PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival, and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy

by William Doyle

Before the war, relations between the British colonial authorities and settlers and local people in the Solomons were often correct but distant, and marred by white attitudes of racial superiority. But the arrival of frequently heavy-handed and abusive Japanese troops to the islands in 1942 strengthened the natives’ loyalty to the Allies, and when American forces began retaking the islands, these attitudes were cemented further. Overall, the Americans seemed relatively less hierarchical or class-and-color conscious than the British, and they made a strong positive impression on the Solomon Islanders, with black and white U.S. troops working, eating, and relaxing side by side with the islanders. One local scout, John Kari, said the Americans “really went inside the local people,” and another Solomon Islander, David Welchman Gegeo, who helped conduct a wide range of oral histories with islanders who lived through the war, observed that the Americans cultivated a mythic image as “generous, egalitarian, wealthy, audacious and rescuers of the Solomon Islands.” As a result, Solomon Island natives were highly disposed to help American servicemen in peril.