Former South Pacific Heavyweight Boxing Champion title holder Luke Veikoso claimed he and five other Tongan men stranded on ‘Ata island 60 years ago discovered about more than 60 skulls of what appeared to be remains of human adults and children.
Veikoso was one of a group of six Tongan schoolboys marooned on ‘Ata in 1965 when a plan to sail for Fiji went wrong.
He believed these people were Tongans who had been killed and their bodies scattered around the ground.
As Kaniva News reported last month, their story was recently rediscovered by Dutch author Rutger Bregman, who told the Guardian newspaper it proved people in extreme conditions could work together and co-operate to survive.
Veikoso also claimed they saw and heard voices of what appeared to be supernatural beings.
He said they heard an electric band performing various kinds of excellent music, but they could not identify what language was being sung.
He said the arrangement of the instruments were marvelous and was extremely loud.
Veikoso said the incident occurred one evening while the castaways were praying.
He said before they appeared he felt terrified.
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He said that evening he told the other boys he was feeling uneasy and apprehensive. One of the other boys, Sione, said he felt the same.
Veikoso said they used to sit around a fire made from three casuarina branches. That evening, instead of burning, the branches only gave off smoke.
He said Sione told them to pray and this time the fire was glowing before they saw what appeared to be a human form with four glowing eyes dressed in white clothing.
Veikoso claimed another boy, Tevita, yelled out that it was a devil.
Veikoso said he took one of the casuarina branches and chased after what they saw and threw the branch at it before it disappeared.
He said at the same time their chickens fell out of the trees.
Veikoso, who now lives in Hawai’i told a livestreamed interview on Facebook recently that they re-buried the skulls and the human remains they found.
“The teeth were so beautiful and were still intact,” he said in Tongan.
“it looked like these people were murdered.”
When he was asked by the livestream host about the ethnicity of these people Veikoso replied he believed they were Tongans.
“Adults and children according to the sizes of the skulls,” he said
Boxing Careers / Hollywood Film Deals
Veikoso was born in 1947 and grew up in Ha’afeva in Ha’apai before he moved to Houma, Tongatapu where he was married.
It was in Houma that he began his boxing career.
He was a heavy weight boxer who reached the peak of his career when he won the South Seas Heavyweight title in 1976.
Acording to the Fiji Sun, Veikoso continued boxing in 1980s and in 1982 he lost his South Seas heavyweight champion title to Fijian Samuela Naliva.
He was one of the seven Tongans named in the National Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.
Meanwhile, the Hollywood studio behind 12 Years a Slave and The Revenant has won the battle for the film rights to the story of the Tongan castaways.
Veikoso came out with his revelation two weeks ago after Kaniva News, the regional and international news media ran stories on Bregman’s version of their story.
The main points
- Former South Pacific Heavyweight Boxing Champion title holder Luke Veikoso claimed he and five other Tongans men stranded on ‘Ata island 60 years ago discovered about 70 skulls of what appeared to be remains of human adults and children.
- Veikoso was one of a group of six Tongan schoolboys marooned on ‘Ata in 1965 when a plan to sail for Fiji went wrong.
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