The Suwa Maru

Did we have a special beach in mind? Not even mother Anne seemed to know where we were going, though we could see water everywhere. Groping in broad daylight, I followed a path through the Enen-kio brush toward a bank of the turquoise lagoon. I think I was following mother Anne, hoping that a dip would soon restore me the way it usually did. I was quickly let down. The beach proved to be uninviting, full of pebbles that were hard on my feet, and I had been warned to watch out for the poisonous coral along the waters edge. Even a rusty old diving board, constructed for the recreation of soldiers, did not coax me to play, but served only as a monument of isolation and abandonment to bully and mock whomever might happen to see it. Thus my obligatory descent into the lagoon was not at all refreshing, but tepid as the breeding ground for all sorts of invisible creatures.

I must have been perfectly exhausted that day (or was it really night?), and lost my appetite when I vomited onboard, because I cannot remember any of the meals we ate on the island or attempts to fall asleep in the metal hut.

The next day, dad asked me if I wanted to survey the island with him. Perhaps he asked other family members too, but I was apparently the most eager to join him on this excursion. Given my lingering disappointment from the day before, coupled with the fact that I was feeling better, I wanted to go somewhere else. Dad seemed keen on showing me a place where he had been before, or perhaps he simply wanted to share his innate need to reconnoiter the unfamilar, a war relic, a neglected springboard between the US and the Far East. We were there for a purpose, though it was not a place either of us would have chosen to visit. We were both taking orders. We walked along the outer shores of the atoll, where the waves lapped, and the breeze was more refreshing. A corroded shipwreck rose like the tail end of some giant seabird bent on obtaining some sustenance for survival.

Dad offered an explanation: “Her name was "Suwa Maru".
“Sue was…what?”, I asked.
“Suwa Maru. She was a merchant vessel that tried to pass the American block in 1943, World War II, and was hit by torpedoes. The captain beached her here, before she sank.”
“Oh”.

We continued along the south shore in silence until we arrived at the airstrip, where we turned back toward the huts.