Journal l0/4/1983
P1 Bikinians interested in Hawaiian land
Bikini leaders are scheduled to meet with Mayor Mayor Hannibal Tavares, 12 October, to finalize plans to buy lands on Maui and Molokai, according to a 29 September issue of the Honolulu Advertiser. Earlier, the Bikini leaders announced their desire to use part of their trust fund to purchase land on Maui.
P4 Nauru’s problem is too much wealth
The people of this central Pacific island have a custom called bubuji. When good fortune befalls a Nauruan, according to this custom, friends ransack his property. So birthdays often work in reverse here: Guests don’t bring gifts; they take them. And newly elected presidents lose everything. “They even took the toilet paper,” says one former head of state, Bernard Dowiyogo. Nauruans have any number of unusual ideas about money and property. And why not? This eight-square-mile island, the world’s smallest country, is probably also the richest. Nauru owes this unlikely wealth to an even more unlikely windfall: Millions of migrating birds once nested on Nauru. Over the years, the birds’ guano became phosphate, which is used to make fertilizer. Phosphate is Nauru’s only export and it’s a good one. The secretive Nauru government won’t say how rich the phosphate has made it. But World of Information, a British publishing group, estimates that Nauru sold phosphate worth $125 million last year, or about $25,000 for each of the 5,000 Nauruan citizens. Oil sheikdoms didn’t do as well. —The Wall Street Journal.
Journal 10/2/1992
P11 Boat pass claims another victim
Years ago, there was a well known sea captain who plied the waters of the Marshall Islands, sometime inn the 1800s. His name was Capt. William Reiher, and, if you look closely at a map of Mili Atoll, you will see noted on the map a small passage named “Reiher’s Pass.” The pass was so named because Capt. Reiher was the one who discovered this secret pass and exposed it to the world. Passes throughout the Marshall Islands have been angered at the Reiher family ever since, and formed a secret society to evoke revenge. This last weekend, Saturday, about 6:30m, Majuro small boat pass managed to wreak a portion of that revenge on one of Capt. Reiher’s ancestors. Pass “channel” communications bubbled with the joyous news over the weekend, savoring the succulent satisfaction of getting even to a degree: A Reiher was smitten. Here’s what happened: William Reiher, the present day descendant of the original Capt. William Reiher, took his small boat along with a 15hp outboard down to Laura. He then worked his way back to the boat channel, arriving around 5pm. According to Reiher, he saw that the waves were too rough to enter the pass, so he hung around outside for about an hour and a half waiting for the tide to turn. Then, according to Reiher, he made a mistake. Instead of going out to sea for a distance and then approaching the entrance to the pass straight in, he came upon the pass from an angle, got caught up in the waves washing in on the side of the pass, and ended up in big trouble. His boat got caught up on the tip of a large wave, and then slid down the back of the wave, smacking the transom to pieces. Additional impact rendered the entire boat into a shattered mass of shards, leaving Reiher with a few nasty cuts and scrapes, and nothing but himself in the water. The 15 horsepower engine sunk like a Mako shark going after garbage on the bottom, and Reiher started to swim in earnest against the relentless outgoing tide. After an arduous struggle, Reiher finally managed to get near shore and received some much-needed help from Jain Jeton. He got taxied home, boatless, engineless, fishless, but, fortunately, not lifeless. Alive still…to obtain yet another boat, to face again the feckless impersonality of Majuro’s small boat pass and and overcome the revengeful personality that has wrought beaucoup destruction on Majuro boats. —Joe Murphy
Journal 10/5/2012
P1 Salome wins acting award
Of the nearly 200 films from 27 countries that were submitted to the Guam International Film Festival, only 53 films were chosen for last weekend’s festival. Those films put hundreds of actors and actresses from all over the world into the spotlight at the festival. From all of these films, Guam organizers honored Salome Fakatou, a 10-year-old Bikini girl, with the Grand Jury Award for Achievement in Acting for her starring role in Ainikien Jidjid ilo Boñ (The Sound of Crickets at Night).