|
Volume
12 Number 2/3
October, 1996 |
 Paradise Lost |
|
|
| 1945 |
On January 25 Lt. Col. Huggins returns and instructs the settlers to devote
more time to planting and less to village maintenance.
Sometime in “the late war years” a large four-engined aircraft
is reported to have crashed on Sydney Island two hundred miles to the east.
Details are not clear, but supposedly the bodies of the crew were recovered
and the wreck abandoned to be salvaged for useful metal by the local settlers.
This is probably the source of a few B-24 parts which later turned up on
Gardner. During the time that the USCG Loran station was at Gardner, PBY’s
delivered mail and perishable supplies. Records still exist for all of those
flights. On no occasion was an aircraft reported lost or even damaged at
Gardner Island.
In December the Loran station is de-activated and abandoned. |
| 1946 |
In March a Coast Guard work crew disassembles and secures the station’s
Loran gear in the Quonset huts formerly used as living quarters. Floyd Kilts,
a Chief Carpenter’s Mate involved in this work, later (in 1960) tells
a San Diego newspaper reporter that one of the Gilbertese told him of “the
skeleton of a woman with American shoes and the skull of a man” found
by the island’s first
settlers in 1938. |
| 1947 |
In June a new supervisor-magistrate, Aram Tamia, is appointed to try to speed
up development of the colony which is deemed to have stagnated during the war
years. As a youth Aram Tamia had served as Gallagher’s personal assistant.
A visit by Chief Lands Commissioner B.C. Cartland and District Officer McKenzie
finds the situation “even less satisfactory than had been thought.” |
| 1948 |
Further official visits during the year confirmed a need for a re-organization
of the colony. |
| 1949 |
On January 2 Lands Commissioner Paul B. Laxton arrived to give the settlers
a choice between repatriation to the Gilbert islands or committing to further
development of the atoll under a system of land grants and leaseholdings. Six
families elected to leave, three of whom were among the first colonists, but
the remainder stayed. The village was moved to the site “originally selected
by Mr. Gallagher, freeing the main area of developed trees for a leasehold
party selected from Manra (Sydney Island).” These Sydney residents may
have brought with them a few useful pieces of aluminum salvaged from the wartime
crash on that island. |
| 1953 |
A new aerial photo survey of the island shows the enlarged settlement. During
this period the island reached its maximum population of nearly 100 people. |
| 1963 |
Yet another severe drought damages the coconut plantations and prompts a
British decision to abandon the colony. A channel is blasted through the reef
at the island’s west end to facilitate the evacuation and the process of resettling
the island’s residents 2,000 miles to the island of Vaghena in the Solomons
is begun. |
| 1964 |
A scientific party from the Smithsonian Institution visits the atoll to
study the bird and plant life. Only a few residents remain to be moved. |
