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NAN’YO: The rise and fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885 1945, by Mark R Peattie. Pacific Islands Mono graph Series, 4. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988. xxii + 382 pp, maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95.

Reviewed by James Brooks MARK Peattie’s Nan’yo is particu larly specialised, being devoted exclusively to Japan’s involve ment in Miocronesia during a 60-year span that ended in 1945.

It is obvious from page 1 that Peattie, director of East Asian Studies program me at the University of Messachusetts, Boston, has exhaustively researched his topic. More than 250 published sources in Japanese and English are included in his bibliography and his notes indicate he conducted many interviews during visits to the islands.

In his acknowledgment he gives signi ficant credit to Professor Dirk A Ballen dorf, of the Micronesian Area Research Centre (MARC) at the University of Guam, and the Rev Francis Hezel, S.J., of Xavier High School, Truk. Both are renowned for their own contributions to the extraction and preservation of histor

ically significant material concerning

Micronesia.

For manay readers it will probably come as a surprise to learn that the Japanese interest in Micronesia was vir tually non-existent until the last quarter of the 19th century. It pays to remind oneself, however, that the Japanese re mained in virtual isolation from the rest of the world until Commodore Matthew Perry blasted his way into their con

sciousness with his gunboat in 1853; and it was not until the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of the Meiji dynasty in 1868 that the Japanese began to look hesitantly outward.

Through 1914 Japanese involvement in the Nan’yo the Japanese word for South Seas and which was sometimes used by them to mean Micronesia speci fically was based on private economic endeavour. Although the setbacks the

early entrepreneurs experienced were

many, including restrictions imposed by

the Germans who had taken possession of the islands from the Spanish in 1898, the Japanese were tenacious and estab lished a toehold that helped register the strategic importance of the islands with the home government.

Foremost among the early economic explorers was one Mori Koben, a Japanese who settled in Truk in 1891 and remained there until his death in 1945. Through an alliance forged with the Trukese chief Manuppis in a battle against another clan, Mori became

powerful and respected. His marriage to

the daughter of Manuppis resulted in the birth of 12 children, many of whose descendants still reside in Truk.

With the outbreak of World War I the

Japanese, ostensibly honouring a treaty

commitment to the British, invaded the Northern Marianas, Truk, The Mar shalls, Kusaie, Yap and Palau. The League of Nations refilled the occupa tion in 1919 when the islands were placed in Japan’s custody as a “class C mandate”. What had been merely an economic opportunity for private inves tors had ripened into territorial expan sion for natural purposes.

Peattie explained in detail the close alliance that existed between the govern ment bureaucrats that were sent to over see the islands and the business interests that were often granted monopolies.

Classic examples were the Nan’yo Boeki

Kabushikigaisha (South Seas Trading

Co) and the Nan’yo Kohatsu Kaisha

(South Seas Development Co). The for

mer dominated shipping during

Japanese times and the latter, founded by Matsue Haruji, who had been edu cated at Louisiana State University, de veloped a rich sugar industry on Saipan and Tinian. His statue as “the Sugar

King” still stands on Saipan today.

An important point Peattie makes is that the Japanese intended to gradually absorb the islands into their nation. This was to be done by excluding other coun tries from trading in the islands and by

systematically settling them with large

numbers of immigrants. Byt 1938 there were 45,000 Japanese in Saipan and 15,000 in Palau, compared to indigenous populations respectively of 4000 and 6000.

That this flood tide of immigration had a genocidal effect on the native population bothered few Japanese. Peat tie notes that even within their own ranks the Japanese had no qualms about

discriminating. The racial hierarchy they

recognised has main island Japanese at the top, followed by Okinawans and Ko reans, from whose ranks came the labourers for agriculture, fishing and mining (the latter of phosphate on Angaur), then Chamorros and finally all other Micronesians. The author noted: “Discrimination took place not only in terms of education, employment and official policy, but also in terms of in

sensitive treatment by ordinary

Japanese.”

In the several years before World War II commenced, Micronesians from all of the islands were impressed to work as virtual coolies military construction pro jects on lands seized from native owners without compensation of any kind.

Nearly a quarter of the book is de voted to Japan’s militarisation and Amer ica’s conquest of Micronesia. Unfortu nately, at least from a Pacific islander’s viewpoint, the impact of the battles on the peoples of Micronesia seems not to have enjoyed the same intensive research as other phases of Peattie’s study. This is likely because the book’s focus is on Japan and its people in Micronesia, not the impact that Japan had on Microne sians.

The perpetuation of big nation indif ference to Micronesians is emphasised in Peattie’s epilogue. It recounts the fact that thousands of Okinawans captured on Saipan were offered the opportunity to settle on Tinian. They were stranded, the author notes, because the United States “had taken over so much of their homes for use as military facilities”.

Although the Okinawans initially were interested, they abandoned Tinian at the end of 1946. One can only wonder if they had not if there would be a Com monwealth of the Northern Marianas to day. D