Kennedy Island
— — the island the lieutenant swam to.
Not only on a wall.
“A small uninhabited island in the Solomons' Western Province, ringed by coconut palms and a thin white reef. On the night of 2 August 1943, the patrol boat PT-109 was cut in two by a Japanese destroyer in the Blackett Strait, and Lieutenant John F. Kennedy towed an injured crewman by his teeth across more than five kilometres of open water to reach this shore. The locals later called it Kasolo. The reef is still here. The water is still that colour. from the studio
Kennedy Island, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Kennedy Island, known locally as Kasolo and historically as Plum Pudding Island, is a small uninhabited coral cay in the Solomon Islands' Western Province. It lies in the Blackett Strait off the southwest coast of Gizo Island, roughly five kilometres from the modern provincial capital of Gizo town. The island is little more than a sand-and-coral hump ringed by coconut palms, perhaps 100 metres across at its widest. It sits within the New Georgia Group, the cluster of volcanic and reef islands that saw some of the heaviest naval fighting of the Pacific War in 1943.
On the night of 1 to 2 August 1943, the United States Navy patrol torpedo boat PT-109, commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, was rammed and cut in two by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri while running a patrol in the Blackett Strait. Two crewmen died; eleven survived. Kennedy, the future president, swam roughly 5.6 kilometres to this island towing the badly burned engineer Patrick McMahon by the strap of his life jacket clenched in his teeth. They were rescued six days later after Solomon Islander scouts Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana carried a message carved on a coconut shell to an Allied coastwatcher.
The island is reached by a roughly 20-minute outboard banana-boat ride from Gizo town, the provincial capital and main port of the Western Province. Most visitors come on a half-day trip arranged through the Gizo Hotel or one of the dive operators; there is no jetty, no shop, and no fresh water on the island itself. Gizo is served by Nusatupe Airport on the small reef island opposite the town, with daily Solomon Airlines flights of about 90 minutes from Honiara, the national capital on Guadalcanal.