The Typhoon of War: Micronesian Experiences of the Pacific War

PREFACE

OUR GREATEST resource has been the interviews granted to us by the participants in our oral history collection project of 1990–1991, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (those who wished their names known are listed in Appendix A). It is obvious that this book could not have been written without their help. What is less obvious from the written word is the passion , generosity, warmth, nostalgia, and commitment to remembering history that characterized their interaction with us. In using interview material in the text, we have identified speakers by name only where we used more than a phrase of direct quotation. In a few cases, we have masked identities of contributors to protect their privacy. Laurence Carucci gathered accounts in the Marshall Islands; Suzanne Falgout in Pohnpei and Kosrae; Lin Poyer in Chuuk and Yap. In each area, the authors worked with Micronesian assistants, whose names are also listed in Appendix A. The daily work of these assistants and their help with local arrangements made the project possible. The assistance of local historic preservation officers in each area—also listed—was vital to our success. Each of us has our own memories of people who gave special aid and encouragement; we offer them our thanks, and include their names also in Appendix A. Finally , we are indebted to our two historical consultants, Dr. David Purcell and Fr. Francis X. Hezel. At the University of Hawai‘i Press, we thank editor Pamela Kelley and two readers who reviewed and commented on our manuscript. We also thank David Poyer and Joseph Foster for reading and commenting on the manuscript, and Masako Ikeda, Lee Motteler, Dee Spock, Robert Kelly, and PREFACE Lela Goodell for their work in the production of this book. All errors are, of course, our own responsibility. Our coverage of Guam, the Northern Marianas, and the Republic of Palau—where we did not ourselves conduct interviews—depends on existing literature and oral history sources, especially holdings at the Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam (in particular, work by Wakako Higuchi and Dirk Ballendorf) and the Hamilton Library at the University of Hawai‘i. We have greatly benefited from recent work on Micronesian history, especially that of the Japanese colonial era, which we cite throughout this book. Our understanding of the Micronesian war experience has been aided by research into U.S. military archives, published and unpublished writings of anthropologists working in the area, and interviews with American veterans of that time and place. Our thanks go to the historians, archivists, anthropologists , military veterans, colleagues, and student assistants who have made it possible to manage (insofar as we have been able to do so) the vast store of written information available on the war. One caution: our access to Japanese attitudes and intentions toward Micronesians was limited to information published in English. The result may be skewed, especially since all three coauthors are Americans. A large number of elderly Micronesians speak Japanese, and we hope there will be a chance for more Japanese-speaking researchers to pursue the ethnohistory of the Pacific war, as Goh Abe, Wakako Higuchi, and Hisafumi Saito have done. We are fortunate to have begun our work during a period of multidisciplinary reassessment of the Pacific war, as new information and interpretive approaches supplement the standard military, journalistic, and memoir sources. Historians adopting cultural and critical approaches outline the wider context of the conflict in which Islanders were usually powerless participants (e.g., Dower 1986; Iriye 1981; Spector 1985). This widespread rethinking of the war in the Pacific signals an opportune time for anthropological contribution to the scholarly dialogue. In addition to adding to our knowledge of Micronesia during this era, the careful study of Islanders’ oral histories contributes to the comparative framework within which scholars seek to understand the significance of global conflict. Our task has been immeasurably aided by the work of Geoffrey White and Lamont Lindstrom both in exploring the war in Melanesia and in stimulating the ethnohistorical study of the impact of the war throughout the Pacific (White and Lindstrom 1989 [developed from a series XII preface of Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania conferences]; Lindstrom and White 1990; Lindstrom 1996; White et al. 1988; and the 1988 East-West Center Conference, “Cultural Encounters in the Pacific War” [White 1991]). Funding for the field...