You can sense that history from the moment you land at Henderson Airfield, now the Solomon Islands’ main international gateway, named for US Marine Corps Major Loften Henderson killed during the Battle of Midway one month before the US Marines made their landing on the beaches of Guadalcanal in August 1942.
Directly to the left of the arrivals hall lies a beautifully groomed grove of trees with small plaques at the base of each detailing the name of a US airman, solider, sailor or marine killed during the infamous campaign.
And once on the road to Honiara, you travel the ‘Kukum’ Highway, a Navajo Indian word for ‘pineapples’ which the famous ‘Wind Talkers’ based there used to describe the yellow-painted US hand grenades.
It would take six long months of gruelling fighting and the loss of some 40,000 lives, including 31,000 Japanese soldiers, before the US Forces and their allies, including a large contingent of Kiwi soldiers, airmen and sailors, could wrest complete control of the island from the enemy and as importantly, place the Japanese Imperial Army on the defensive for the first time.
Today reflecting the interest in the country’s WWII history, battlefield tours and key sites are readily available offering memorable and moving tours to the WWII museums and other significant sites including the American memorial at Skyline Ridge and the Japanese Solomons Peace memorial.
Many of the battle sites remain virtually untouched and rusting aircraft, jeeps, tanks and amphibious vehicles abound.
Given the intense sea and air battles that took place, many relics remain on the seabed, including destroyers, troop ships, oil tankers, seaplanes and submarines. Several lie in shallow water just a short distance from shore. Others are only accessible by experienced divers.
A must for anyone visiting Munda in the Solomon Islands’ Western Province is the Peter Joseph WWII Museum, one of the best collections of WWII relics to be found anywhere in the South Pacific.
This amazing private museum features a huge collection of US and Japanese military utensils, ammunition, machine guns, shells, crockery, helmets, shavers and knives left behind by the Allied and Japanese forces after the conflict ended.
The museum is named after US Marine Peter Joseph whose dog tags were the first curator Alphy Barney Paulson found when he began collecting WWII debris in 2000.