At Tarawa last week TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod came upon a story oj incredible human endurance, the saga of a Gilbert Islands native who sailed 2,000 miles across the lonesome stretches of the South Pacific in a canoe. Nabetari's feat, unequaled in the lore of oceanic survival, has been officially confirmed. The story that follows is a simple English version prepared for translation into Gilbertese, which has only a 400-word vocabulary:
In April; 1944, there was very little food left on Banaba (Ocean Island). The Japanese made the natives work hard, and did not give them enough food or money. So...