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The same man who passionately states that "War is hell, really hell, when you’re in it," bears no ill will against the men who held him prisoner in the South Pacific for 3 ½ years during World War II. Fr. George Lepping, S.M. served as a missionary in the Solomon Islands for 51 years before retiring to the Marist Center in Washington, DC.

The Pacific Island missions of Melanesia were entrusted to the Marist Order by the Vatican in 1836. Fr. George Lepping, ordained by the Order in 1938, was immediately assigned to St. Teresa’s, a mission of 500 in Buka, Bougainville. His second assignment in the Shortland Islands ended when he was arrested by the Japanese. He spent most of WWII in a Rabaul prison camp, where, unbeknownst to the Allied bombing strategists, some 500 missionaries were hunkered during the relentless bombing raids conducted from Nissan Island. The Japanese had burrowed a warren of tunnels through Rabaul, and the religious found daytime refuge in them for 2 ½ years. Many of his comrades were killed and he was facing death himself when they were liberated at the end of the war.

In 1976, he arrived on Nissan to spend 13 years as Parish priest. By then, there was nothing left of the military except the strip which accommodated a fair size aircraft. He mentioned something that had been turned on its side and used for an aerodrome. He did not mention the abandoned ammunition strewn about that claimed so many limbs, according to later accounts.

Father Lepping liked the islanders. They were good workers, good students, good religious. The Marists had the two missions - Sigon and Tongol. The East Point Chapel was just a place where the Tongol priest would travel up to say Mass. The school was about a mile south of the airstrip. There are now native priests in the area.

He is not aware of the Australian plantation managers mistreating the islanders as the British had. The mission took over running the plantations after the war and gradually turned them over to the natives. Fr. Lepping ("a bit of a socialist") helped them establish stores and negotiate with ships for sale of products. Copra was the main main export both before and after the war. That is what the dryers on the map are for. The coconut is dried in its skin in huge dryers for processing into soap, etc. Lever Brothers is traditionally one of the main purchasers.

The CBs loused up the topsoil a bit. Pigs and fish also products. Father Tim Sugrue never lived on Nissan, but he visited as fundraiser for the Solomon missions. He traveled about the islands and is very knowledgable about the complex social and political issues of Melanesia. Fr. Lepping was on Shortland when he was captured and taken to Rabaul where he was held with some 400 religious. They were to have been taken to Japan. However the Allied strategy of isolating and debilitating Rabaul made travel impossible. Of course it also led to numerous privations as supplies were cut off. ( From the newsletter)

During his second posting, in the Shortland Islands, he was taken prisoner by the Japanese on April 30, 1942. For five months, Fr. Lepping and fellow Marist Fr. Maurice Boch were under house arrest. They were then shipped to Japanese headquarters in Poperang and questioned before being moved 200 miles away, to a prison camp in Rabaul, New Britain. Conditions were poor and the priests were not allowed to celebrate Mass. While he was there, a group of six American and Australian prisoners were taken away, ostensibly to build an airstrip. Fr. Lepping says, "The Japanese killed them instead and said to me, ‘You go tomorrow.’" That night, American B-17s bombed the camp, wounding the guard who made the threat.

His replacement didn’t know that Fr. Lepping was marked. Fr. Lepping says that the Marist Sisters who were in the camp were well-treated after a group of Japanese women entertainers were stranded at the camp and insisted that the conditions be improved. The prisoners were transferred after six months. "We were taken away in a truck and thought we were going to be killed," says Fr. Lepping. Instead, they were brought to Kokopo, where a large Sacred Heart Mission had been converted into a prison camp.

Some 400 religious, 50 orphans and 25 seminarians lived at the camp. Fr. Lepping taught English and Christian Doctrine at the seminary and the priests were able to quietly celebrate a total of 30 Masses a day. "The Brothers were clever," says Fr. Lepping, "They had buried sacramental wine in several spots around the grounds, so we never ran out." The Mission was bombed daily, says Fr. Lepping, so the prisoners lived in dugout caves. Life was tolerable, though. Fr. Lepping describes theatrical productions and the potent cognac one Brother distilled from bananas. "We were allowed to go to the cemetery at the mission in the evening and there was a grotto en route," he says. "I always felt that the Blessed Mother was watching over us."

The natural serenity of the Solomon Islands was shattered during World War II. At one point, American destroyers fired phosphorescent shells that reminded Fr. Lepping of movies he had seen. He says that the Japanese marked all the unexploded shells, but no one wanted to move them to a safe spot. Fr. Lepping and the seminarians he mobilized carted the shells to a ravine, which was later bombed by American B-25s.

The prisoners were sent into the jungle, where they lived in six interconnecting tunnels for 18 months. Fr. Lepping had liberated a mattress from his captors and he carved himself a pair of wooden shoes after "everything else fell apart." He and his colleagues ate mostly boiled cassava roots and the tempo of their days was dictated by the Allied bombing runs. "We came out in the afternoons, when the pilots went back for their meal."

As the war drew to an end, the Japanese planned to detonate explosives to seal the prisoners into the tunnels. The date had been set for August 22. Fortunately, the war was over by then and Fr. Lepping’s group was freed by the Australians.

After the war, Fr. Lepping volunteered to work in Occupied Japan, but he returned instead to Bougainville, where he served in local parishes until his retirement at the end of 1989. In retirement at Marist Center, he remains active, writing about his earlier years and helping with repair work.

American B-25 bombers made daily runs over the Mission where Fr. Lepping was held captive

On August 7, 1942, Capt. Harl Pease’s B-17 Flying Fortress failed to return from a tumultuous battle over New Britain Island. For years it was suspected that Captain Pease and his crew perished with their aircraft. In the mid 1980’s, it was discovered by John Mitchell, while visiting the Air Museum in Papua, New Guinea, that two Air Force officers had been shot down on August 7^th and taken prisoner on the island of New Britain near Rabaul.

The final piece of the puzzle was provided by a Catholic priest, Father George Lepping, who was interned at a Japanese prison camp near Rabaul in September, 1942. He found Captain Pease there along with three other American fliers. Everyone respected him, Father Lepping stated, including some of the Japanese guards. Captain Pease was a natural born leader without trying to be one. The Japanese looked up to Captain Pease because they were in awe of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and to have the captain of a "Boeing" as the Japanese called them. The younger Japanese guards would ask Captain Harl Pease in broken English as "You, you ah, Captain Boeing?", and Harl would stand straight and say, "Me, me Captain Boeing."