you don’ eat, Sarah had told Taliki, many times, in her soft, but determined Melanesian voice.

This was the central lesson of life in Malaita. It was at the heart of the island’s traditional wisdom, too. That was the way things had to be on this, the most heavily populated island in the Solomons. Life, itself, depended utterly, on a family’s success raising yams, bananas and greens in their village gardens on this fertile island. That required constant work.

The boys’ father, Alfred tried to supplement his family’s diet with fish. There are magnificent southern tuna, in the waters of the Indispensable Strait, which separates the islands of Malaita and Guadalcanal. However a dugout canoe, like Alfred’s, is a frail craft in open waters, particularly when a storm strikes suddenly.

Alfred had stood in his canoe to spear a large fish in a shoal that was passing by, close to the surface, when a strong wind from behind caused him to overbalance and topple into the sea. Taliki held his hand out towards his father, who had just grasped it, when a sudden squall of hard, heavy rain struck. Taliki, too, went overboard. Alfred and Taliki, father and son, both drowned.

Constantine was just five years old when that happened. His new baby sister, Sammi, was too young to grasp what had occurred, although even she knew that her mother Sarah was suddenly very sad. Constantine, though, did not have to be told that he now had new responsibilities.

If not me, then who? he thought.

Constantine knew that he wasn’t as bright as Taliki had been. However he did know that he had been named after a Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, who had bravely converted to Christianity. In his grief, the boy had suddenly remembered that. So this Constantine had decided that he, too, would be brave.

If not me, then who? he had asked himself, once again.

That thought came back, many times, to Constantine, as he worked diligently tending his family’s garden, over the years, to support both his mother and his younger sister.

Shortly after his seventeenth birthday, Constantine joined the Anglican church in Honiara, as a Melanesian Brother, a group known locally as the Tasius. His mother and sister were settled comfortably, by that time, with a little help from Sarah’s brother, Tony, who had become the Anglican Bishop of Honiara, by then.

Constantine knew that his commitment would not necessarily be permanent. Young men, typically, started training to join the Tasius when they are about sixteen or seventeen. Once trained, they work, mostly as preachers, teachers and carers until they are about twenty five. About that time in their lives, many would start leaving to marry, knowing that other young men were ready to take their places. The Tasius are loved, respected, yet still feared, throughout the Solomons.

They travel, throughout the length and breadth of this island chain, mostly in groups. They do so, almost always, on foot, because that is the most practical way to travel in these islands, at least for those whose work is not tightly bound by the constraints of time. These men make no secret of the fact that they are on a mission. They carry wooden staffs, wherever they go, as a visible sign of Christ’s presence with them on their journeys. To many simple, still superstitious, villagers though these staffs are clearly magic sticks. These villagers know that all a Tasiu has to do is point his magic stick at you, say the appropriate words and bang, you’re dead. Nothing Constantine Kiloku, or any of his fellow Tasius, could say would ever convince these villagers that this is not so.

Unlike some of younger, more lively, colleagues, though, Brother Kiloku never joked about these things. He was still a serious person. Perhaps a little too serious. His uncle, Tony Makuru, had cautioned Constantine, more than once about this, telling the young man that he took things too personally. The Bishop, though, was also taking things a little personally, himself. He had found, particularly, that he could not avoid taking a special interest in his nephew, Constantine.

Sarah, who now lived with Sammi in Auki, had just spent a week, shopping in Honiara. She was leaving the Bishop’s residence, on the hill overlooking that small city, one Friday night, to catch the 6pm langa langa or small ferry back home. She had enjoyed meeting Tony again, and having her evening meal of grilled fish and yams with him. Sarah was worried, though, about her son, Constantine. She thought he looked tired and uncomfortable. Constantine sensed that—and was slightly embarrassed.

Constantine was, indeed, both uncomfortable and worried. He was apprehensive, about what the Bishop might want to say to him, after Sarah left.

Did I, really, say too much at Betti’s funeral? the young Tasiu asked himself.

Constantine had conducted the funeral rites for the little girl