Melanesian Cruise: Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands 3.4.26)

Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, was one of the bloodiest battles of World War II.  It started over an airport.  The Japanese learned that the Americans were finishing an airport on Guadalcanal Island which had originally been started by the Japanese.  They feared the airport could become a base servicing all of the South Pacific.  In August 1942, the Japanese invaded to keep the airport from being completed by the Americans. Six months and tens of thousands of casualties later, the Japanese disappeared in the night.  We visited Honiara, on Guadalcanal Island, on March 4, 2026.  Parts of the old American airport are still being used, although the main airline flying out of that old WWII airport is now Solomons Airlines.

The part of the airport still remaining from World War II.

We visited a collection of ruins from World War II---rusted tanks, banged up planes, and even a metal barrel shot full of bullet holes.

We visited a memorial garden honoring soldiers who fought at Guadalcanal, and we also visited monuments erected by both the Japanese and the Americans.

The Japanese monument included a poem, "Sound of the Tide," about fishermen dying at sea.

The American monument had large marble plaques telling the history of the Guadalcanal campaign and the soldiers who fought in it.

Both the Japanese and American monuments were high on the hillside.  The pathos of the place and its memories were represented, for me, in this photo of a man contemplating as he looked over the now peaceful valley below the monuments.

As we watched from the top of the hill, a plane came flying in, landing at the same airport which had seen so much history.

Polyonesian cultures in Hawaii, Tahiti, and New Zealand are highly evolved.  The Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, in Melanesia, seemed much more primitive, both in the lifestyle and in the art.  I love indigenous art, though, of any sort, and I enjoyed the collection at the local museum.

Dave and I stopped at a local shop to buy a beautifully turned wooden bowl, inlaid with shell, for my paralegal, Cate.  I wish I bought one for myself!

One other unique feature of the Solomon Islands is that gold has been discovered there.  In addition to a large, majority Chinese owned mine, there are many small-time miners mining gold illegally.  There were signs all over town saying, "We buy gold."