Nobles and Knaves

OPINION:

Noble: Eroni “Aaron” Kumana, who saved then-Lt. John F. Kennedy and the rest of his shipwrecked Navy crew during World War II.

Mr. Kumana is finally being honored for his heroic acts, 64 years later. Here’s a bit of back story: The PT-109, a torpedo boat skippered by Mr. Kennedy, was hit by a Japanese destroyer while in the occupied waters of the Solomon Islands. Mr. Kennedy and the surviving crew members swam to a nearby island, where they were discovered by Mr. Kumana and fellow scout Biuku Gasa, who had been sent in canoes by an Australian coastwatcher to search for survivors. Messrs. Kumana and Gasa then paddled 35 miles with a note carved into a coconut by Mr. Kennedy to get a rescue boat.

Mr. Kumana and Mr. Gasa were invited to Mr. Kennedy’s 1961 presidential inauguration, but rumor has it that local authorities felt them to be too improper and sent replacements. Two years later, Mr. Kennedy was assassinated. Thus the heroes were never officially honored. In 2002, National Geographic sent a documentary team to search for the remains of the PT-109. They brought gifts for Mr. Gasa but none for Mr. Kumana, whom they believed to be dead. In fact, he is alive and well, and was recently invited aboard the U.S.S. Peleliu by Navy Secretary David Winter and the ship’s commanding officer, Capt. Ed Rhoades, where he was honored and presented with an American flag.

Although it is several decades overdue, for saving the life of a future president, Eroni “Aaron” Kumana is the Noble of the week.

Knave: Zhang Shaocang, the Chinese power company official on trial for corruption who plagiarized his apology.

This week, the Procuratorial Daily reported that the Communist Party member and high-level official of the state-run energy company Anhui Province Energy Group Co. Ltd. “wept” as he read his apology in front of a courtroom. Later, it was revealed that he had used the same letter as Zhu Fuzhong, another prosecuted former party chief whose apology had been printed two weeks before in none other than the Procuratorial Daily. Mr. Zhang lifted entire sentences from Mr. Zhu and paraphrased others.

The Procuratorial Daily is operated by China’s prosecutions office. It is likely that while Mr. Zhang was in the office during the investigation against him, he read Mr. Zhu’s apology. Or, perhaps he was advised that the court might look favorably upon him if he gave a similar heartfelt apology. In a country where government-sponsored prosecution is rampant, it’s almost difficult to really pinpoint the knave in this scenario — the plagiarizing, bribe-taking Communist Party official or the Communist Party prosecutions official who no doubt told Mr. Zhang to read the apology.

So, here goes. For stealing another man’s apology letter, Zhang Shaocang is the Knave of the week.