My Little Sister's Little Visit (Part 1)

My roller coaster of a summer was capped off by a wonderful visit from my younger sister Jenna. She is only 16 years young, but was ready to head off by herself and adventure around the world. Our family has always joked about how she is overly mature for her age, and this trip proved that she was indeed responsible and shrewd beyond her years. She traveled all by herself through Hawaii, Guam, and Japan to make this trip to see her big brother. She trudged through muddy roads, hiked through dense jungle, descended to the depths of the ocean, slept on hard floors, munched on fish heads, learned a new language, and endured everything with a smile on her face. Jenna had taken a fair amount of family trips to fun places around North America, but nothing compared to this trek to the middle of the Pacific. I don’t know whether or not it could be classified as a “life-changing” experience for her, but it was most assuredly a two-week stint that she will remember for the rest of her life. I think she decided to embark on this journey for a few reasons: to see something different from suburbia Irvine, to hang out with me, to experience a new lifestyle, to scuba dive, and to have some good material to write a kick-ass college essay.

Jenna walked off the plane and into the humid air of Chuuk early on a Monday morning. The airport has a movable staircase for unloading the plane, and the passengers disembark in plain view of everybody. Jenna was the last person off the plane and mistakenly walked the wrong way on the runway. She was chased down by an airport attendant, who showed her the proper path through the doors. I spotted my little sister through a chain link fence and was amazed to see how much she changed. My first thought was, “ O wow, my older sister Julie decided to come instead!” Since the last time I saw her, she had her braces removed and has continued to grow into a beautiful young lady. I was awestruck about how much she resembled her older sister. I laughed because she was clad in tight yoga pants and a hoodie jacket, not exactly island wear. I leaned against the rusty chain link fence and bid hello to Jenna as she stood in line for customs. We were both so excited to see each other and our faces lit up with delight.

My Peace Corps friends and I covered her in shell and flower necklaces. I think we had about 10 necklaces to adorn our new guest with. I threw her big black bag on my shoulder and we started our two-block walk to the Peace Corps office. Her bag had rolling wheels, but those would do no good on the muddy roads of Weno. Carrying it on the shoulder was the only way to go. We strolled in the hot sun towards our office and Jenna got her first peak of decrepit Weno. However, the crumbling buildings, piles of rubble, and sloppy walkways didn’t seem to faze her at all. She didn’t even comment.

The first night we headed down to the far end of the island to stay at the fanciest hotel in Chuuk, the Blue Lagoon Resort. There are only 3 hotels in all of Chuuk, and Blue Lagoon takes the cake as the nicest. It is the only place with an authentic island atmosphere. It has rows of palm trees spread over fields of green grass that stand adjacent to a small sandy beach. The property juts out on a small peninsula and is surrounded by ocean on all sides. Our room had a fantastic view of the lagoon waters and the outlines of the tiny islands that spread across the horizon. We were only about 50 feet from the ocean and had a nice patio to enjoy our relaxing environment.

Our main purpose in staying at Blue Lagoon was to do some serious scuba diving. I have been in Chuuk for almost a year now and still have not experienced its world famous scuba diving. I haven’t had the time or money, but the visit of my little sister was a proper occasion to finally get down under the sea and see the mysterious ship wrecks from WWII. We were eager start scuba diving, but we decided to wait a couple days before we began our underwater adventures. A couple of my Peace Corps friends were still around and we thought it might be a good idea to take a hike with them.

The following morning, we awoke and prepared for what we expected to be a mild walk to another end of the island. We were planning on going to Xavier High School. Xavier is the most prestigious high school in all of Micronesia, and students come from all over the Pacific to attend. It is the crown jewel of Chuuk and stands on a hill by itself overlooking the lagoon. The school and its neighboring Japanese lighthouse are some of the main tourist attractions in our state, and we figured we should check it out.

One of my other Peace Corps friends told us that the walk from Blue Lagoon to Xavier would only take about 90 minutes. We planned on departing in the late morning and being back well before dark. We would simply saunter through the jungle and be back in time for a late lunch. Wellll, being in Chuuk we should have remembered that nothing ever goes to plan. The walk was not a simple 90 minute stroll.

We left the resort and started our trek on the muddy streets towards Xavier. The roads in this part of town were even more deteriorated than in the downtown area. The street was skinnier and no construction work was being done to renovate their crumbling remains. The roads were covered in water and we walked ankle deep through puddles for a mile of so, but fortunately it was less muddy and more watery than most of the roads in Weno. The road continued to get skinnier until it resembled the rocky remains of the road on my home island of Fefan. A road had been built out of coral chunks 25 years ago, and no maintenance had been done since the late 80’s. It was walkable, but it was hard to imagine how a car could traverse these stretches.

As we continued our walk, the surroundings became more rural and less polluted. I was pleasantly surprised to see this side of Weno. My picture of Weno is garbage filled mud holes with grafitti covered fences. But this side of Weno was much nicer. Well not nicer economically. But nicer in its feel. It was more like the rural islands of the lagoon where we live. The jungle was still alive and the people lived off the land. Small streams trickled under the road and short waterfalls fell from the rocky cliffs. Locals were collecting taro and carrying their produce back to their thatch meeting houses. It was refreshing for me to realize that not all of Weno had lost its traditional lifestyle.

Our path dwindled, the forest became denser and before we knew it there were no more houses to be seen. We had entered the only uninhabited coastal region of Weno island. This little stretch of intact forest only went for a few miles and there were dozens of paths that winded through its streets. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t know which of those paths to take. We tried to stay on a straight route, but there were some forks in the road and we took a wrong turn somewhere. At one point, the path took us directly into a barbed wire fence. We were confused about the fence because we could see that it only stretched for about 100 yards and didn’t enclose anything. We disregarded the warning and tiptoed our way around the edge.

We were gaining elevation and the path was getting worse with every step. Our feet were sludging through mud and the backs of our sandals were splattering the wet dirt all over our backs. More and more forks in the road came into view and we had lost confidence about which way to take. My friend Dan wanted to climb higher and I wanted to head downwards. We followed his direction for a while, until we came to a clearing and realized that we were at least a mile from the shore. At this point, he yielded to my urgings and we slid our way down the mountain. We came down to flat land again, but this area was a boggy marsh. There were pathways through the muck, but there was no way to avoid the mud. We squished our way through the mangrove roots and finally came to solid ground.

After an hour or two of wandering through the soggy forest, we emerged back into civilization. We walked through some local front yards and the people stared at us in wonder. We were covered in mud and looked like a confused bunch of dirty Americans who had just popped out from a mysterious journey. Well, we were a confused bunch of dirty Americans who had just popped out from a mysterious journey.

A man approached us and talked to us about where we were going, he happily told us that we only had about 2 minutes until we reached Xavier. Jenna’s spirits were lifted and we picked up our pace towards our destination. After about 15 minutes, Jenna asked how come we weren’t there yet. I laughed and told her that the man’s 2 minute prediction meant absolutely nothing. Two minutes in Chuuk can mean anywhere between 30 seconds and 1 hour. Time is all relative.

Finally, after three and half hours of walking, we arrived at the Xavier High School Campus. We met up with our JVI volunteer friends who were teachers at the school. They fed us a meal of PB&J with salad. Our faulty planning did not include a meal plan. Luckily, we had friends.

We went to the roof of the school and looked over to the peninsula where the Japanese lighthouse stood. It would have been about a 45-minute walk (in real time) to get to the lighthouse. We calculated our timing and figured that we wouldn’t have enough time to get back to Blue Lagoon before dark. We walked all this way and didn’t even have time to see the main attraction.

Our friends told us that there was a shuttle bus that drops the students off at their houses around the island, and we could hitch a ride back to Blue Lagoon. We had a couple hours to kill while waiting for the bus, so we took a tour of the school campus. It truly was a great school and deserves its place at the top of Micronesian academic institutions. The main building is a former Japanese communication center, so the walls are about 2 feet thick and it has huge steel doors. There is a giant grass field and a couple of outdoor basketball courts. They have dorms, a church and houses for the teachers to live in. Local houses representing each island state are built along the cliffside overlooking the ocean. And a wooden chapel with trellised walls points out to the blue waters of the pacific. It looks like the coolest place on earth to go to church.

As the sun descended in the sky towards its final resting place behind the silhouetted islands, we hopped in the back of a pick-up truck and began our trip back to the hotel. We drove the opposite way from whence we walked, so we got to circumnavigate the island of Weno. It was my first time seeing the far side of the island, and once again I was surprised by the difference from the main part of Weno. On this northern side, the road was nice! It was paved with black pavement and our car drove faster than 8 mph. It reminded me more of Pohnpei and less of Chuuk.

We finally got back to our hotel after dark and passed out quickly. We were exhausted from our hike around the island. It was much more of an expedition than we expected and we didn’t get to accomplish everything that we wanted, but nonetheless it was a great time. I finally got to see all of Weno, and Jenna got a full introduction to the geography, lifestyle and sites of Chuuk.

On our second morning, Jenna and I woke up and got ready for a day of scuba diving. We were planning on doing 2 dives down to the shipwrecks at the bottom of Chuuk Lagoon. Towards the end of WWII, the Japanese navy was pulling its ships back towards their homeland and Americans were crushing their forces along the way. Many of Japan’s warships had retreated to a safe base in the Chuuk Lagoon. This lagoon was the headquarters of the Japanese Navy at this point in the war. Dozens of ships, planes and bases were scattered in the calm waters of this remote lagoon. The Chuuk Lagoon was a seemingly impenetrable fortress. It was encircled with a coral reef fence and had only a few easily-defendable passes. It could not be attacked by water. Unfortunately for the Japanese and fortunately for the US, we had other ways of attacking besides with ships.

On back to back days in late 1944, the Americans undertook “Operation Hailstorm”. We dropped tons and tons of bombs all over the lagoon. The US airforce destroyed the bases on Tonoas, Weno and Etten. We sunk the majority of the ships and crippled the Japanese Navy. This battle hasn’t retained fame like Okinawa and Guadalcanal, but its significance should not be underestimated. After this point, the Japanese were crippled beyond repair and the war effort diminished thereafter.

56 ships and a few planes now lie at the bottom of the shallow Chuuk Lagoon. These war remains have served as breeding grounds for blooms of coral and throngs of fish. Sunken ships are the ideal places for sea life to thrive, and the ships in Chuuk are no exception. It has the largest collection of shipwrecks in the world and is renowned as the best shipwreck scuba diving in the world.

Jenna and I were lucky enough to have the chance to see this underwater cemetery of Japanese war wreckage. We are both inexperienced divers, but we both have our PADI certifications from when we took a trip to Jamaica a few years ago. I reviewed a few of the basic techniques with Jenna and we were ready to go. We rented some gear and got on a boat to dive down and see the ships.

All of the ships we saw were between 40 and 100 feet below the surface. Each one of them were enormous vessels that used to be cargo ships or war boats seventy years ago. Immediately as we pointed our heads downwards and descended into the dark depths, we were greeted by the immensity of the shrouded ships on the sea floor. I slowly floated down to the ships dock and began my journey of exploring this morbid underwater museum. The coral was more fabulous than any other I had seen before. Purple tipped fingers with translucent tentacles sprouted from railings, orange and pink striped leaves flopped with the current on the deck, electric blue worms dangled from the doorways. The colors and variety of the coral outcroppings is beyond description. I cannot even begin to describe all the wondrous variety of shapes, colors, and types of plantlike animal growths that covered the decaying remains of the ship. Red rimmed bowls with yellow bubbles clumped along the rusted poles, orange and green webs of interconnected strings stretched across the walkways, a pile of blue spaghetti noodles laced over a yellowish brainy lump of polyps. Everywhere I looked, I saw more fabulous and unbelievable types of coral. We were in an alien forest of underwater foliage. The best science fiction writers couldn’t describe a more fantastic and otherworldly environment. The random crayon doodles of a bored student and the wild imaginary creatures of Dr. Seuss were thrust into reality in a wonderful display of life on board this ancient ship.

The coral bouquets were magnificent, but they were only one of the attractions to this deep-sea amusement park. The fish were the actors in the show. And the show was overcrowded with a wild cast of characters. Giant orange fish with purple spots wandered through the ships wreckage, rainbow colored fish with parrot beaks pecked at the algae on the coral clumps, flat black fish with orange and blue lines traipsed through the water. The fish were not only huge in size, but also huge in number. Schools of silver mackerel spun circles around our heads, groups of pointy nosed blue fish darted back and forth, and crowds of shimmering brown skinned swimmers danced in the clear waters. A giant dog-toothed tuna came within inches of my face and reared its ugly fangs at us as it passed. A gigantic spotted blowfish lazily floated underneath an old pipe. Three eagle rays glided past us and twirled around the towers of the ship.

I was impressed with the beauty of the fish, but I have to admit that only one thought was running through my mind the whole time I was down there….I wish I had my spear! This would have been the best spear fishing of my life. I could have come back with a hundred fish as big as my forearm. Not only were there thousands of large fish down here, but they weren’t scared like the fish on the surface. Up on the top levels, a fish feels the vibrations of my swimming and darts away before I can get with 20 feet of him. But down here it’s different. Nobody fishes for these guys. They have no fear. They will swim right in from of my face and barely react when I reach out to grab them. If I had a spear down there one time, I could feed my village for a month.

The flocks of exotic fish and collections of reef growth were truly amazing, but the real reason for diving in the Chuuk Lagoon is to see the eerie graveyard of Japanese war remains. The ships themselves are quite a site to behold. The multi-leveled decks, cargo holds, thick towers, anti-aircraft guns, engine rooms, and living quarters all hold dozens of fascinating antiques to admire. There are artifacts left scattered all over the surface of the ship. We saw wine glasses & bottles, shoes, typewriters, plates, knives, forks, bowls, tables & chairs, and even a human femur bone. These left over items can be found all over the ship in corners or sometimes right out in the open.

To see the real details of the wreckage, you have to go into the hull of the ship. Into the dark recesses of the mysterious cemetery. We followed the flashlight of our guide and delved deeper into the Japanese mausoleum. In the dark rooms of the ship, the only light you can see is from the beam of the underwater flashlight. Everything else is pitch black except for the narrow area illuminated by the light. Inside the rooms, there are many decaying artifacts and objects to inspect. All types of war materials and standard living supplies are still scattered around. A cleaning crew hasn’t come through to tidy up in about 70 years, so everything is left exactly as it was when the bombs struck and the ships sunk.

In one of the ships, it seemed like each one of the rooms was a breeding ground for tiny fish. I do not know what type of fish there were, but I do know that were a seemingly infinite amount of them. Little guppies smaller than a pinky finger crowded the darkness of the rooms. Walls of tiny fish impenetrable by the eye were blocking all the doorways and window. Millions upon millions of these baby fish surrounded us on all sides when we entered the gloomy rooms.

We touched 20-foot guns and looked at the remnants of the powerful engines. We swam through a gaping hole caused by a torpedo and entered into a large cargo hold that contained 4 airplanes. The ship was so big that airplanes were inside it! The gas masks of the pilots were still in the cockpits and most of the glass was cracked or missing.

Unfortunately, we did not have an underwater camera, so I cant show you evidence of these breathtaking shipwrecks. You are just gonna have to take my word that they were amazing. Or you can come see for yourself. Thousands of dead bodies, dozens of ships, and millions of sea creatures are waiting for your prying eyes.

I mentioned this once before in my blog and I encourage you to watch the video about the imminent disaster that is awaiting these ships and the Chuuk Lagoon. The hulls of the ships are corroding quickly and are on the verge of collapsing. When this happens, millions of barrels of oil will spill into the pristine lagoon waters. It has been estimated that it could be larger than the BP oil spill. The ships will be destroyed, the reefs will whither away, the fish will die and the people of Chuuk will suffer horribly. Experts have predicted that this event will take place sometime between 2010-2015. Already, oil has begun to leak from the ships. They say that the real danger is when a typhoon or big storm hits, this could be the straw that breaks the camels back. All of the oil could come gushing out at once and become one of the biggest natural disasters in human history. So, hopefully we can do something about it before its too late…..