by John Darnton
The longhouse was about twenty feet in length, with a thatched roof and open sides, built on a frame of thick logs and mounted on stilts about four feet off the ground. Bits of raffia hung down on the sides, swaying in the ocean breeze. It was clearly a public space—I was told afterward that it was used for village meetings to discuss important matters, like setting up a school, and on those occasions when a candidate for parliament came to solicit votes. As visitors, we were given privileged places around the sides, so that we formed a rough circle. About thirty villagers crowded in around us while the others watched from the outside, clinging to the logs, a solid wall of people with men at the top and wide-eyed children at the bottom.
It was time for introductions. The chief’s name, we were told, was Cyprian Oiroembo. A procession of villagers filed by, stopping before each of us to shake hands and give their names. First came the women, after them the girls, then the boys, and finally the men. I was surprised that each had a Christian first name—Grace, Margaret, Elizabeth, Henry, James—and sometimes even English surnames—Hutchinson, Robinson, Braithwaite—until I realized that they had been baptized by missionaries. The reach of Westerners had not entirely passed over Pongani. The last in line was the son of the chief, Donald Cleland, who spoke in a high-pitched, excitable voice, interspersing his remarks with whoops and shouts of “Oro!” Dressed only in a scant loincloth, he was bedecked with necklaces of boars’ tusks and had tucked tufts of grass into his headband. His cheeks were fiercely painted in red and white stripes and he presented a frightening mien.
A bouquet of flowers was in a pot on the floor, propped upright by a slice of watermelon rind. Next to it was a pile of coconuts. A man with a machete picked up one, whacked it deftly three times to knock the top off, and handed it to me. I smiled, nodded thanks, and drank. The milk tasted sweetly sour. He picked up another coconut, opened it for Nina, then did the same for everyone in our group.
The discussion began. I was prepared for this—villages in this part of PNG are known for democracy, sometimes an excess of democracy; everyone has a say and takes as much time as he wants saying it. A man stood and delivered a lengthy speech of welcome, which was translated in bits and pieces. Then our translator recounted the reason for my visit. As he introduced the others in our group, each was applauded. Another man stood and spoke and then our translator prepared to speak again. “I’ve briefed the chief,” he explained in an aside to me, “and now I have to brief the community.” He stood up, rubbing his red Adidas shirt with one hand as he launched into a lengthy explanation of my purpose. Afterward, another man stood and welcomed us. Then Donald, the chief’s son, leapt up and began a lengthy discourse. He spoke in rapid bursts, interspersed with translations. “You have come a long distance. You are welcome. Thank you for making it your business to come here.” Speaking of the war, he said, “Your people came here and our place was disturbed. You came to see that, so I thank you very much.… Many people here who saw the war have died. They were children when the war arrived and they saw the war with their own eyes and they fled into the bushes in fear. Our people were terrified—they saw the guns fire and so they ran to escape. So tell me now why you have come—because for these people, the war is still with them, and no one has talked to them.” Donald’s voice rose in excitement and spittle flew from his mouth. “My father was sixteen years old when the war arrived. He walked four times on Kokoda and went all the way to Milne Bay. Those white men who came from overseas returned home and were well looked after. But look at my father”—here he gestured toward the chief—“he is forgotten.”
I rose and I thanked them for the gracious welcome and their hospitality. I told them that I had wanted to see the place where my father died and said that my mother had always thought his spirit had been released here. I added that many people had suffered in the war, on all sides, and that Americans were very grateful for the assistance the Papuans had rendered and in particular for the aid they’d given the wounded. Now I wanted to know if anyone remembered my father and what had happened on that morning long ago.
After I sat down, I realized that we should offer to make a donation, but I wasn’t quite sure whether this should be done in public. I asked our translator quietly and he said, “No, not now.”
Another man, who had come with us from Bendoroda, made a speech. The translator only passed along a bit of it, in which he said, “I’ve been dealing with tourists for a while. I don’t want you to blame me later if you miss out on some opportunities.”
The discussion went on for quite a while and now many people were talking at once. The crowd was getting restless. A clutch of elderly women to my left seemed disapproving. Whether they were angry at me or at their own speakers wasn’t clear, but they seemed upset. Some of the men peering in from the outside were whispering to one another. Finally, Donald took to the floor again, sounding exasperated. He spoke for quite a while and ended by saying, “When you get their stories, will those people benefit or no? When the white men returned home from the war, they were looked after, but for our people, no one bothered to help them.”
I suggested to our translator that it was time to offer money, but he shook his head. So I made another speech, saying that if I could talk to people, I would write their stories and the outside world would learn about them and perhaps then they would get some benefit. As this was translated, I could see that Donald looked dubious. The stalemate continued and everyone fell silent for a while. I began to feel frustrated and unaccountably anxious. I had come all this way, only to see my chance to talk to the village elders slipping away. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted it. I was beginning to despair.
Then Dale McCarthy came to my rescue. He roused himself and stood and walked over to the translator. “We’re talking money now?” he inquired. The translator nodded. Dale raised both hands and addressed the crowd. “It may not be the right place to do this,” he said, his voice loud, “but I’ll make a contribution. I’ll donate five hundred kina [the equivalent of about two hundred dollars]. But I won’t give it to any one person. It’ll go to the school.”
There was a general murmur of approval. A man jumped up and said, “How about the clinic?” The remark was quickly translated. “Okay,” replied Dale. “I’ll give two hundred and fifty kina to the school and two hundred and fifty to the clinic.” That settled it. The negotiations were over. Everyone started talking at once; people came over to shake my hand. I looked over at the elderly women, who now seemed pleased. Trays of food appeared—yams, pineapple, watermelon, and various other delicacies, which I could not identify. Dale appeared at my elbow and quietly told Nina and me which ones to avoid. Donald leapt up, saying, “Now you may collect the stories. We have someone here who can talk about the war.”
I was led to a corner where an elderly man was sitting with his legs crossed. His age was difficult to judge, but deep wrinkles creased his face. He looked kind and intelligent. His skin was a dark bronze color and his teeth were dyed red from betel nuts. He was wearing a light brown shirt and two necklaces made of nuts and small circular pieces of pink and white shells. He said his name was Alexander Girewo and that he was born in 1936. I did a quick calculation: He would have been six years old at the time of my father’s death. I turned on my tape recorder and pulled out my notebook as he softly began telling his story. He paused every so often to allow the translator to catch up. He said he had been very young when war came to the village, seemingly out of nowhere and without warning. His first memory of it was the sight of two planes being chased by two other planes. They zoomed low in the sky right over the beach and he had no idea of what they were until his elders told him that the first planes were American and the pursuers were Japanese. They were fighting each other—the people inside the planes—and one would win and the other would die. “We were terrified. We fled into the bushes.” He said shortly after that, the older boys, including his brother, the chief, went off to become carriers in the war.
I c
ould bear the suspense no longer. “Did you see the attack that killed my father?”
He nodded yes. He answered slowly, as if striving for precision. I stopped writing in my notebook.
“I was in the village. The boat with your father on it was out in the water, at the mouth of a river, when it was bombed.” It was, he said, early in the morning. “I was on my way to school. We all heard it. People ran to investigate and I ran along with the people.”
He sat, looking thoughtful while this was translated. Then he resumed. “The white men came in from the boats. They brought the dead and injured and laid them on the beach. I went to look. There were two men dead and a third badly injured. They were all dressed in military clothes.”
He did not have much more to say. “Only the older people could get close to the bodies. We small children weren’t allowed to go near.” He added, “I was appalled and saddened by what I saw.” He waved his hands in the air, a gesture of resignation. “But what could I do? It had happened.”
He reached over and touched me. Then I talked to the chief himself, who had been sixteen when the war started. But he was not able to answer any questions and his recollections were dim. “It was a bad time,” he repeated more than once.
When everyone finished eating, another elder clapped for attention. A villager entered the longhouse, carrying something in both hands. He approached me and unwrapped the bundle. Inside was a handsome necklace threaded with shells and wild banana seeds, with two curved tusks of wild boar rising up like crescent moons in the center. Looking very serious, he held it before him. I heard the son of the chief say something quietly and the translator whispered, “This man goes everywhere with this thing and now he’s about to part with it.” The man placed the necklace around my neck. Then the chief lifted another necklace, this one made of nuts, with a large half-shell pendant. The chief gently placed this one around my neck, too, and I was told to hold the shell between my teeth. I did, with the shell facing toward my chest. Everyone laughed. I was told to turn it around, and I did, biting it so that the bowl of the shell faced the crowd. They applauded vigorously. The first man took the floor. “These two things are very important to us. When our son or daughter gets married, they cover the price. They are like money or in place of a pig. When we don’t have a pig or money, we give these instead. So they are very important. They are what make people married. Today, John got two uncles. These two uncles got married to John. So take these, and when you go back to your home, you put them on the wall, and when you look at them, you will think of your two uncles who saw your father die.”
I was too overcome to speak. I finally managed to say how honored I was to have my new uncles. Then we stepped down from the longhouse. I had brought a Polaroid camera and I took photos of the villagers, who clustered around to see the dark negatives and broke into smiles and laughter when their images gradually materialized. I was besieged on all sides: Everyone wanted a photo, and soon I ran out of film.
I felt a tug on my shirt and turned. It was Alexander, the old man who had witnessed the bombing. He gestured for me to follow and we walked down the beach until he stopped. He pointed to a spot in the sand. We did not have a translator—and besides, there was nothing to say—so we just looked in silence for a long while at the place where my father’s body had lain.
It was time to leave. We waded back out to the boat and climbed aboard. The entire village gathered at the water’s edge to see us off. They sang and danced and waved as the boat pulled away. We waved back and continued waving until they were tiny figures way off in the distance. I took off the two necklaces and wrapped them in a spare shirt and put them on a shelf in the boat where they would be safe. We sped away, heading toward Bendoroda.
My father’s death seemed suddenly real to me. Maybe it was having spoken to someone who had seen his body. Maybe it was looking at the spot on the sand where he had lain. Maybe it was the dislocating sense of returning to a place I had only visited in my imagination. But my father’s death hit home in a way it never had before. It was not catharsis; it was revelation. I felt decades of illusion drop away and turn to anger—pure white-hot anger. What a senseless, tragic death! What a difference that one little sliver of shrapnel meant to our lives—my mother’s life, my brother’s, mine. How it had changed everything that followed. Why had he gone on the King John? Why hadn’t he worn his helmet? Why had he been standing by the pilothouse? Why did all those little decisions conspire to put him at the wrong place at precisely the wrong time? I felt the depth of the loss. I felt his absence, and I felt as if I were mourning him for the first time.
We spent the night in the fisherman’s lodge in Bendoroda. It was our last day there and we had been told to get up at dawn and meet the elders. I awoke early. Lying in bed, with only thin walls of leaves between us and the outside, I heard the village stirring around me. I was immersed in the sounds of it—I could hear chickens scratching underneath our floor, the yapping of dogs running around, a baby crying somewhere, pots being put on outside fires, women talking softly. After Nina and I went outside, we had yet another surprise. We were told solemnly to undress—and put on the clan’s regalia. I was handed a loincloth, a huge headdress, and a thick club. Nina was decked out in tapa cloth and beads. We were officially inducted into the tribe, which was related by marriage to the Pongani tribe. The villagers here did not want to be outdone by their friendly rivals up the coast.
The ceremony took several hours, which turned out to be a problem. For all that time, I was half naked, and in my excitement I had neglected to put on insect repellent. I suddenly felt faint. When I went to my room, I realized I had been bitten by sand fleas. Hundreds of welts rose up. Nina counted them—more than four hundred on my back, chest, thighs, legs, and arms. I took a heavy dose of Benadryl and we prepared to leave in the boat. Nina hugged the chief’s wife, who said they were now sisters.
Dale ferried us down the coast to a comfortable diving resort called Tufi, where I recovered in a cabana with air-conditioning and scotch. Some of the bites were suppurating. Nina insisted that I take an antibiotic we had with us. She also found a local man on the beach, who gave her a plant, instructing her to squeeze the juice and apply it to my skin. It didn’t seem to work—nor did the creams we had with us. I felt feverish and weak. Lying on the bed, under a spinning fan, the compulsion to scratch the bites was strong. I was struck by the thought that I was enduring only one-thousandth, one-millionth of what our soldiers had endured there six decades earlier. I had come away with an appropriate souvenir from the beach where my father had died. The next day, we returned to Port Moresby, and after that, we flew to New Zealand and then home.
EPILOGUE
In New York, I hold a small wooden box, ancient-looking and fragile. On the top, a label is torn, but the heading can be made out: ON HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE. And below that, faded almost into invisibility, are the words: “This package contains personal effects [of] the late BYRON DARNTON, war correspondent.” The top, held by a single nail on one side, swings open.
First there is a small notebook with my father’s familiar scrawl. He’d labeled it: “Mainly personal accounts—fliers. One conference—Diller.” Then there are the shoulder patches: “Correspondent U.S. Army” in tight-knit yellow print, two chevrons, and two more of the famous 32nd, a red arrow bursting through a solid line. Below that is his passport, the old green kind, valid only for Australia and five other countries in the Pacific for “newspaper work.” His photo is inside a raised round seal of the State Department, making him look like a target. He is wearing a jacket and vest, his tie slightly askew, and he is smiling but also frowning slightly, a combination that appears both hopeful and worried. His thumbprint holds the photo in place in the upper right corner. Below that is a pair of broken glasses in a case. Then there’s a small golden booklet, an alumni list from the Adrian public schools from 1857 to 1930. I see he’s drawn arrows to mark friends and family members. Why did he have that along? Did he use it t
o establish connections with the soldiers he was interviewing? Near the bottom I find a brass insignia for the collar: war correspondent. Then I come upon a faded checkbook from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia; after the last check, for rent, he’d written a balance of fifty-four pounds, eleven shillings, and three pence. Then I see his dog tag with his name and several Japanese characters and on the reverse side the number 2314338.
Finally, I lift out his war correspondent’s credential and identification card, and when I open it, I see a small collection of photos. There’s one of Mom, cut into an oval—it must have been extracted from a tiny frame—looking so young, with large, dancing eyes. I’ve never seen her looking so beautiful. Then there’s one of Bob, sitting in a sandbox, looking serious. Something else falls out—a tiny photo, less than an inch long, half an inch wide. It’s of a baby, who’s being held up in the air by the hands of an unseen adult. The baby looks familiar. I stare at it. Surprise! It’s me. My father kept my photo in his ID card, carried it around with him, always.
I sit back in my chair and imagine him. I see him taking it out and showing it to his colleagues, who look at it out of a sense of camaraderie and mumble something pleasant. I see him pulling out his credentials and showing them to an officer to talk his way onto some air force base. The photo slips out and flutters to the ground, just as it has done with me, and he stoops over to collect it, a bit embarrassed. I see him looking at it before he goes to sleep in the correspondent’s hut after searching the night sky for Orion, the constellation that connects him to our mother.
I also see him that last morning on the King John. It is that quiet time, with dawn just breaking and the mountains taking shape in the far distance. The soldiers around him are coming to life, stretching their legs after a sleepless night, talking quietly. Grenades are passed around. The men are nervous. Some of them catch fish for breakfast. Now there’s nothing to do but wait for the order to launch the boat. It looks like it will be a magnificent day; the sky is blue. I imagine my father is excited by thoughts of what might lie ahead, and a bit nervous, too. But he’s been through it all before, seen much worse in the trenches. He’s older. It’s up to him to project an air of calm for the younger men. And he does feel calm. He pats his notebook in his breast pocket to make sure it’s there. He touches his side pocket. There are the usual accoutrements: his glasses, his passport, his identification card.