This weeks Word a Week Challenge from the Word in Your Ear Blog is: Rainbow.

Here is one of my rainbow pictures. I took this one a couple of years ago, when I was working on the tuna boat. We sometimes went in to Tarawa (Kiribati/Gilbert Islands) to unload. We would tie up to a reefer ship in the anchorage off Betio (the main town on the atoll) and have a couple of days to get ashore there.

For such a small place, in the middle of nowhere, Tarawa had some interesting history. Some of the biggest battles of WWII were fought over these islands. There are still a lot of military ruins/wrecks/artifacts from when the Americans were fighting the Japanese there (Battle of Tarawa).

I’m not really into military history or how wars are fought, but I do understand the strategy of having those island ‘stepping stones’ for the US during WWII. The US still keeps an eye on things there. When I was there once, I met up with a US ship doing some ‘PR’ work throughout the Pacific Islands. A group of military people were cleaning up the war memorial and sent a medical team to help out the locals.

At this point in time, Tarawa has gone back to it’s sleepy small town ways. I really enjoyed myself there. The people were friendly and a lot of fun. A couple of years after I stopped working over there, I read a book “Sex Lives of Cannibals” by J. Maarten Troost. I highly recommend it. I laughed SO hard. Yes, it really IS like that there. 🙂