24 June, 1942

Commanding Officer,
U.S. Naval Air Base
Island of Palmyra, T.H.
Dear Sir:

It might be a little irregular to have your time taken up with a letter
from a strange lady. However, I do not consider myself a strange
lady--I am not strange to myself, as I have known myself for more than
forty years. I may at first, seem strange to you - but if you will look
at your most recent map of the Island of Palmyra and note two islets
side by side on the North shore between Strawn Islet and Cooper Islet,
you will find their names to be the same as the two that are signed at
the end of this letter. Idelle and Meng. I am Idelle and my husband is
Meng.

Some day, when you look across the lagoon, as the boobies come in
fish-laden to their young and the French Frigates zoom down to snatch
the spoils, perhaps you will see the "wrath" of a young woman with two
long black braids walking along the shoals. There might even be a
shadow of a tan dog, close at her heels. A dog so nearly the color of
the girl's brown legs, you might even think you are viewing a side-show
freak--a three legged person. That, Sir, is I My "yaller dog" and I. I
go back to Palmyra so often in thoughts, that I wouldn't wonder if my
dis-embodied self doesn't actually appear there on the white sands of
America's most beautiful atolls. If I am there, my dog, "Friday" would
be most certainly there.

Are you familiar with the story that reads like fiction, of my husband
and I and our young eighteen year old friend Bonner, going there from
Honolulu on a chartered sampan, to stay two or three months at the
most, to investigate the possibilities of commercializing the copra and
fishing interests there? The stories today--do not say we went to stay
so short a time-- they have it a year. Had we gone to stay a year, and
been prepared to stay a year, the story would not be of interest. We
did stay a year, but that is because our source of return
transportation failed. Too long a story to tell here. The archives of
the Star Bulletin and the Honolulu Advertiser are full of the affair as
it happened over that long queer year. How, first one proposed moans of
transportation failed and then another--how our Copra Company's
unfinished boat lay on the dry dock under construction, while the ship
builders walked out in sympathy with a strike in Oakland. The thing
goes on and on, and during that time, we three young people walked bare
foot along the sands of our domain--really monarchs of all we surveyed.


When I think of any sort of an Air Base being on "our island" I well
remember the beginning of the 12th month of our stay there the Navy
boat dropped anchor out beyond Penguin spit, with that one small
seaplane aboard the deck of that "Eagle Boat". This last fall marked
the 20th Anniversary of the first plane soared above the swarms of sea
birds and took pictures of Palmyra, zoomed over the reefs, and the
coco-palms and came to rest in shouting distance of our shack on Easter
Lagoon. So, some day when you or any member of your personnel, fly
across the length and breadth of America's most isolated out post, in
your modern planes, remember it was first done more than twenty years
ago, by Lt. Kirmer, and Lt. Com Robt Kirkpatrick, Captain Glick, master
of the old Eagle Forty, and other members of the first Naval Aviation
Exposition to come to Palmyra.

Since all the troubles in and around our Island Possessions, I have
thought more strongly of Palmyra than at any time for years. My old
friends in Honolulu have over the years, kept me posted on the
different parties that have gone there. Unless some woman has been
there very recently, I am still the only white woman that has been
there, and I believe there was only one native woman that was there
back in 1885 the Hawaiian wife of a Scotsman lived there a year with
her husband who was an employee of a Guano Company. I have written and
sold many articles about my stay there.

It is strange what a year's experience can do to a person. I had rather
take from my memory any one year, than the one spent on Palmyra. I felt
tragic when my last pair of shoes were gone, and when my clothes were
in shreds--then it occurred to me how funny it was, and from then on it
did not worry me. Sometimes I would think of the lovely clothes in my
trunks in Honolulu--I was a bride of only four months, when I went to
Palmyra. We had stacks of magazines, and when we would view those
colored pictures advertising Swift's Premium Hams, we would nearly go
crazy. However, when the officers of the Eagle Forty came ashore the
morning they landed, brought lovely food, including the largest turkey
they could buy in Honolulu-with their Filipino cook, the food tasted
queer to us, and it lay untouched on our plates, while the most of the
turkey found its way into the paunches of our visitors.

I get so used to fried fish and coconut crab, lobster, tern eggs,
coco-cabbage, cornstarch pudding made with coconut milk, chowder made
with coconut milk etc., that for ages after we went back to Honolulu,
we would just have to have fish to satisfy our appetites. The things we
wanted most were ice-cream, cottage cheese dill pickles and white bread
and butter--when we got to Honolulu these things were most
disappointing to us. Even the shoes on my feet and the hair-pins in my
hair worried me to death. I really think my coat of tan started the
sun-tan craze women had for so long.

I am afraid I am imposing on you unknown fellow-islander. It was just
an urge to write to any human who might reside on my island. If in the
course of days, of looking after our safety, you have time or are so
inclined--write us and tell us about Palmyra. Perhaps you may not be
the "writing kind", if not, be so good as to pass this on to one of
your associates who might have a yen for writing to strange people
about islands, coconut crabs, etc..

When we were there, no sign of human beings was visible, except the
cooper house on Home Islet. No bottles, tin cans, etc. We had a certain
place to put these things--we kept the islands as nearly as they were,
except we planted coconuts in islets, bare places etc. We daily scanned
the horizon for boats, but found to work, kept our minds from going
"screwy". We had a 25 foot boat, with sail and motor. Our magneto went
on the blink so we took the motor out and lightened the boat and rigged
it so one to sail and steer at the same time--many a day I have sailed
alone around the lagoons. Our small punt we used, to get our daily
supply of fish. How well I remember the giant turtles that lay their
eggs on the sands of Strawn--the big leopard rays that zoomed through
the waters of the lagoons, the evil eyes of the black conger eels, the
way a lobster raised his feelers in the crevices of the reef on the
North Shore. Walking, always with a cane knife at our belts, cut our
trails through the ferns of the big islets. We never threw a stone at a
bird, nor fired the revolver we took with us. I have pictures of a tiny
love tern covering her well-balanced egg on a limb of a tree, with my
own hand two inches beneath her. I touched the silly boobies on their
nests and gathered eggs on the sands after the semi-annual laying of
the terns. The sooty terns nested above our door. We soon learned that
the well-fed shark were more afraid of us than we were of them. When
the Eagle Forty was there for four days, and each day a bunch of
fellows came ashore for the day, they were asked not to molest the
birds--not to kill coconut crabs, nor mar trees. They even asked my
husband's permission before taking the queer pieces of coral away with
them. The day I sat in the motor lorry with the officers of that boat
and rode with few possessions out to the Forty, and looked back and saw
the forms of my husband and our young friend and that "yaller dog"
merge, through my tears, into a back-ground of palms, was the saddest
of my life. The ship's officers seated me where I could watch the
island disappear through a rain cloud, and I never dreamed I would
never see it again. When we landed in Honolulu a few days later, those
officers gave me a colored picture of the boat in a frame shaped like a
pilot's wheel, and it hangs on the walls of our den today. I remember
the hue and cry of the news reporters, the friends that called, and
most of all the sound of the first woman's voice I had heard in a year.


So, in writing to you a strange man, or strange men, over there, it
might even be a silly thing today--but it is obeying an old urge to
keep in touch with that little bit of Paradise as I remember it. If you
happen to be an idealist and have any authority over things there,
please preserve as much of nature as you can, after all this trouble is
over, and the Clipper ships go to all those places it would be
wonderful to have at least a portion of Palmyra as a National Forest to
show to posterity America's example of a true atoll. It isn't likely
that I will ever see that island again, except in memory, but when the
toast burns, and the sink gets stopped up, and the laundry loses my
best table cloth, and things go wrong in general, it is good to
remember the year when these things didn't bother me, and when I walked
bare-foot through the sands of Palmyra.

To you, whoever you are, and to the men stationed there, I say God keep
you, and remember all times are not war times, and perhaps a day will
come when the sun blazes up over Eastern Island, and sinks beyond the
mouth of that crescent that bounds Palmyra to the East and the West may
on that day peace be restored and you can return to your own homes and
leave my islands to the boobies, the terns, the French Frigates, and
the crying curlew.

When you walk along Idelle Isle, see if there is a pile of coral well
in the middle of the island. That is supposed to be a cairn that marks
the spot where the island was named. If it isn't there, put another one
there, and on this day I will look from the windows of my sunroom here
high above the Pacific, near the city of Santa Barbara, and say to you,
thank you, and the best of everything to you-- I am,

With kindest interest,

Idelle S. Meng.

How about that letter Joe,

That is the location you left the crew of the "Pau" A virtual departure
as was the voyage.

I,for one, remember "The Voyage" fondly. There was a magical bonding of
that crew, for me, that has no explaination.

Good post!

Ole Thom




http://community.webtv.net/tassail/ThomsPage

Thom Stewart wrote:
How about that letter Joe,


I think she was one lucky lady.

I saw a recent landing photo with 5 new moter launches at the
dock....paradise lost?

Id like to sail to Palmyra and find out.

Joe





That is the location you left the crew of the "Pau" A virtual
departure
as was the voyage.

I,for one, remember "The Voyage" fondly. There was a magical bonding
of
that crew, for me, that has no explaination.

Good post!

Ole Thom




http://community.webtv.net/tassail/ThomsPage