Three days ago, I received an email from R.K. (anonymous), of the Manus Island area of Papua New Guinea. (We starting communicating earlier this month.) The nocturnal flying creatures that he described to me–I believe they are ropens–were common and were dangerous to local fishermen previous to the early 1940′s, when their numbers declined. In these northern islands, the creature is called “kor.”

Here is part of R.K.’s account of the Japanese retaliation against the creatures that had attacked them:

” . . . it was the japs [Japanese miliary] on the island who were attacked by the kor.  They [Japanese soldiers] apparently shot several wounding them then followed them to cves [caves] and blew [blew up] the entrances. They called ships fire on the hills and pounded them for several hours.”

R.K. asks an interesting question: “I wonder if there is a record of that somewhere?” Perhaps there is an old Japanese veteran who knows about this or has written about the battle with those creatures. If so, perhaps the word used for those creatures would be “dragons.”

I just received an eyewitness sighting report from somebody in Papua New Guinea. Reports of nocturnal glowing creatures flying near the coast of Manus Island are hardly new; we assume that they are related to the ropen of Umboi Island. Here is part of the recent account:

“I was born and brought up in Manus Island . . . there are lights swooping over fish shoals . . . Two years ago  we took a boat out to investigate and could see the lights soaring over us and heard flapping of wings though we never could make out the actual animal, we observed they did dive into the sea and then erupt out of it with a great flapping sound.”

I am waiting for this eyewitness to answer detailed questions, such as “Did they flash for a few seconds or were they always on?”