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$1.20 The Great Southern
PAGES 18-20
Star
INSIDE
TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2009
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PUBLISHED TUESDAY 56 PAGES
The great race Sport
Page 2
Parrot power
Lest he forgets Korumburra man’s mission to return US soldier’s ID tags K By Chris Brown B A KORUMBURRA man returned an a American soldier’s “dog tag”, bringing peace to his family more b than 66 years after he died. t It took more than five years from the moment Ian Webb bought the identification tag m of Corporal Walter Hahn on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, until it made its way back Washington state. to Was Cpl Hahn’s sister, Dorothea King, received the dog tags tag earlier this month, telling her local paper Spokane that she still has “dreams all the time in Spok that he ccomes back, knocks on the door and says, ‘I just live down the street’. “This “Thi will give me some closure.” After a seemingly endless string of obstacles, Afte most ppeople would have given up on finding a home for fo the dog tag. But Ian persisted, knowing that war-time IDs often considered a sacred part of a dead solare ofte dier’s ppossessions. There were late night phone calls across the Ther Pacific, hhours spent poring over records, numerous and frustrating dead ends. emails an During this time the dog tag sat in the top drawer Durin table along with the watches that of Ian’s computer c work. don’t wo didn’t really want it in my drawer; it’s not re“I did souvenir,” the prison supervisor said. ally a sou “The fact is someone had it and they died and I wanted to t give it to someone who it meant something too.” too The bbattle for Guadalcanal was a turning point in the pacific war and was vital in protecting Australia Japanese invasion. from Jap Hahn’s unit landed on Guadalcanal on New Cpl H Year’s Eve, 1942. Year’s Ev Around Aroun January 18, units were pushing west near Galloping Horse when Hahn was sent up to scout Hill 53. The T patrol encountered a larger number of Japanese soldiers, and Hahn was among the Americans killed. kill Other Othe members of the unit buried the fallen solCpl Walter Hahn
diers on the ridge, then came back about five months later to dig up the bodies and transfer them too an American cemetery elsewhere on the island. Ian spent four months working at a prison on n the Solomon Islands where he was surrounded by military itary history. “We used to go swimming at a beach on Saturdays rdays and Sundays and there was a wrecked freighter that had run up on the sand and back from there was a tanker with a hole blown in the side of it,” he said. At different places the natives have tables of war debris, including mortar bombs, helmets and fronts of planes, for sale. A few boys about 10-years-old came up to Ian’s group with items to sell that included Cpl Hahn’s dog tag. “The internet there was appallingly slow, so I didn’t really do much other than give it a wash andd chucked it in my bag,” he said.
Long search: Korumburra resident Ian Webb spent years trying to find a relative of a slain American solider, so he could return his dog tag.
“Then I came home and jumped on the internet and had a look to see if I could find out something about this fellow.” Continued on page 5.