The Grand Tour 02: Kodachrome Slides from the Pacific, 1947-1950

Guam

My dad worked for PIE engineering company on Guam for two assignments, 1947-1949 and 1949-1950. In mid-1949, he had returned to Massachusetts but was unable to find a suitable job there, so off he went to Guam again. There, he lived in a Quonset hut on the US Navy base in Agaña, now called Hagåtña.  

In those days, flying from Honolulu to Guam was a long trip, requiring two stops for refueling.

It is a long way to anywhere from Guam (note the New England road map)

Honolulu to Guam route

Ready to fly at NAS Hagåtña (Agana), now the A.B. Won Pat International Airport

I am not sure if my dad flew with these people of if he was just wishing them goodbye. The massive airplane in the background is a Pan American Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. It was luxurious and comfortable but suffered from two major flaws: high fuel use and propellers that tended to crack and disintegrate in flight. 

The PIE Camp was rather basic. The engineers had their own living quarters, consisting of half of a Quonset hut. They had no air conditioning, but the mess hall and cinema were cooled. When it rained, there was mud. The jeeps were mostly wrecks that broke regularly. 

 

Minor hole in the road

 

My dad told me that when he and other engineers went up-country to look at watersheds or survey, two armed soldiers accompanied them because there were still Japanese soldiers living in the forest. 

Yap Island

Yap is an island group that is part of the Caroline Islands of the western Pacific. Now it is a state within the Federated States of Micronesia. In 1948, the US held the Caroline Islands as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

My dad flew there in January 1948 on a PBY Catalina flying boat to do a quick inspection of water sources and aquifers. He saw the round stone money disks, used as a symbol of wealth by local families. From Wikipedia, "... stone money, known as Rai, or Fei: large doughnut-shaped, carved disks of (usually) calcite, up to 4 m (13 ft) in diameter (most are much smaller). The smallest can be as little as 3.5 centimetres (1.4 in) in diameter. Many of them were brought from other islands, as far as New Guinea, but most came in ancient times from Palau."

 

Oops, a bit of mud. Local gents are helping.

Stone money lining a path

This ends this short look at the Pacific in the 1940s. We will continue on to Hong Kong when my dad finished his one-year contract and headed west.

I think he used an American Perfex camera for these Kodachrome slides. I scanned them with a Nikon Coolscan 5000ED scanner. Considering their age, the slides were in remarkable condition. He bought his Leica IIIC at the post exchange in early 1950. I do not know what happened to the Perfex.