HONIARA: Sixty years after a young John F. Kennedy swam for his life in the Solomons, five people undeterred by a new conflict in the Pacific islands will on Sunday recreate the World War II aquatic adventure.

While future US president Kennedy’s perilous swim to save comrades trapped behind enemy lines was hailed as heroic, the reenactment is likely to be an easier affair, despite an ongoing civil war plaguing the Solomons.

“A good portion of the swim will be like snorkelling in clear, blue, warm water, allowing you to experience the most diverse fish life in the South Pacific,” said organizer Danny Kennedy — no relation to JFK.

But following an Australian travel advisory warning off visitors to the Solomons, just one local and four foreign swimmers will be taking to the water.

Danny Kennedy, 19, hopes the event will both help to restore tourist interest in his dive centre in the Solomons island of Gizo, a scenic area dense jungle, high volcanoes, vast lagoons and seas teeming with marine life.

Kennedy insisted tourists had nothing to fear despite last Thursday’s arrival of an Australian-led intervention force which, with soldiers, naval vessels and helicopters, has the appearance of a major military operation.

But the military presence creates an appropriate backdrop to the recreation of John F. Kennedy’s original swim in the aftermath of the bloody World War II Battle of Guadalcanal in which Japan seized the Solomons.

On August 2, 1943, JFK was skippering PT109, a 24-metrehigh-speed patrol boat operating under cover of darkness against Japanese convoys off Gizo.

Without radar, PT109 blundered into the Japanese destroyer Amagari which rammed and sank the American vessel, killing one of its 12-man crew. Clinging to the still-afloat bow of the PT109, the survivors struggled six kilometres to nearby Plum Pudding Island — later renamed Kennedy Island — where the future president towed one of the worst casualties ashore.—AFP