Memories of War: Micronesians in the Pacific War

Preface

PREFACE We are very grateful to the Micronesians who granted us interviews duringouroralhistoryprojectin1990–1991,whichwasfundedbytheNational Endowment for the Humanities. Neither our earlier book, The Typhoon of War, nor this one could have been written without their help. Those participants who wished to be named are listed in the Appendix. In direct quotations in this text, we have identified most speakers by name. In a few cases, however, we have masked the identities of contributors to protect their privacy. Numerous others participated in the research, analysis, and writing of this work. Suzanne Falgout gathered accounts in Pohnpei and Kosrae; Lin Poyer in Chuuk and Yap; and Laurence M. Carucci throughout the Marshall Islands. In each area, the authors worked with Micronesian research assistants (also listed in the Appendix). Furthermore, the assistance of local Historic Preservation Officers in each area (also listed) was an invaluable aid to our success. They guided us to people known as particularly good raconteurs or who had interesting stories to tell. We are indebted to our two historical consultants, Dr. David Purcell and Fr. Francis X. Hezel, and to James West Turner for insights on cultural memory. We also thank University of Hawai‘i-West O‘ahu students Tara Moorman, for assistance in selecting interview material, and Kari Lynn Harumi Nishioka and Jennifer Hackforth, for assistance in selecting photographs. We also thank those at University of Hawai‘i Press, especially Masako Ikeda who, along with two anonymous readers, offered comments on our manuscript. Masako Ikeda and Yoko Kitami kindly offered assistance translating Japanese terms. We are also indebted to Cheri Dunn and Robert vii viii preface Kelly for their work in the production of this book. All errors, of course, are our own responsibility. For materials from Guam, the Northern Marianas, the Republic of Palau, Kiribati, and Nauru, we depended on existing literature and oral history accounts, especially holdings at the Hamilton Library at the University of Hawai‘i and the Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam. We are thankful to many colleagues who granted us permission to use information on World War II in Micronesia they collected. For some of these materials , we have only limited contextual information. We refer the reader to our colleagues for additional information. We wish to especially acknowledge the excellent work conducted by Wakako Higuchi and Dirk Ballendorf on Palau. We have also greatly benefited from recent work on Micronesian history and the Japanese colonial era—especially the work of Mark Peattie—and from published and unpublished materials at the Micronesian Seminar on Pohnpei , U.S. military archives, anthropologists who have worked in the Micronesian area, and a few interviews with American veterans of the Pacific War. Our access to Japanese perspectives was limited to information published in English. We sincerely hope that more Japanese-speaking researchers will pursue that line of research in the future. We have also benefited from the recent multidisciplinary rethinking about the Pacific War, especially the work of Geoffrey White, Lamont Lindstrom, and others in their examination of Islander perspectives on the war in Melanesia as revealed through oral histories. Funding for the field collection of oral histories was provided by National EndowmentfortheHumanitiesGrantRO-22103-90,“WorldWarIIinMicronesia : Islander Recollections and Representations.” The East-West Center provided an opportunity for us to meet following our fieldwork. Additional funding for Poyer’s travel to archives and research support was provided by the Taft Memorial Fund of the University of Cincinnati. We dedicate this book to all those who helped us in our work, and offer it as a memorial to all Micronesians who suffered through the “typhoon of war” in Micronesia. ...