Mystery sailors come

back to haunt Palau

By Michael Field

AMELIA Earhart might be the sexy lost story of the Pacific, but on Palau they have got a stranger tale than a long missing avi ator.

While people search through Fiji’s dusty ware-houses for Earhart’s remains (and perhaps her alcoholic navigator who never gets mentioned), in Palau they have had to face the prospect that 22 people who went missing back in 1941 had turned up alive 58 years later.

But now a story straight out of The X- Files and complete with a weird New York woman could just have turned out to be a scam.

The story began on May 23, 1941, when a group of 22 people boarded a small boat sailing to Peleliu and were never seen again. It was, of course, wartime and no search was made.

Then the story saw the arrival of an Israeli, Noga Garrison, who claims to be a New York art consultant and curator.

In 1976 she claimed she was on the Sepik River in Wewak, Papua New Guinea, looking for artwork to sell. She said that she also went to the Mermit Islands, around 260 kilometres north-east of Wewak - and about 1600 kilometres south of Palau.

There, she said in a rather vague fash ion, she met people who told her that they had come from Palau years before. An old man had told her they had been caught in a storm and driven out to sea, ending up on an unknown island. And there they lived, in 1976.

Although Garrison claimed to have passed the story onto authorities in what was then the US Trust Territories nothing more was done about it.

Garrison though continued to press her claim with a variety of people but only really got attention when, in January, the Palau Horizon magazine came out with an extensive report on her claims. . “After long years of painfully remem bering these lost relatives and close friends originating in the states of Angaur and Peleliu, the thought of finding them has gone almost to oblivion,” the maga zine reported. “But the heart still yearns for their return.”

The magazine noted that by now most of the party of 22 would be over 100 years old - but there was a pregnant woman

among them.

“There is also a perturbing thought that they could have been enslaved or mal treated in a strange island where they were shipwrecked.

The story created a sensation in Koror and Garrison, long unknown, suddenly found celebrity status.

The government announced they would bring Garrison to Palau and a through investigation would be launched.

Garrison quibbled over what she should be paid, agreeing only to come after she was paid $2500 plus a return first class air fare from New York.

‘ln Palau they have had to

face the prospect that 22

people who went missing

back in 1941 had turned

up alive 58 years later’

Tia Belau newspaper said the report that the 22 had survived raised high hopes among family and relatives.

Last month another magazine, Palau Horizon, reported on the case, saying that the 22 people from Peleliu and Angaur states left Peleliu on May 23, 1941 and were never seen again.

It said the thought of finding them again “has gone almost to oblivion. But the heart still yearns for their return”.

A self-described art consultant and curator in New York, Noga Garrison, then entered the scene. Her story was that back in October 1976 she had gone to the Mermit Islands, 260 kilometres (160 miles) north-east of Wewak and found the Palauans.

She said she spoke to the oldest man in the group who told her they had been caught by a storm. This drove them far out into the sea and they were apparently shipwrecked on an unknown island.

Since then the “discovery” has remained untested, until Palau Horizon published its account last month, noting that if any of them were still alive, they would mostly be over 100 years old.

With publication the Palau Government flew Garrison out to Palau.

Reporter Jerome Temengil of the newspaper Tia Belau said Garrison became an “instant sensation” although he reported on the growing doubts.

A host of leaders including President Kuniwo Nakamura and Vice President Tommy Remengesau all talked with Garrison. But, the newspaper said, “all shook their heads after a few minutes of meeting her because her information was so scant and flimsy that it requires further inquiry.”

Tia Belau was unimpressed over the affair, asking how the entire leadership and public of Palau “who have experi enced encounters with so many foreign con artists, fortune hunters, swindlers, fake investors... can get all excited and spent so much money and effort without checking the reliability of the source of such information.”

Officials tried to persuade Garrison to take them to the same place she reported meeting the lost people but she would not go, saying she needed time for her anti malarial medicine to work.

So officials were despatched to PNG with Tia Belau saying it was a hoax that was going to bring great trauma to the people of Palau. “Who will bear the responsibility? At least one person made money and had a first class visit to Palau.”

Sure enough, in February the whole thing was formally buried. The govern ment had sent Ngatpang Chief Rekemesik and official Surangel Whipps to Wewak to have a look around. There were no missing survivors, no mystery people on the Hermit Island group. Was it all a scam? That’s a mystery. ■