I was attending the Kennedy School on Vaitupu when I was recruited as a coast-watcher to help out two New Zealanders on Beru in the Gilberts [now Kiribati]. I got polio when I was fifteen, and I was a cripple. I couldn’t walk. But I was keen, and the New Zealanders taught me all about the radio. I watched them make their reports, and I helped count airplanes flying over and watched out for Japanese ships going by. Then one day the Japanese came to Beru. The two New Zealanders took off into the bush. But the Japs knew they were there because they had been able to track the radio signal.
So we were all gathered up in the village, and the Japs said they would kill one islander every hour until the New Zealand coast-watchers gave themselves up. Someone found them in the bush and told them, so they came in to the village and turned themselves in. They didn’t want to see us suffer on their account. In addition to the New Zealanders, the Japs rounded up all the Europeans on Beru. There were about fifteen total including two nuns. The Japanese told us they were taking them all to Tarawa, and they were never seen or heard from again.
Before they left, the Japs made the New Zealanders bring out their radio, and they smashed it all up. After they left, I collected all the pieces and put it back together. I had paid attention to their lessons about the radio and how it worked, and I was able to get it working again after a while. I turned it on and started to contact the people the New Zealanders had been reporting to. I first called the Americans on Funafuti, and they didn’t believe me. They knew the New Zealanders had been taken by the Japanese, and they thought it was a Japanese trick, that I was doing this with the direction of the Japs. I kept telling them what happened and that I was telling the truth, but they never believed me. I finally raised the Americans in Hawaii and told them what happened and convinced them I was telling the truth. So they said okay, please start reporting just the way the New Zealanders had been doing, and I was to tell them about all the Jap planes and ships going by Beru. But they told me I was in great danger. They said the Japs came for the New Zealanders because they could track the radio signal to Beru, and they warned me that they would do the same thing again and come after me.
So I got my friends to help me. I would make a report on the radio, and then they would pick me up, and pick the radio up, and move me and the radio into the bush or to another part of the island. When the Japs came looking for who was broadcasting over the radio, they could never find me. They knew they had taken all the Europeans, and I don’t think they really seriously thought an islander could be doing anything useful with a radio. I think they came just because their officers told them to, and they thought it was a nuisance and just wanted to break the radio again. But I kept broadcasting, and they kept looking for me, but they never found me thanks to my friends who kept moving me and the radio around Beru. Those Japs never did catch on!
I broadcast for the two months before the Tarawa invasion, and told the Americans all about the Jap planes and ships I saw heading to and from Tarawa. The Americans were very grateful, and thanked me over and over again for doing this for them. They said it was a great help in getting ready for the Tarawa invasion. I didn’t mind doing it. I was glad to help.
When the British came back to Beru after the war they knew about what I had done, the coast-watcher work, and they awarded me the King George Medal. I think people here respected me for what I did, and every time there is an American or British visitor they are brought to me, and I talk to them and tell them about what happened during the war, and how we outsmarted the Japs!