Eroni Kumana, one of the two Solomon Islanders who saved John F. Kennedy and the crew of PT-109, has passed away at age 93.
Kumana's grandson, Rellysdom Malakana, says: "He did not feel like he was someone special. But people from overseas, people from America, they are the ones who told my grandfather that he was a special man - that he was the hero who rescued John F Kennedy."
More below the orange swirl.
Pretty much everyone knows the story of how Kennedy's ship was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer and how he led the crew to safety. After being stranded a couple days Kennedy and another sailor went looking for food and water and along the way met Kumana and his friend Biuku Gasa who agreed to carry a coconut with a carved message from Kennedy to a coast watcher station on another island 35 miles away.
but to get there they had to paddle through waters patrolled by Japanese ships. The Japanese were notorious for using the locals as "target practice" says Danny Kennedy [local historian and no relation to JFK] - and if they had been caught with such a message it could have been a death sentence. But Kumana and Gasa passed on the message successfully and a rescue mission was launched for the injured, exhausted and hungry US sailors, who many assumed were already dead.
Kennedy would always remember his saviors as he climbed the political ladder and when he was elected president he invited Kumana and Gasa to the inauguration. Unfortunately British colonial officials interfered and and would not allow them to go because they could not speak English well enough and sent another Solomon scout instead.
Nevertheless they did exchange letters with Kennedy during his first year in office.
In Kumana's interview in 2002, he spoke of the moment he heard that Kennedy had been assassinated, "My sadness was great," he said. "I would never meet him [again]."
Biuku Gasa passed away in 2005.
http://www.bbc.com/...