William O. Sabel

Bill Sabel was born in Chicago during WWI (1916) and spent 4 1/2 years in the Corps of Engineers during WWII. With his passion for gardening, he established a garden on every base to which he was assigned.

GARDENING IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC

I was instrumental in introducing watermelons to the natives on a lonely South Pacific island during World War II. My mission was to establish a vegetable farm in the Solomons on the island of Kolombangara for the purpose of furnishing fresh garden produce for the base hospital at Munda — 5 miles away.

Prior to my induction into the army, I was a poultry farmer and had an interest in gardening. When I received my orders for induction in April 1941, I was sent to Camp Shelby, MS for one year. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 my military career was extended indefinitely and I had the opportunity to become an officer in the Corps of Engineers by attending OCS (Officer Candidate School) at Ft. Belvoir, VA.

After receiving my commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in April 1942, I was sent back to Camp Shelby, to help organize and train the 350th Engineer General Service Regiment. The military was segregated in those days and the enlisted men in this regiment were black while the officers were white. After six months of training in Mississippi, we shipped out to the South Pacific in January 1943 and our destination was Espiritu Santos in the New Hebrides. Upon our arrival, we were bivouacked in a cocoa bean plantation and I noticed the fertile dark soil where we had established our quarters and I wondered if vegetables and flowers would grow here in the tropics. I requested my parents, living in Chicago, to enclose a variety of seeds in their weekly airmail letters we exchanged. As a consequence, outside my living quarters at every base where I was stationed, I planted a flower and vegetable garden. Being just south of the equator, everything grew quickly and profusely in the warm, moist atmosphere of the tropics.

As the war progressed to the north and the Japanese were driven from the recaptured islands, our unit was ordered to Munda in the Solomon Islands. When my platoon was constructing the general’s mess hall, I noticed him puttering around a small garden. Evidently he was a garden enthusiast like myself. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned the garden I had established on Santos and how successful it was. When the army garden project was being contemplated, he remembered my interest and spoke to our colonel about it. They suggested a vegetable farm be established on the nearby island of Kolombangara to augment the drab dehydrated menu that was served to the wounded men in the base hospital.

I was asked if I would be interested in taking on the project and I accepted the challenge. After examining the records of the enlisted men in the regiment, I selected 6 men, who had prior agricultural experience before their induction into the service. The British government had control of these islands and supplied 16 male natives to help with the work. A request was made to the Red Cross in Australia and New Zealand for vegetable seeds and they sent quite a variety including a bushel of field corn, watermelon, lettuce, okra, cucumbers and others I can’t remember.

I obtained a small bulldozer from our motor pool and also a single bottom moldboard plow. The US Navy supplied a landing craft for transportation to Kolombangara Island 5 miles away. The natives arrived at the garden site in canoes from their village on a nearby island bringing their hand tools in the form of hoes, axes and mattocks and we went to work.

Prior to the war, this island had a coconut plantation and the Japanese in their bid to dominate the world had confiscated it. They used the plantation as a fighter based airfield to protect their main base at Munda and had cut the coconut trees flush with the ground for the landing strip. It was my mission to farm this abandoned airdrome.

In 3 months time fresh garden produce began flowing back to the base hospital at Munda including many watermelons and cucumbers. It was gratifying, to imagine the surprised reaction the patients in the military hospital experienced, when they were served a slice of ice cold watermelon with their evening meal as they lay recuperating from their war wounds. They also received other unexpected fresh vegetables in place of the canned dehydrated variety of foodstuff that they had long been accustomed to.

The native workers enjoyed the watermelons as much as our men did, and as they had not been familiar with this American fruit prior to the war, I demonstrated to them how to save the seeds and replant them. To this day I keep wondering if my watermelons are still being grown on that faraway island of Kolombangara in the South Pacific.