Nonetheless, August 18 marks the end of seven-week period 40 years ago during which five notable events took place that helped shape the course of American history.
In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 in New York City, patrons fought back against a police raid of a Greenwich Village homosexual bar called the Stonewall Inn in an episode many mark as the beginning of the gay rights movement in America. Less than three weeks later, Apollo 11 lifted off its Florida launch pad on July 16 to provide a riveted world with an adventure that culminated in man first setting foot on the moon. In the midst of the Apollo drama, Senator Edward M. Kennedy drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island on July 18, causing the drowning of a young woman and altering the trajectory of a major political career. That trauma was followed on August 9-10 in California by the gruesome Tate-LaBianca murders orchestrated by Charles Manson.
Finally, the Woodstock Music Festival on a farm in upstate New York on August 15-18 marked the end of “a summer of love” for the baby boom generation that now is rapidly moving into its retirement years. Woodstock is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most pivotal moments in popular music history and was listed on Rolling Stone Magazine 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.
Why do I make note of these events? Because I missed virtually all of them! I missed them because I spent that entire summer in the far corners of Micronesia where, no matter how momentous, news traveled very slowly 40 years ago.
From June 5, 1969, when I departed Washington, D.C. for the Pacific, to Labor Day, I suffered a virtual news blackout for nearly the entire summer of 1969. It was not until I returned home that I learned about all that I had missed, especially the five major events during the seven weeks between late June and mid-August.
After a few days of briefing in Hawaii, when I stepped off the plane on Saipan for the first time in June of 1969, it was the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the air phase of the Battle for Saipan, an event that was in the history books for someone my age. But looking back at it 40 years later, I realize now the Micronesia of that period was still living in immediate post-war conditions. To illustrate how rudimentary communications were, not only did we have to rely on the BBC over shortwave for much of our international news, but in order to speak by telephone from Washington with the Trust Territory High Commissioner on Saipan, we had to go through a military switch in Hawaii to reach an office on Guam, from which the calls to Saipan then were completed via single sideband radio!
Anyone who is familiar with me knows I am a news junkie and have been so as far back as I can remember — at least as far back as the summer of 1952, when I watched gavel-to-gavel coverage of the two national political conventions in glorious black and white on a 13-inch television set in my hometown Chicago, where both gatherings were being held. Of course, I watched the conventions because that’s what my parents wanted to watch and even though we had only one TV, it really was all that was on anyway — except maybe for the DuMont Network. But I wasn’t being forced; I wanted to watch and I got hooked. I have never missed either watching both parties’ conventions or participating in every (Republican) convention since then. And I suspect it was as early as 1952 I knew it was my destiny some day to end up in Washington, where so much of the national political news is made.
After having worked on the Nixon campaign in 1968, when the president took office I was assigned to be part of a team assembled at the direction of the White House to travel to Micronesia to review economic and political conditions there in preparation for negotiations with Micronesian leaders to end the United Nations Trusteeship the U.S. had administered since the close of World War II. The other members of the team were drawn from academia, government agencies and other organizations but the idea was for me to remain attached to the Interior Department at the end of the mission to help with preparations for the first round of political status talks with delegates from the Congress of Micronesia in October, 1969 — yet another 40th anniversary of an event that ought to be marked by Micronesian news outlets later this year as the formal beginning of Micronesia’s journey towards self-determination.
Our team spent three months in Micronesia that summer visiting all parts of the territory. We would spend a week in each district then return to Trust Territory headquarters on Saipan for a week to evaluate our findings. Although outside news was hardly more plentiful on Saipan (no newspapers yet in 1969), it was just the luck of the draw that we found ourselves in the Marshall Islands District in mid-July. Majuro, the district center then, now capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, was the TT outpost farthest from Saipan and the last stop on the U.S. shipping route, which started on the west coast and went to Hawaii, Guam and Saipan before doubling back to offload goods and supplies at the other islands on the way back to the Mainland, with Majuro being the final stop.
The effect of Majuro’s location was to make the Marshalls perpetually short of everything and last to get the news. So, when Apollo 11 lifted off, were it not for the BBC on shortwave, I would not have known. Fortunately for me, I had detached from the rest of the team and was in the company of an ex-Peace Corps volunteer named Carlton Hawpe, who skippered a ketch called the Mara. The government had chartered the vessel to take supplies to the outer islands and I asked to join him on his trip to Ebon in the southern Marshalls so I could educate myself about needs in the really remote areas of Micronesia. Carlton had a short wave radio on board and I remember us being anchored one night and listening to classical music on the shortwave that seemed to be in tempo with the gentle waves but was periodically interrupted with BBC news updates on the progress of the moon mission.
Even if I had been in the states, 40 years later I likely would not be remembering exactly where I was or what I was doing when I first learned about the Stonewall Riots, Chappaquiddick, the Manson murders or Woodstock but July 20 (21st for me across the Dateline) is one of those days in life — like November 22, 1963 or September 11, 2001 — that everyone remembers exactly where they were. I had rejoined my team on Majuro while the Apollo mission was still in progress and we had headed out for an inspection of Bikini Atoll, which was undergoing a cleanup and rehabilitation for the eventual return of the indigenous population. It was on Bikini that we learned that Neil Armstrong successfully had descended onto the surface of the moon, although we were unable to hear the broadcast live. The news was delivered to us by a military liaison officer who had accompanied us to Bikini from Kwajelein Atoll on an army aircraft.
With the dramatic communications revolution we have witnessed over the past 40 years, I can just imagine what kind of news coverage there would be today if the Stonewall Apollo, Chappaquiddick, Manson and Woodstock stories were occurring this year: wall-to-wall cable news coverage of Apollo; a webcam in Armstrong’s space helmet; the blogosphere crazy over Stonewall and Chappaquiddick, news networks’ non-stop analysis of Manson and live Internet streaming of Woodstock.
And the coverage would not be limited to the U.S., either. I’m not sure how much of the revolution has reached Ebon or Bikini but I know I likely would be watching these events unfold live if I were on Majuro and certainly so on Saipan. Ironically, these events were so big and have been replayed so often over the years, I doubt I would remember today that I did not watch them as they happened were it not for the fact that I recall where I was when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
So when the media mark five-year anniversaries of these memorable stories, it is easy for me to recall that the period also marks a life-altering summer for me, for 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of my introduction to the Northern Marianas and the rest of Micronesia and the 40th anniversary of meeting on Saipan the woman who would become my wife.
Fred Radewagen is a Washington-based government and public affairs consultant who specializes in the Pacific Islands. He can be reached at [email protected].
