Michael Ratigan

SOS Kwajalein Lagoon Michael Ratigan

The setting for this story takes place at Kwajalein Atoll, located in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, 2200 miles SW of Hawaii. The inspiration for this endeavor comes from an allegation by the U. S. intelligence community that a Soviet submarine penetrated this top-secret U. S. ballistic-missile test range located at Kwajalein Atoll in 1987. It is alleged that the submarine was in Kwajalein local waters for the purpose of trying to recover (i.e., steal) a U. S. top-secret warhead data package that had been targeted into the Kwajalein lagoon test area from a launch site at Vandenburg Air Force Base, California. The local Army Command, at the time of the alleged sighting, refused to acknowledge that a Soviet submarine was sighted off of Kwajalein. In spite of their refusal to acknowledge the sighting, a report about a Soviet submarine spying off the waters of Kwajalein was aired on national TV. The main characters in the story are two teenage boys living on the Kwajalein Atoll. They are the heroes in the story. One is Sean O'Rourke, an expatriate American living with his mother and father, a scientist working for the U. S. Government, and the other is Russell Benje, a Marshallese native living on the island of Enubj (Kwajalein Atoll), with his parents. The story is about their adventures in preventing the theft of a data package by Soviet commandoes. Kwajalein island, the main island in the atoll, is three miles long, five feet above sea level, a quarter mile wide and in the shape of a boomerang. The principle mode of transportation on the islands is by bicycle, with a few motor vehicles primarily used for official business. For about eight months of the year, the island lies under the easterly trade winds which helps to cool the island from the intense sunrays; the remainder of the year the monsoonal winds bring the much-needed rains which help to replenish the island's water supply. I drew upon my own personal experiences to help develop the setting and background information for the novel. I am confident that this lends realism to my novel, in that I lived on the island of Kwajalein for 12 years. Such personal experiences include: certification as an open water SCUBA diver at the age of 9; sailing on my parents' boat throughout the Marshall Islands while on holidays and extended weekends; working as an ordinary seaman on a local 4,000 HP tug during summers; and spending several weeks each year living with Marshallese friends on the other islands of the Kwajalein Atoll. It was during my extended stays with my Marshallese friends that I learned much about the Marshallese culture and its traditions such as sailing outrigger canoes, and learning about the ancient method of navigating by observing ocean waves and swells.