Memories of War: Micronesians in the Pacific War

Chapter 1. “Micronesia”

9 Chapter 1 “MICRONESIA” The attempt to portray Micronesian cultural memories of the war is a more ambitious task than it may at first seem. Micronesia—which includes the Marshall, Caroline, Marianas, and Kiribati islands and Nauru—is a vast area of the world and one that embraces much geographic, cultural, linguistic, and historical complexity.1 “MICRONESIA” “Micronesia” is a Western label given to the area; it means “little islands.” While generally smaller than those elsewhere in the Pacific, the more than two thousand islands in this area range from tiny sand spits covered at high tide to Guam’s relatively large land area of 225 square miles; they extend over an area larger than that of the continental United States. The islands differ in composition and resources as well as size. The western islands of the Marianas, Palau, and Yap are continental in origin; those to the east are volcanic, either high mountainous peaks (including those in Chuuk Lagoon, Pohnpei, and Kosrae) or low coral atolls (including those found in Outer Island Chuuk, Outer Island Pohnpei, the Marshalls, Nauru, and Kiribati). Different island sizes and types, along with climatic and other factors, set variable conditions for productivity, population sizes, and sociopolitical complexity. Peoples in this region speak more than twelve indigenous languages. Micronesian languages and cultures are historically related, descending from Austronesian speakers who voyaged from maritime Southeast Asia beginning almost five thousand years ago to settle the Pacific Islands. Yet the differences 10 chapter 1 are great: the archaeology of western Micronesia reveals some of the earliest Austronesian settlements in the Pacific, while the rest of Micronesia reveals some of the latest Austronesian settlements. In addition, the region contains two Polynesian outliers (Kapingamarangi and Nukuoro). Adding further complexity, peoples of Micronesia were great seafarers, and the islands saw repeated interisland contact, population movement, and political realignment throughout prehistory.2 The islands also differ in their experiences during several centuries of European and Asian contact. The first European landfall in the Pacific was that of Ferdinand Magellan on Guam in 1521, and for more than two centuries Guam served as a port for the Spanish galleons sailing between the Philippines and Mexico or Peru. The Spanish galleon route led to Spanish sightings and occasionally visits to other islands. However, the rest of Micronesia experienced little European contact until the nineteenth century, when proximity to whaling grounds and to the route of the China trade spurred the development of several important ports of call. These served primarily for reprovisioning ships in transit, but a small trade in such Micronesian produce as copra, bêche-de-mer, and tortoiseshell also developed. The establishment of these new sea-lanes and trade centers was quickly followed by new missionMicronesia “micronesia” 11 ary activities, mostly by American Protestants, who dominated eastern Micronesia , and Spanish Catholics, who dominated the western islands. Whaling, trading, and missionary activity gave most of Micronesia some familiarity with European and (in the west) Japanese foreigners.3 Although Guam and the other Mariana Islands were the first European colony in the Pacific Islands, formally claimed by Spain in 1565, the rest of Micronesia was colonized much later in the Age of Empire. Near the end of the nineteenth century, the region underwent a sequence of shifts in colonial control. In 1885, Germany, whose citizens had decades earlier established trading companies in Micronesia, sent warships to claim the Marshall and Caroline islands. Spain disputed German rights to the Carolines and prevailed through papal arbitration. Pohnpei served as Spanish colonial headquarters in the Eastern Carolines, and Yap played that role in the Western Carolines, with Spanish Catholic missionaries now found throughout these islands. Germany remained in the Marshalls, continuing to develop those islands for economic production, especially the burgeoning copra trade, and allowing American Protestant missionary activities. When Spain lost its Pacific colonies at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1899, Germany extended its program for economic development to the Carolines and the Northern Marianas. The United States, which had earlier maintained a relatively minor presence with Protestant missionaries, whalers, and traders throughout the region, now claimed Guam, close to its colony in the Philippines, primarily for strategic reasons.4 Fifteen years later, at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Japan occupied Germany’s Micronesian colonies with little resistance, an act sanctioned at the 1920 Paris Peace Conference when the League...