(22 March 88) Reminders of the Japanese presence on Roi Namur are everywhere. The relics range from bunkers and storage buildings to pillboxes.
A few hundred yards north of the present air terminal is the former Japanese Command Post for air operations, which also served as the office of rear admiral Yamada. Three tunnels provided escape routes from the structure – one leading to a bomb shelter, another to the eastern shore of Roi and the third to gun positions on the northwest side of the island. Click on image to enlarge.
Between the air terminal and the Japanese Command Post stood the main hanger for the airfield and a clue to a mystery. In the ruins of the destroyed hanger, a U.S. Naval Intelligence officer discovered “…a blue leatherette map case embossed in gold leaf with the letters A.E.” Amelia Earhart’s plane disappeared from this general area in 1937 and she could have been taken here temporarily before being transferred to a Japanese prison.
Dyess Field, the airstrip on Roi, was named after Lieutenant Colonel Aquilla J. Dyess, who was killed while leading his fellow Marines against the remaining Japanese gun position on Namur. He and three other Marines received the Medal of Honor for their actions that day.
On the northwest side of Roi, on the golf course across from the rocket launch facilities, are twin five-inch Singapore guns which were taken from the British when the Japanese captured that port in the early part of the war.
Yokohama Pier is a former Japanese submarine port on the lagoon side of Namur. The ferry boat arrives early in the morning from Third Island with Marshallese men, women and children. Some are here to work, others to shop in the Army stores. And some will head over to the terminal to fly on a C-130 down to Kwajalein. From there they will visit on Ebeye or catch an Air Micronesia jet to the Capital of Majuro or to Honolulu. These are some of the “benefits” the United States gave the local islanders when they were booted off their islands.
The Japanese have another memorial to the 3,472 Japanese soldiers killed on Roi Namur during the American invasion. Unlike the memorial on Kwaj, this one is in the middle of the Roi golf course among the flowers.
When I see the islanders arrive on the island, I can understand how much they miss living on Roi Namur. When the U.S. government told them they could return after they conducted a few tests, the islanders believed them. That was about 50 years ago.
Filed under: Almost Paradise Volume 3
Trackback Uri
