My strategy on how to find the location of the coconut grove picture in Ed's album - was to take a local World War II tour and have my guide show me where he thought this particular location was. The tour was amazing and I learned a lot about how the troops lived (including Ed) and how quickly they departed. At the end of the tour, my guide stopped at a location behind the main market in town. This is where he thought the photo was taken. I decided to get one more opinion - and that is another blog - Pastor Tony

Espiritu Santo

During World War II, particularly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the island was used by Allied forces as a military supply and support base, naval harbor, and airfield. In highly fictionalized form, it is the locale of James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific.

Million Dollar Point

This beach area is located near Luganville, Vanuatu. It has quite an interesting history and has become one of Luganville's most popular tourist attractions. At the end of the war the American army had accumulated a very large amount of equipment and supplies. They offered this equipment to the French/British governments that were in charge at the time, for a very cheap price (6 cents for each dollar). The government said no, thinking the Americans would just leave the thousands of supplies and hundreds of vehicles and large equipment anyway - there gamble turned out wrong.

Rather than take up space on ships to carry their equipment back they used the space to return the thousands of troops that were anxious to get home to the USA. The army’s decision was to build a jetty at a location near the channel entering the harbour. They bulldozed all the equipment and supplies right into the ocean. They even blew up the equipment they used to build the roads and airports. A massive amount of material went into the sea - and 70 years later it is still evident and washing up on shore. Millions of dollars of goods were destroyed over a period of two days, contaminating the sea with fuel, rubber and metal. That is how Million Dollar Point came to be.

Since Luganville was the hub and staging area for the US Army’s Pacific operation it had to develop an infrastructure that included, hospitals, airport runways, housing for prisoners, housing for soldiers and amunnition depots. You can still see physical evidence of buildings and foundations that were built then and still being used by local people. Hundreds of quonset huts built for storage, are still being used for homes - 70 years later.

Beterihi Cultural Park

Another place to visit for people wishing to learn more about the US occupation of Luganville, is the Beterihi Cultural Park. It turns out the person who bought the property started to dig around and many buried US Army artifacts started to show up. He has a small museum there for tourists. Aime Ruvua the owner has a pretty large presence, when you shake his hands - you won’t forget it.