Guadalcanal ‘Peace Envoy’ Displays Battle Memorabilia to Veterans From Both Sides

GUADALCANAL, Solomon Islands —  Fred Kona has been waiting 20 years for an invitation to Washington to present his shell money and war club to American veterans of the Battle of Guadalcanal 47 years ago in World War II.

Japanese veterans of the battle took him to Japan in 1985 and he is hoping that the Americans ask him to the United States. He gave the Japanese shell money, highly prized by Solomon Islanders and usually used to buy brides.

“But I got no money to go Washington,” Kona said.

The 50-year-old Solomon Islander says he regards himself as a peace envoy.

He is well known to veterans of both sides who have returned to the site of one the Pacific war’s greatest battles.

Among the coconut palms and jungle of his 214-acre plantation, he has assembled a collection of World War II memorabilia.

“Look, this Japanese gun was designed by British, this one by German,” he said. “This plane is Grumman Wildcat. Fly very high to dive on Japanese ships.”

His collection is virtually the only reminder of the great naval and land battle that began Aug. 7, 1942, and ended the following February. The Americans lost 1,600 men killed and 4,200 wounded in taking the island. Japanese casualties were estimated at 15,000 killed or missing.

Wreckage of P-38

Kona has the wreckage of a twin-tailed P-38 Lockheed Lightning that was shot down by the Japanese and salvaged from the sea.

He paid $400 for it.

When he first began collecting wrecked planes from the jungle in 1969, he cut them into pieces so he could carry them.

“I misunderstanding, so I cut them,” he said, adding he learned later it would have been better to have kept the planes intact.

“There plenty of good planes all over until the 1960s, but people sold them for scrap.”

Hauling fragments of wreckage from the jungles over the years, he built up a collection of planes, guns, shells and helmets that many Japanese and American veterans come to look at when they return to Guadalcanal each year, particularly in August. Many of them weep when they see them.

In recognition of his efforts, the U.S. government presented Kona with an American flag that had flown over the White House in Washington.

Australian veterans, to commemorate the sinking of the flagship cruiser Canberra in a famous engagement alongside the cruiser Houston against the Japanese in the Battle of Savo Island, put up a plaque in his garden.

Next to it is a marble stone memorial from the “Guadalcanal Combined Veterans (USA).”

And it stands next to another simple stone memorial with this inscription in English:

The Repose of Souls--Tens of thousands of young men who fell in battle sleep here. May the tragic events that occurred on this island in World War II (1942-43) be forever inscribed on our memories. War brings all sides nothing but grief and distress. It must never happen again. To the souls of these departed youth our only words of tribute are the renunciation of war.

People of the world, let us take this pledge and may the blue sea, the great expanse of sky and this green island be a testimonial of eternal peace.

Sleep peacefully, fallen friends.

This monument was erected in memory of deceased friends by a former Japanese soldier, August, 1983.