Castaways Spell HELP on Beach: Get Rescued

Three fishermen who were stranded on an uninhabited South Pacific island for more than a week were rescued by the Navy and the Coast Guard after they used palm fronds to write “HELP” on the white-sand beach.

The men subsisted by eating coconut meat. They had some fresh water from a well.

On Easter Sunday, the three, all experienced fishermen in their 40s, left their homes on Polowat Atoll in Micronesia to fish off Pikelot Atoll, about 100 nm away on a 20-foot open skiff. As they neared Pikelot, the boat swamped in heavy weather. The outboard quit but they managed to reach shore. The battery on their VHF radio died before they could use it.

Six days later, a niece of the three called the nearest search-and-rescue center, operated by the U.S. Navy, on Guam, saying her uncles were missing. The Navy dispatched a recon jet from Okinawa. It spotted the HELP sign on the beach and dropped survival packs to the three men.

The next day a Coast Guard plane from Hawaii dropped radios to the men. They said they were in good shape but wanted to be rescued. A day later the Coast Guard cutter Oliver Henry reached Pikelot and sent a small boat ashore to complete the rescue.

But then came a surprise, when one of the first men to land on the beach, Petty Officer 2^nd Class Eugene Halishlius, realized he was related to the castaways. Halishlius is from Micronesia and was able to speak to the men in their language. It turned out that he was the third cousin to one of them and a fourth cousin to the other two.

The Oliver Henry picked up the three fishermen and delivered them back home, safe and sound, to Polowat.

Micronesia is made up of more than 600 islands, many of them very small and remote. For its part, Pikelot is just 31 acres in size.