A Solomon Islander who helped save John F. Kennedy when a Japanese destroyer sank the future US president’s patrol boat during World War II has died at age 93, his family said yesterday.
Eroni Kumana and fellow islander Buiku Gasa were out in a canoe in 1943 when they came across the injured Kennedy, who was then a US Navy lieutenant, and members of his crew stranded on a coral atoll.
The pair helped the sailors survive and Kennedy went on to become the 35th president of the US, keeping a coconut from the ordeal as a paperweight on his White House desk.
Kumana’s son, Esori, said his father passed away surrounded by family members on Saturday aged 93 and was laid to rest on his home island of Ronongga yesterday.
“It was very sad, [but] he lived a full life and we are proud of him,” he told reporters via telephone from the island, where villagers were preparing a feast in Kumana’s honor.
Kennedy’s boat, PT-109, was on a night patrol when a Japanese destroyer emerged from the dark and sheared the wooden vessel in half, Smithsonian magazine said.
Spilled fuel ignited in the water, causing both the Japanese and other US boats to assume the 13-man crew had all perished in the shark-infested waters.
In fact, 11 of the crew were still alive, and when dawn broke Kennedy led them on a 5km swim from the boat’s wreckage to a coral atoll.
Kennedy, who had suffered a ruptured spinal disc, towed a badly burned crewman behind him during the marathon swim.
Eventually, Kumana and Gasa passed in their canoe. They helped collect food for the crew and Kennedy sent them off to get help with a message etched into the shell of a coconut, reading: “Nauru Isl commander/native knows posit/he can pilot/11 alive/need small boat/Kennedy.”
After being rescued, Kennedy retrieved the coconut and had it encased in plastic, using it as a paperweight throughout his postwar political career. It is on display in the Kennedy Museum in Boston.
Kumana and Gasa were invited to Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration, but were unable to make the trip to Washington.
Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.
Gasa died in November 2005.
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