Travel & Tales from the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands
by William H. Stewart
Former Deputy Director Department of Resources & Development,
Director 1973 Population Census, Industrial Economist
Subject Titles
Background (1919 - 1978)
Addressing only a brief time span within the first three-quarters of the Twentieth Century starting around 1919, following the conclusion of World War One, the former German controlled Pacific Islands of the Marshalls; the Eastern Carolines, (Ponape (now Pohnpei, {formerly Senyavin Is.}, Truk (Chuuk) and Kusaie (Kosrae); the Western Carolines (Yap and Palau (Belau) and the Northern Marianas would soon thereafter be administered by Japan as a mandate under the newly created League of Nations.
Japan withdrew from the League in 1935 after it had virtually annexed the islands into the Empire. In 1944, almost two years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the eastern most islands in the Marshalls were assaulted by American forces which quickly moved westward
to the Marianas. United States forces attacked and by-passed many of the islands in the western Pacific until the land assaults in the Marianas and Palau in 1944. The U.S. gained control of these island in 1944 and the construction of bases and airfields began. It was from one such airfield on Tinian that the first nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima by the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay hastening the end of hostilities. After the surrender of Imperial Japan the United States Navy assumed control of the former Japanese Mandated Islands in the western Pacific and in July 1947 the area was recognized as a Trust Territory by the United Nations. The United States Navy became the administrator under a Trusteeship Agreement with the United Nations Organization, the successor to the League of Nations. In 1952, upon signing the treaty of peace in San Francisco, Japan legally gave up all claims in the mandated islands previously assigned by the League of Nations and acknowledged the United Nations Agreement establ
Rishing the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands with the United States as the administering authority. Shortly thereafter, the Central Intelligence Agency established facilities on Saipan for guerrilla warfare training. When these activities ceased, administrative responsibility for the area was transferred to the United States Department of the Interior.
The former C.I.A. administrative buildings on Saipan became the new headquarters for the Government of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. In 1987 the facilities were taken over by the Commonwealth Government then a United States Commonwealth as a result of a negotiated agreement with the U.S.
By the time I arrived in the Trust Territory to assume my duties within the administration of the islands, the scrap metal collectors had collected most of the destroyed or abandon
ed World War II war materiel for shipment and sale to the metal foundries of Asia. Still there was enough remnants of the weapons of war to testify to the conflict. Japanese aircraft which had been shot out of the sky or caught on the airstrips still littered the fields of Yap and Palau. The rusted hulks of Japanese tanks could be seen covered in tropical vines and weeds in the fields of Pohnpei and Palau. In Saipan's lagoon several American tanks in the invasion force were halted on the first day of the invasion in June 1944 and still remained today in water up to their turrets, their rusting and silent guns pointing toward the beach as if still struggling to get ashore. In those days the floor of Saipan's lagoon was littered with the artifacts of war, ship-wrecks, aircraft, rifles, bottles, helmets and ammunition lay just below the surface of the tranquil waters off the islands' western shore once congested with t
he invasion force of the U.S. military.
Years later it was not unusual to learn of a farmer burning his field for planting being killed by a shell which had eluded collection and detonated by the flames set to clear brush.
It was a time when Japanese bone collectors returned to the islands to collect the bones of Japanese soldiers for cremation and honorable burial at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.
The scars of war remain not only in the minds of those caught up in its web of destruction but also on the face of the fields of battle.
The following vignettes provides several human interest situations experienced by the author during his period of residence within the several Pacific island societies -- a period long ago washed away on the waves of time.
First Encounter with the Trust Territory and the Mariana Islands - 1970
The Boeing 707, Trans World Airlines flight #1 enroute around the world landed at Guam International several hours before sunrise for a short fuel stop before proceeding with its military passengers to Vietnam thence to Bangkok and points west as it raced to catch the Sun. Disembarking into the warm, early morning hours that September in 1970 on a rain swept tarmac with humidity so thick, it took my breath away, I waited for the 6:30 flight to Saipan aboard a four engine D C 6. This was my first encounter with an island in the western Pacific. Forty-five minutes after boarding the ancient aircraft for a destination north of Guam, it started its final approach toward a brush lined, unlighted, coral airstrip at Saipan International. When approaching the island for the first time it looms out of the sea like a mirage, a green protruding intruder surrounded by a vast expanse of blue sky and water. During the decent m
y thoughts returned to the strange turn of events that began one evening years before on the shores of North Africa and eventually culminated in my approaching an isolated island in the far reaches of the Pacific that I barely remembered from World War Two newspaper headlines and the evening news broadcasts heard on our Magnavox Radio and the voices of Edward R. Murrow, H.V. Kaltenborn, Fulton Lewis Jr, Gabriel Heatter and others.
Until 1944 the Micronesian islands, sprinkled like tiny jewels across a vast universe of water, were known as the Japanese Mandated Islands. After the war they were considered a strategic trust by the U. S. military and some, such as Saipan was closed off to all but a few "authorized officials", (see "CIA Activities on Saipan" within the listed titles of this series).
A series of buildings were constructed on Capitol Hill around 1953 by the Central Intelligence Agency to house staff responsible for training certain Asian personnel in the black art of covert activities and guerrilla warfare. This activity was undertaken by the top secret U. S. Naval Tactical Training Unit, (NTTU). In 1962 the CIA closed the complex and it became the administrative center for managing the affairs of 2,100 islands of which 100 were inhabited and spread over three million square miles of the Pacific. I believe the NTTU’s departure (for Taiwan ?) was the result of a man (Fred Goerner) who visited Saipan in search of any local person who may have remembered seeing, or hearing, of an American aviatrix rumored to have been picked up by the Japanese and brought to the island after her aborted attempt to fly around the world in 1937.
In his search for information about Amelia Earhart the gentleman stumbled upon the Capitol Hill facility and later mentioned it in a book planned for publication which the authorities tried to censor failing to realize that Amelia Earhart’s husband was George Putnam of the famous Putnam Publishing Company. Curiously, when the book"The Search for Amelia Earhart" was published the secret base was abandoned. However, there is no proof of a connection for the abandonment.
The Northern Marianas was one of six districts throughout Micronesia administered from the headquarters of the Government of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands located on Saipan's Capitol Hill. After the war the islands were administered first by the United States Navy and later by the U.S. Department of Interior for the United Nations. Those were the days when the Cold War was at its height and every two years various members of the United Nation’s Security Council would make inspection tours, always accompanied by a Soviet member to evaluate the American Government's stewardship of the area. I still recall meeting the Russian Ambassador to the U.N. when he visited Saipan and his account of the horrifying experiences during the German siege of Stalingrad. But, I’m getting ahead of the story.
I first became aware of the existence of the islands one evening in a village along the Mediterranean Sea as I sat on the balcony of a jasmine draped Arab villa savoring the beauty of a golden sunset as it bathed the 2,500 year old Roman ruins of Carthage, Tunisia, birth place of Hannibal. I was reading the June 11, 1967 edition of the New Yorker Magazine in which a story appeared about a cluster of islands called the Trust Territory. The story entitled "A Reporter At Large" had been written by E.J. Kahn Jr., and was about the name of a geographic of which I was not acquainted, and now I was about to experience one of the islands for the first time. Kahn was going to change my life forever.
The plane flew low over the air strip and I was told that this maneuver was a safety measure since there was no control tower and a “fly by” was necessary to check the wind direction and scare away any stray dogs or cattle that might have wandered onto the weed infested landing path of World War Two’s air strip situated at the southern tip of Saipan, (now the Koblerville Road).
Those were the days of a four engine, 84 seat DC-6 Continental Air Micronesia aircraft and its single daily flight which flew with an “on-board mechanic” and its own spare parts since the nearest repair facilities were many thousands of miles and days away.
The terminal building -- if a tin shack can be termed as such -- was without glass in the window frames. With its paint peeling and bleached by an unrelenting sun with a hot a
Fnd humid interior, the small wooden structure was a refuge for wandering "boonie" dogs which tolerated the intrusion of arriving and departing passengers whenever the plane finally arrived -- no doubt thinking that what the wind and noise brings it will soon carry away. Then, when all was quiet and the building abandoned, they returned to their lazy, undisturbed slumber.
One particular dog would meet every aircraft arrival, run up the steps when the door was opened and race down the aisle between the feet of deplaning passengers toward the cockpit where the stewardess fed it sandwiches. The dog met every flight. “Pilot’ was a regular fixture at the airport and when the day came when the crew was transferred to Guam they took Pilot with them. I guess he entered Guam without any papers but he did arrive with a full stomach.
. By the late summer of 1970 the islands were almost devoid of the amenities of the last quarter of the twentieth century -- certainly the airport was.
Little did I know when I left the terminal that September morning that I would spend most of the next 30 years of my life on the island.
Renting an automobile for $2.50 a day I started driving on a pot-holed, coral road near Agingan Point and turned right and headed northbound on another road choked with coral dust which appeared to have remained unimproved since the U. S. military left several decades earlier.
Weaving first to the right then to the left of the road to avoid the deep, water filled craters at a speed of about 20 miles a hour, I noticed that there were very few structures along the way, only weeds, uncut brush, thick vines and assorted tropical vegetation. Passing Townhouse Market’s Quonset hut, (later the Payless Market), opposite Carmen’s Safeway Store and continuing north toward Susupe and the 56 room Royal Taga Hotel (where the World Resort now stands), very few vehicles were met on the road, maybe five rusted, second hand pickups. Here the island’s single stop sign was posted at the exit of the Royal Taga Hotel. Passing Joeten’s Shopping Center I later learned that this store, facing Beach Road and shaded by a beautiful flame tree, (which has long since been destroyed to provide a single parking spot), was the social center of the island. It’s strange that I should remember that tree after all these years -- but it was huge and magnificent. It was here also that one made overseas telephone calls from an RCA booth. In those days long distance calls could not be made from one’s residence.
From that point, past the Marianas District Administrator's Office, (near where the Judicial Center is now located), not more than five or six ramshackle structures lined Beach Road between the island government offices and the Microl intersection. Continuing toward Garapan even fewer buildings were in evidence on either side until reaching the Hafa Adai Hotel, the island’s only other hotel which consisted of ten plywood bungalows each slightly larger than a shipping container and the hotel’s small Japanese restaurant. Facing the Hafa Adai on the other side of the road was the future location of M.S. Villagomez store which, years later, would be the location of the beautiful DFS building.
I distinctly remember one event concerning planned travel to Guam to see the newly released film, “The Godfather” , which had been advertised in the Guam Daily News many days in advance. In those days to view a movie on Guam one had to purchase an airline ticket, rent a car, stay overnight in the Cliff Hotel and eat in a restaurant -- all to see a $2 film. I made reservations on Air Mike several weeks in advance to reserve seats and then followed up every few days to reconfirm my reservations on the 84-seat aircraft. Each time I called I was assured that I had indeed, airline seats reserved in my name. When the day arrived after anxiously waiting several weeks to depart, I went to the airfield where, much to my surprise, there must have been 400 people all claiming to have seats reserved on that particular flight to Guam. I approached my friend who was the airline’s station manager as was told that I “couldn’t board as all the seats had been sold.”
In complete astonishment I said, “but you told me several times over the past few weeks that I had confirmed reservations!” He said, “Bill, I knew the day you first called that you couldn’t go because the plane was full -- but think -- I made you so very happy when you thought you were going.”
That’s one reason I have always liked the islands -- they make many days of happiness -- but few of disappointment.
In those early days before there was a tourism industry there were no recreational craft in the lagoon save one, a glass bottom boat operated by Tetsuo, a Palauan. Middle Road was even less developed, another pot holed, two lane, dusty road with hardly a business on either side and even fewer vehicles to encounter. The maximum speed possible was about 20 - 25 mph. At that time the Fire Department had a single red jeep with a garden
Jhose. In recalling those days long ago, I distinctly remember that I never saw people riding bicycles or jogging, saw very few birds, never saw lightening or heard thunder. Why this remains in my memory - I don’t know.
Kobler Field was an unlighted, coral airstrip and one evening there was a serious accident that could not be handled at Doctor Torres Hospital where the college is now situated. The injured person had to be "med-evac'd" to Guam. The problem was it was around 11 PM. and no aircraft could land on the field at night.
The radio station was contacted and an announcement was aired for volunteers to drive their vehicles to the airstrip where they were assembled by the police directing every vehicle to each side of the entire length of the field with their low beam headlights illuminating the landing path for the incoming military aircraft. It all worked like clockwork with the span of an hour. The plane came in and the injured person was flown out to a Guam hospital.
To even think of a tourism based economy in 1970 was an unimaginable dream since the Japanese could only convert yen to its equivalent of $743. A round trip ticket to Guam purchased at the Pan American Airline office, or from Continental Air Micronesia, was $28. Those were the days when there was only one flight a day and one cargo ship a month. The population of Saipan, Tinian and Rota combined was 12,256 including the employees of the Trust Territory Government, the islands’ major employer.
The purchasing power of the dollar at the time would be equal to a little less that 20 cents in 1998. The 2,376 registered vehicle owners, including those of the Trust Territory and district governments, purchased gasoline for 38 cents a gallon; rice was 13 cents per pound; sugar 12 cents and a can of corned beef sold for 75 cents. There were 55 businesses in the Northern Marianas employing 673 people. The total annual government revenue was only $433,334 and the islands’ exports amounted to a measly $254,635. There was no private sector economy worth mentioning, no tourism, no garment factories, only government jobs for the most part.
Watergate had not yet consumed America and it was the year four students were killed at Kent State University. Personal computers, fax machines and the internet were unheard of and slide rules were still widely used. Walter Cronkite’s CBS News was ten days late in reaching Saipan. The world could have ended and we wouldn’t have known it for more than a week from the black and white telecasts originating from WSZE TV, the small television station on Navy Hill that glowed to life about 6 P.M. and went off the air around midnight or earlier to the sound of the National Anthem.
Mail from the U. S. east coast took 10 or 12 days -- some things never change.
Capitol Hill Housing built by the CIA was the best on the island. The single Duty Free Store was housed in the Royal Taga Hotel and was no larger than a row of telephone booths, ten people in the shop made a crowd. The number of island restaurants could be counted on one hand.
I recall running the island’s single stop sign and was ticketed by the police after being read my rights. Appearing in court the next day the judge asked for my plea, “Guilty -- your honor” , I replied.
At the sound of a gavel, he said, “I fine you $3.” Then the judge leaned over the bench and asked in a very compassionate and soft whisper, “Do you have $3?”
I am certain that if I had replied, “No, sir, I only have $2” , the fine would have been reduced to that amount. There was very little money available on Saipan at the time. Nor was there much crime in those days, usually only rocks being reported thrown at someone’s tin roof.
One had to be very careful exploring caves and “boonies” and walking along the beach, as unexploded hand grenades, cartridges and live ordnance of all type was littered about. Several people were killed when their souvenir hunting curiosity got the better of them. It is still dangerous to handle such finds. During my years on Saipan I always became a little nervous when passing a ditch-digging machine along the road thinking it might “chew” into an unexploded 16 inch naval shell and blow me to glory.
At the time one could walk along the beach and find bone fragments of some fallen soldier and, when snorkeling, observe the floor of the lagoon littered with the weapons of war. Japanese “bone collectors” returned frequently to recover the pitiful remains of their fallen comrades for cremation ceremonies at Marpi and honorable burial rites at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.
The islands have had to overcome some tremendous obstacles in their quest for economic growth. There are no known natural resources in the traditional sense other than those of the sea. They were, and still are, located far from major sources of supply and foreign markets. Both raw materials and exported products were subject to high freight rates. Jet aircraft were not that frequent a visitor, and thus had not become a major contributing factor in disjointing one’s concept of time and space in the Pacific cosmos.
In those days the air was filled with invisible air waves transmitting teletype, telex and radio signals from every corner of the world -- but the messages they carried were largely unheard by many of us. People just didn’t seem too interested in the affairs of the world beyond their own island center of the universe. At that time I thought about a particular affliction that seemed to affect some people distorting their perception of reality. The never-ending cycle of the ebb and flow of the tide, always present, never changing in its eternal wash, hour by hour, day after day, month after month can make one feel one is also ageless.
Some of the islanders I have met seem to live mostly in the present. I have not noticed that they dwell on the past or even discuss it at length. Maybe that’s what happens when you inhabit a place that has twelve months of July with the only monotony of the climate broken by raging typhoons that scare the devil out of you.
Thinking back, someone once observed that the Spanish brought Christianity to the islands, the Germans commerce, the Japanese a sense of discipline and the Americans dollars, commercialism and a the concept of democratic government. My own version of the historical account at least of the Northern Marianas is: “the Spanish discovered the islands for the west and sold them to the Germans. The Japanese took them from the Germans. The Americans took them from the Japanese and gave them back to the local people who leased them back to the Japanese.”
Shortly after my arrival on Saipan I recall thinking it curious that some elderly Chamorros and others throughout the former Japanese Mandated Is
lands looked back on the Japanese period with nostalgia. This was somewhat surprising. It may have been related to the desire for formality found in Japanese relationships and the discipline instilled by Japanese society and its sensitivities, both markedly different from the casualness, informality and briskness of the west. I learned the Pacific is the ocean where east meets west -- ancient civilizations with cultural and ancestral stability and with reverence for the past are juxtaposed with the restlessness of the west and its obsession with the future. Perhaps also, it could be that initial opportunities were limited in those distant days there-by simplifying life's choices. Then too, it may be a misplaced perception or remembrance and longing for a bygone time, now remote and as irrecoverable as one's youth. Whatever it was, it still existed in the hearts and minds of many islanders long after the Japanese society was washed away on the waves of time.
Tennyson may have been right when he wrote, "There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young." And now it has happened to me as my thoughts return to the old days of the Trust Territory. It was long ago.
Today the Marianas archipelago, situated in a universe of water, are the farthest stars out in the American galaxy, a political affiliation few could have foreseen.
Some people are just suited for islands -- they like the freshness of early morning sunrises, the tranquility of evening’s flaming sunsets and the cool nights when the stars look
like diamonds on black velvet. A Rachmaninoff moon shredding the mist and piercing the clouds as a full white orb rising over Mount Tapotchau in the late night cool.
The rattle of palms in a tropical breeze and the ever changing hues of the lagoon from emerald green to cobalt blue and everything in between.
I think the empty horizon, visible in all directions at all times clears the mind and lifts the spirit in a comforting manner like no other vista and it all ends each day with a soothing, blazing sunset.
Tropical islands are one of the few places where one can witness God’s paintings.
Some people are just suited for islands -- and I’m one of them.
Saipan Before Becoming A U.S. Commonwealth
The Royal Taga was the first full service hotel and consisted of 56 rooms, a pool and a very good dining room. It was the center of the island’s social life with live music in the lounge featuring a Palauan singer, “ Johnie B.” , who I dubbed the Frank Sinatra of the Pacific. The Taga had the first Duty Free Shop on the island which was slightly larger than a telephone booth placed sideways.
_ For many years Air Micronesia was the only travel link many had with the world beyond the horizon. Two factors are responsible for the association of the far flung islands of the Federated States of Micronesia, (Pohnpei, Kosrae, Chuuk and Yap). Continental Air Micronesia connected them by the contrails of its engines and a billion dollar “pipeline” to the U. S. Treasury. If there is a quid pro quo -- for the latter I have yet to figure it out.
A friend of mine was an “Air Mike” pilot , Larry “Sky” King, as he like to be referred. His idea of a good time was to fly through one of Micronesia’s raging typhoons. He said it “broke the monotony of long flights.” I was once on one of his flights during a storm and swore I would never fly again.
It’s highly recommended for a severe case of constipation.
In those days the air route servicing the Micronesian Islands within the Trust Territory, an area extending from the Marshall Islands to Palau and the Northern Marianas, was to be awarded by the Trust Territory Government to only one of two carriers. At the time Pan Am operated an around- the- world flight with a stop on Guam. It also operated the Trust Territory’s single aircraft. The Trust Territory hierarchy insisted that the air route from Hawaii would be awarded to the airline that agreed to construct hotels in each of the then six island districts of the Trust Territory.
Continental Air Micronesia build the Continental which later became the Hyatt Regency and two small hotels in Palau and Truk (Chuuk). To compete for the route Pan Am constructed the Intercontinental Inn now the Saipan Fiesta Resort and Spa.
Continental Air Micronesia won the route award. The Northern Marianas gained two fine hotels which marked the “take off” of Saipan’s tourism industry along with the Royal Taga. The Hafa Adai Hotel soon followed with a few plywood bungalows each about the size of a 40-foot container. It has since expanded many times and now dominates the Garapan skyline.
For awhile in the early seventies Guam and Saipan were connected to the U.S. by TWA, Pan Am, Braniff and South Pacific Airways (SPIA in the 80’s) and, of course, Continental.
A few of the other Saipan businesses that come to mind -- all long since gone are -- Fireside Restaurant, Bank of America, Pan Am ticket office, RCA, Micro Hut, Chamorro Island Hut and Tetsuo’s Glass Bottom Boat (the only one in the lagoon).
Other businesses that have disappeared include: the Lighthouse Restaurant, Cow Town, Rainbow Dairy, Taipei Revolving Restaurant, Deak Perera, House of Taga Restaurant, Commonwealth Bank of the Northern Marianas, Islander Inn, Ship Ashore, Noa Noa, Rudolpho’s, The Brew House, Diamond Jewelers, Bon Marche (L’Avenue), Daiwa Fishing, Coconut House Restaurant, Wendy’s, Captain’s Lodge, Marinas Trench Hotel, Traveller’s Motel, Tinian’s Lone Star Casino, MOE Divers, several newspapers including the Voice, Star and Review as well as a couple commuter airlines, many construction firms, several travel agents and assorted ground tour operators, Hakubotan and the La Fiesta San Roque Shopping Mall must be added to the list, along with a number of garment firms.
Sheer distance and the time involved in traversing the Pacific astound many visitors the first time they make the trip. The Commonwealth is about as far away from the U. S. west coast as, for example, Washington, D. C. is from Cairo, Egypt. The Marianas archipelago is closer to Moscow than Washington, D. C. At 7,000 miles, the area is the most distant member of the U. S. political family and the United States Capitol - it’s the farthest star out in the American galaxy and its “Pacific lake.”
I happened to accidentally see the Air Mike plane as it was affectionately known years later -- retired and unused - on a dusty coral runway on the island of Exuma in the Bahamas. Its engines long since idle and rusted, worn out by the hundreds of thousands of miles of Pacific use. The Air Mike insignia of a single star with red, white and blue stripes faded by the tropical rays of an Atlantic sun could still be seen.
In terms of ground travel on Saipan in those days Middle Road was a two lane, 15 mile an hour, bone-shattering potholed, obstacle course. One would often see a slow moving, picturesque ox cart with wooden wheels driven by an old gentleman with a straw hat probably going either to or from his farm.
There were no businesses and only a few houses along the stretch of Middle Road from Puerto Rico to Chalan Msgr. Guerrero Road. In fact, all the roads were pot holed except those on Capitol Hill build by the CIA in the fifties, an area which at the time could boast the most a
ttractive homes on the island. No more.
In those days the lagoon was full of fish but there were few boats of any kind. One could drive along Beach Road and see great piles of fish that had been netted by the Carolinians being divided up among family and friends. One doesn't see this any more.
Back then choices were few, life was simple, it you couldn’t get something you improvised - made do with what you had and enjoyed every day. Friends were easily made and most non indigenous folks soon had a surrogate family consisting of locals and expatriates to share holidays and other events which often served to some limited extent as a alternate for families left behind.
What more could anyone ask?
A Few Tales from the Islands
During the days of the Trust Territory administration it became the policy of the administrating authority, the U. S. Department of Interior, to prepare the then six districts of Micronesia for eventual self-government. The 3 million square mile area encompassed the Marshall Islands; the Eastern Carolines, (Pohnpei, Chuuk, {Truk}, and Kosrae); the Western Carolines, (Yap and Palau) and the Northern Marianas. At that time, around 1970, the future political status alternatives for the islanders centered around several choices: maintaining the status quo and remaining a Trust Territory; free association; independence and commonwealth status.
At that time the United States hoped to negotiate with the representatives of each island entity as a cohesive group and keep the islands together as a unit. It was not to be. The representatives from the Northern Marianas had a different agenda and were the first to break away, eventually deciding on a Commonwealth status. During this period and elsewhere in Micronesia there were many human interest encounters of which the following are several.
Island Innocence
One day a police patrol car was driving through a village on Saipan when the officers spotted what appeared to be several marijuana plants growing in coffee cans on the front porch of a house. Saipan being a small island where everyone in the village knew everyone else -- the officers knew the house to be the residence of a kindly and very devoutly religious grandmother.
They also knew that plants were grown in coffee cans and other containers for protection against huge plant eating African snails with shells as large as hen's eggs.
The officers approached the house, knocked on the door and the well known and prominent island grandmother answered.
"Good afternoon Mrs. XXX . How are you today?" -- was the courteous greeting.
"Fine, what can I do for you?" she replied.
'Well Mum -- we were driving by and noticed the plants in the coffee cans. "
Totally oblivious to the fact that marijuana was illegal, she replied;
"Yes-- the kids spend so much money on it I thought I would grow it for them."
With much deference, the officers advised her that it was illegal to grow such plants and that she should destroy them -- which she did.
Yap, "Island of Stone Money" Western Caroline Islands
Assignments with the Trust Territory involved work on many of the Pacific islands, one of which was the island of Yap in the Western Carolines. Yap is 541 miles southwest of Guam. It is a curious place in that it has no natural stone and is a hump of red clay rising out of the Pacific. As a result, many years ago the inhabitants developed an unusual interest in stone to the extent that they used it as money. In the late nineteenth century an Irish-American trader by the name of O’Keefe observed that the Yapese could be induced to work producing copra, the dried meat of the coconut which had a ready market in Hong Kong and they would make copra in
exchange for payment in round stone monoliths of varying size and weight which they considered as money.
O’Keefe would sail to the islands of Palau south of Yap where he hired Palauans to quarry great pieces of circular stone slabs with a hole placed in the center, a form of stone donut, through which a pole could be placed thus permitting two men to transport the object much as two people would bear a stretcher. The precious cargo would then be loaded aboard his ship for the return trip to Yap were it would be exchanged for copra. In 1901 O’Keefe was lost in a typhoon.
To this day there is an area near Colonia, a village with a population of about five hundred and the island’s main commercial center, where one can visit the Stone Money Bank. Here both large and small, moss covered wheels of rock line both sides of a tree shaded path. The Yapese know the present owner of each piece and the full history of previous owners. Thi
s ancient monolithic stone money is unique in the world. Each piece has been given the name of the man who quarried it. The money is used for ceremonial purposes at betrothals, marriages, pregnancies, births, deaths, memorial services for the departed and other events. The money is never moved from this location. It is still considered extremely valuable and it is rumored that the local branch of the Bank of Hawaii once accepted stone money as collateral for a loan of U.S. currency, (also considered throughout the world as “hard currency” ).
The Yapese use American currency, but the continued reverence they display toward their traditional money is testimony to the endurance and stability of their culture. Of all the people in Micronesia I found the Yapese to be the most conservative, honest and admirable people.
A Yapese friend once told me that anyone could own pieces of this money but it could never be moved. He said, “But don't worry Bill -- everyone in the village will know it’s your money.”
Had I had the foresight at the time -- today I could be quite wealthy in Yapese money.
Yapese Justice
I first visited Yap for the purpose of meeting our economic development field representative, an individual by the name of Jack (family name withheld), who had lived in the principal village of Colonia for about two years. The total home area population of Colonia was only 525 people. Jack was one of only a handful of Americans on the island and everyone knew him. Crime was practically nonexistent and local law enforcement had very little opportunity to exercise their authority. The social structure of Yap was such that few people ever broke the law.
Shortly after arriving on Yap I asked Jack to stop by the police station so I could obtain the required drinking permit as I wanted a glass of wine with my dinner, one of the few pleasures to enjoy on Yap. I was told that it would not be necessary since I would only be on island a few days. I insisted, “Please Jack, stop by the station.” He replied, “If you want a permit you can use mine,” and reached into his wallet and produced a faded, ragged, piece of paper which he handed to me which I stuffed into my shirt pocket without examination.
After completing our business concerning Yap’s development aspirations I invited him to dinner at the only local hotel where I stayed in one of its ten rooms. There was no printed menu in the dining room as each day the cook would write on a blackboard the food that would be served that evening. If you planned to eat at the hotel you were instructed to advise the cook since only meals sufficient to serve those who registered would be served. It was a “take it or leave it proposition.” I also knew before hand that alcoholic beverages could not be purchased in Yap unless one had a drinking permit obtained from the police at a cost of two dollars and valid for two years.
W That evening as we sat in the dining room with a dozen Japanese tourists and a few Yapese I was positioned with my back to the door. The door opened and I noticed Jack’s mouth drop open in startled amazement as two Yapese police officers approached me from the rear. I immediately looked around and saw two intimidating uniforms which appeared to be modeled after their Chicago counterparts. They wore billed caps with black and white checkered designs, shiny brass buttons, gold braid and badges, whistles and leather breast belts with yellow stripes down the side of each pant leg. The only difference was they were barefoot, and their teeth had been stained black from years of chewing betel nut. Of course, this made them appear even more ferocious.
“May I see your drinking permit, sir,” the first officer said.
With the utmost confidence and self assurance, I reached into my pocket and produced a ragged bit of time worn, water soaked, ink stained paper and handed it to him. Several seconds passed and I noticed he was writing something on his clipboard after which he tore from a pad and handed it to me. It was a citation with Jack’s name on it ordering my court appearance the next day.
“Officer,” I said, “I have a drinking permit.”
As he approached Jack and asked for his permit he looked at me and said,
“Your permit expired six months ago Mr. Jack.”
My friend had let me borrow his expired drinking permit!
“And what is your name?” he asked Jack after determining that he was not in possession of a permit. Jack glanced at me and after several seconds of deliberation said, “ Bill Stewart” and the police officer recorded that name on the ticket, tore it off and handed it to him. I could read Jack’s mind that after the officer left we would simply exchange citations and nobody would ever know the difference. After citing us for drinking a glass of wine illegally the authorities turned and left the room without asking another person for the necessary document. Their work for the evening had apparently been concluded.
I presumed they then felt they had to return to the station to fill out their report of probably what had been the first infraction of a local ordinance that had occurred that day.
The next day Jack and I appeared in court but the judge was nowhere to be found. Jack went to his chambers behind the bench and knocked on the door. The judge stepped out barefooted wearing nothing but a Yapese “thu” , which is only a loin cloth wrapped around the lower waist and extended between the legs at the crotch. When Jack told him we had been ordered to appear in court, the judge removed a black judicial robe from a clothes rack, put it on and took his seat on the bench. With a blow of the gavel which signaled that the court was then in session he commanded us to approach the bench.
“What is the charge?,” he asked.
“Drinking without a permit your honor,” Jack confessed.
“How do you plead?”
“Guilty, your honor.”
As Jack entered our plea he bent over slightly and an object that was affixed to a chain around his neck fell outside his unbuttoned shirt. The Judge’s eyes were immediately transfixed to the object dangling on the neck chain.
“What’s that?,” the Judge asked pointing to the article.
Jack placed his fingers on the object and extended it in front as far as the chain would all
ow so that the judge had a better view and said,
“ It’s a whale’s tooth your honor.”
The judge picked up his gavel and with a single wrap on the bench said,
“I fine you one whale's tooth,” and with that we were dismissed and I prepared to catch the plane out of Yap and return to Saipan.
As I started to check out of the hotel and pay my bill I noticed that no one was around. There was a basket woven from pandanus by the open front door filled with money by people who voluntarily paid for their night’s lodging by dropping the payment in the basket. But there was no stone money in it. Ever since that encounter I have always had a soft spot for Yap.
In 1973 the High Commissioner of the Trust Territory assigned me the task of conducting a census of population of the 100 inhabited islands within the 2,000 islands of Micronesia which were spread over 3 million square miles of the western Pacific. It was an area as large as the United States with a land area about the size of the State of Rhode Island. The approximately 100,000 population consisted of nine different languages and as many distinct cultures for which detailed demographic information was to be collected. It was to be the first accurate census since the Japanese period.
The effort afforded a unique opportunity to travel to islands that few have ever visited and provided the experience of meeting many interesting people and "selected" situations such as those which follow
The island of Yap is located four hundred fifty miles southwest of the United States Territory of Guam and consists of four main islands known as Yap proper. Six hundred miles further east are one hundred thirty four outer islands with a combined dry land area of seven square miles. These islands are populated by people whose origins are largely unknown. “Outer islands” is the term used to denote those that are located beyond the principal island which is usually associated with being the commercial center.
On the principal island one can find many of the amenities of modern life. This, however, is not true of the remote outer islands which are some of the most isolated inhabited places on the entire planet. Islands which have remained virtually unchanged in culture and tradition for centuries. Minute pockets of human activity locked in a time capsule not too unlike that found by the first drift voyagers who washed ashore in the distant past from some unknown origin shrouded in the mists of antiquity.
The people subsist almost entirely on nature’s bounty and may live their entire lives on a speck of dry land surrounded by vast distances within a universe of water.
I recall visiting one extremely distant outer island in the Pacific where most of the people I met had an uncanny resemblance with one another. The result of a small gene pool I surmised.
I later learned that in a population of between three and four hundred people, after six generations or so (one generation representing 25 years) there are only third cousins to marry. The children of couples more closely related than fourth half-cousins are at a higher risk of inheriting a recessive genetic disorder. The risk is determined by computing the average proportion of genes -- the consanguineous (of the same blood or ancestry) a couple shares from a common ancestor. This proportion is the same as the probability that both will have any one of these genes in common -- a value known as the coefficient of kinship.
A child shares half his or her genes with one parent and their coefficient of kinship is one-half with the other half being derived from the other parent. For uncles and nieces the value is one eighth; for first cousins - one-sixteenth; first cousins once removed --one-thirty second; second cousins - one-sixty forth and so on.
If both cosanguineous parents are carriers of a recessive gene, the odds that their child will inherit it from both of them proceed according to the laws of Mendelian inheritance -- the child has a one-in-two chance of inheriting one copy and thus being only a carrier; a one-in-four chance of inheriting both copies and thus expressing the trait; and a one-in-four chance of inheriting neither.
Ocean Navigators Equal to Magellan and Cook
The Western and Eastern Carolinians developed unique sailing and navigational skills which, still today, are utilized by some to carry them vast distances over the open sea without the aid of charts or modern instruments. These brave navigators must be ranked with Magellan, Captain Cook and other Pacific explorers as being among the greatest seamen of all time. The curiosity of man and his desire to explore the stars can be traced to Pacific island navigators and their desire to explore the vast emptiness of their world for minute traces of land and other life. One such individual resides on Saipan - regrettably I have been unable to locate him for permission to use his name.
In any case, he along with several others, sailed from Satawal to Saipan in an open canoe. Satawal is some 270 nautical miles west of Truk and more than 500 miles from Saipan. One of his accounts of the voyage concerned their use of the dried husk of the outer shell of the coconut, that part from which coir fiber is produced to make rope. With a freshly caught fish placed within the contours of the half-shell, the fibrous strands of the material could be set aflame with a match. By holding the embers into the wind in the palm of their hands the seamen would cook their fish, but only when they did not prefer to eat it raw.
For some reason, I asked my friend if he saw anything strange or out of the ordinary during the voyage. I remembered having been told of the mystical experiences of people who had been lost at sea, particularly that of one American individual who would not eat fish, as hungry as he was, because he felt the fish belonged there in their own element and he did not. But that was not the reason for my question.
On clear, moonless nights the heavens over the Pacific are ablaze with stars, millions of tiny specks that look as though they could be brushed aside at the touch of a fingertip. As an amateur astronomer, I had spent many evenings with my wife looking at these sparkling diamonds appearing as though they were spread across black velvet and once saw a light larger than the rest, where no light should be. It streaked across the sky, visible for a full minute. Its apparent speed was too fast for a jet or satellite, nor do I believe it was a meteor. I suppose I asked the question to this brave sea voyager to learn if had seen any stellar phenomenon during his voyage. He stated that he saw an occasional bright light in the sky, but then added, “I saw strange bolts of fire like lightning flashes far below the surface of the sea.”
When queried, he would not hazard a guess at what it might have been and neither could
I, unless it was an underwater volcano erupting or a crack in the earth’s crust releasing molten lava.
I'm certain he was not referring to the phosphorescence produced at night by dinoflagellates (plankton) when the water is disturbed -- we are all familiar with that phenomena - we just can't spell it without a dictionary.
Only a few people from the world beyond these “outer islands” will ever visit these remote specks of land. They are small, largely isolated, self-sufficient worlds -- in and of themselves.
From Fais to Princeton
One of the most interesting Pacific islanders that I met was a gentleman from Yap. I was somewhat surprised when I visited his office to find a wall of books on such subjects as astronomy, chemistry, physics, American democracy and many other subjects usually reserved for university study. I asked how he acquired an interest in such areas of knowledge and he replied that he was a graduate of Princeton University and that his adopted father was a Nobel Prize winner. I was stunned. Under normal circumstance this would not be unusual except that this individual was from the island of Fais one of the outer islands of Yap proper and very remote. I could not resist asking the question,
“How did you manage to get from an isolated island in the Pacific to Princeton?”
He replied, “when I was a small boy two scientists visited our island for the purpose of taking blood specimens for studies they were conducting. They wanted blood samples from a population that was considered to be as pure as possible. For this work the scientist won a Nobel prize. My friend continued:
“As a small boy I would follow them around and climb trees to get fresh coconuts to drink. The couple became attached to me. When their work on the island was completed they asked my parents if they could take me to the United States where they promised they would see that I got an education. They did - and I did.”
According to anthropologists, Yap’s caste system has evolved within a highly stratified society and more than 100 villages ranked in a number of castes. The villages of the low cast are situated inland remote from the coast.
In former times and possibly even today to some extent the relationship between the land owners and the people who have been granted permission to live on their soil is not that of a “landlord - tenant” relationship in the normal sense.
No food grown in a low caste village would be acceptable to those of high caste. These “Milingai,” as they are known, could be summoned for all types of work not undertaken by members of the high caste. There were numerous restrictions on the low caste such as the possession of stone money being limited to small pieces and shell money had to be of inferior quality.
Fishing with a large net in the lagoon was not allowed nor the catching of flying fish on the high seas was permitted. While the more stringent requirements of the relationships between high and low caste have weakened, large fleets of canoes from the outer islands to Yap proper would be made annually with the outer islanders bearing tribute to their overlords. In return they received even larger quantities of food and material. This exchange continues although to a lesser degree.
Yap also has its traditional medicine practiced by a “Machamach,” a magician who has a secret place hidden away among jungle foliage. The wizard can be found in a pathless tangle of creeping vines and moss covered rotting logs. Here he works his magic among a number of conch shells, herbs and his magic wand, “ruch” , made from the barb of the giant sting ray fish. Modern trained doctors and nurses, aware that there is something of value in the medical lore of Yap, have supplanted “magic” with modern medicine. Agriculture is also believed to be a matter of magic and the services of a “Machamach” are often employed to bless the taro patches farmed by women.
There are many interesting people in the islands and they can enrich your life.
Truk (Chuuk), "Love Sticks" - Eastern Caroline Islands I was told that in former times Trukese culture provided quite unique and romantic techniques for courtship. When a young man reached the amorous age and became attracted to a young girl he would carve distinctive patterns of notches on a long slender piece of wood known as a “lovestick” .
During the carving process, he would hope that if she happened to walk by she might glance at the intricate pattern along the edge of the lovestick long enough to be able to recognize it in the dark of night when he pushed it through the thatched wall of her house as her family and relatives slept in their single, small room. In the darkness, after touching the “lover’s wand” , she would shake the carved stick through the thatch and then stealthily creep from the sleeping hut to meet him outside. If his enamored work of art was refused, she would simply thrust the stick back through the thatch. This is the story that circulates among the handicraft carvers who fashion replicas as tourist souvenirs.
The Eastern Carolinians are for the most part gentle people and out of necessity avoid confrontations with each other within the limited confines of their world. A sober person is not likely to engage in unfriendly, provocative acts with one’s neighbor if he must see him every day of his life on a small island. When violence does occur, there are interesting ways of dealing with it.
Erhart Aten, former governor of Truk once told me, "If a youth, by some stroke of misfortune, was responsible for the death of another youth, the stricken family could claim the responsible youngster for their own -- as a surrogate son or daughter"
"Because of the great love Trukese have for children, such an act actually results in bringing the two grief stricken families closer together than might otherwise be the case, thus sharing a common bond of love toward the surviving youngster."
Island Character Traits
A Trukese friend of mine (name intentionally withheld) was born in the fifties of an island woman and an American father he was to never know. During the period of the naval administration of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands of which Truk and the rest of the Eastern Caroline Islands were a part, a naval pharmacist stationed on the island met my friend's mother who at the time was a nurse at the local hospital. By the time my friend was born his father had been transferred to another duty station with the result that my Trukese friend never knew his father.
On the last day of my stay on Truk, my friend came to me and told me what he knew of the navy man as recounted by his mother which was very little. He did not know his sur name, his rank or rating. All he knew was that his name was “Willy.” He asked me if there was some way I might be able to locate his biological father in the United States.
My friend, a college graduate and very successful said, “ I would like to know my father. I don’t want anything from him but I may be able to help him.”
How's that articulated concern from a son whose father had abandon him some thirty-five years earlier and who never made the slightest effort to contact his natural son or his mother?
How's that for commendable island character!
I conducted a rather lengthy research effort among sources with which I was familiar to no avail. I remain impressed, however, in the vast difference in people and their attitudes. Here was evidently a man who cared little about the product of his “affair” in stark contrast with his child who -- by all rights should have been indifferent to a man he never knew -- yet he cared very much and was willing to help his father if ever needed.
For a while I thought my Trukese friend was the loser -- but I know now that it is the other way around.
You Can Lean A Lot by Watching
The use of limited local materials in the islands and their many uses in Pacific cultures is intriguing. Coconuts for example not only provide a refreshing liquid to quench your thirst under a hot tropical sun but they also can serve as a life saving method should a fisherman fall over the side of a canoe in shark infested waters. The islanders learned a long time ago that when fishing, the sharks are looking for the same thing they are -- and sharks aren’t particular whether it is fish or man.
If someone did fall overboard, green coconuts would be tossed into the water around the bobbing head to confuse the beast and entice it to strike the green nut. Once its gaping mount with rows of razor sharp teeth bit into the soft fiber, the monster’s jaws would be locked in the green nut sealed and unable to disgorge the head sized object from its teeth or to swallow it. The shark would be rendered helpless while the canoe was maneuvered into position to quickly recover the man from the water.
Marshall Islands, "Atomic Tests"
While serving as Deputy Director of Resources and Development, I met Maynard Neas at the Trust Territory Headquarters after he had been transferred to Saipan from his position as District Administrator in the Marshall Islands where, in Majuro, he was the equivalent of governor.
The Marshalls consist of 31 atolls and 1,152 islands with a combined dry land area of 70 square miles accommodating a population of about 10,000. The water area totaled 375,000 square miles, about one and one half the size of the state of Texas. The islands are 2,273 miles west of Hawaii and the first island group in the former Trust Territory when traveling from Honolulu. Today they are freely associated with the United States. An atoll in the Marshalls of particular importance to the United States is Kwajalein, site of the U. S. Army intercontinental ballistic missile range. Majuro atoll is the seat of government and the commercial center.
Jaluit is alleged to be the atoll where Amelia Earhart was rumored to have been taken by the Japanese after surviving the loss of her aircraft before reaching her destination of Howland Island. However, there is no concrete proof she was ever on Jaluit.
Maynard recalled the atomic bomb tests of Operation Crossroads at Bikini and in particular the “Able” tests in July, 1946 when a B-29 was to drop an experimental weapon over a fleet of ships anchored within the atoll. He told me that an admiral had visited him before the tests an said, “Mr. Neas I want you to broadcast a radio message to all the people of the Marshalls advising them that they should not look in the direction of Bikini at nine o’clock Monday morning July 1st” .
“Why Sir?” Maynard asked. One does not normally question an order from an admiral but he could ask such a question since he was not in the Navy and also was the responsible civilian official.
“Because we are going to test an atomic bomb and if they look in the direction where it will be detonated the flash will burn their eyeballs out and blind them,” was the reply.
Maynard was dumbstruck.
“Admiral, if I broadcast those instructions everyone in the Marshalls will be out sitting on the beach looking in that direction waiting for the explosion, there is no way to keep them from watching.”
After a long pause the admiral said,
“Well then, we will just have to issue everyone wielding glasses.”
The Bikini tests involved 242 ships; 42,000 men; 156 aircraft and thousands of tons of equipment including 10,000 instruments. When the aircraft dropped the bomb the explosion was equal to 20,000 tons of TNT and created a 43 foot wave hurling 2 million tons of water and part of the lagoon floor a mile into the sky. At the instant of detonation the temperature
reached several million degrees, the fireball had a luminosity ten time that of the sun.
Among the ships destroyed at the test site was the German cruiser Prinz Eugen which years earlier had sortied in the Atlantic with the Battleships Bismark and Scharnhorst. The Japanese Battleship Nagato, former flagship of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, planner and director of the attack on Pearl Harbor, went down. The Battleship Arkansas and the aircraft carrier Saratoga were also sent to the bottom by the blast. The Saratoga from 50 to 180 feet under water is the only aircraft carrier in the world accessible to divers.
One can appreciate the admiral’s concern. I never did learn if anyone was blinded.
Vice Admiral Blandy justified the tests by saying,
“We want ships which are tough, even when threatened by atomic bombs; we want to keep the ships afloat, propellers turning, guns firing; we want to protect the crews so that, if fighting is necessary, they can fight well today and return home unharmed tomorrow. The unequaled importance of the atomic bomb shakes the very foundations of military strategy.”
Senator Mc Mahon of Connecticut said,
“In order to test the destructive power of the atomic bomb against naval vessels, I would like Japanese naval ships taken to sea and an atomic bomb dropped on them. The resulting explosion should prove to us how effective the atomic bomb is when used against giant naval ships. I can think of no better use for these ships.”
Ponape, Eastern Caroline Islands ( Object In Sky)
The Trust Territory Government maintained a steel vault within which a great variety of historical documents and records that had survived the war were being preserved.
During the early seventies in the Trust Territory one of the programs of the government was to take great care with land records which were always carefully guarded in the vault. The government had arranged with a translator in Tokyo to translate Japanese language records and a lady in Bonn to do the same with German records. Both were instructed to translate only that information pertaining to land -- nothing else --and return their work to Saipan.
One day my friend Maynard Neas came into my office and said,
“Bill, look at this document I found in the vault.”
The paper he handed me was a report by the German Governor on Pohnpei (then spelled Ponape) to the home office in Berlin, dated 1899. It discussed the usual business of the colonial government of the German administration and mentioned copra production, foreign vessels that had visited the island and other routine matters. At the end of the translator’s report was the following strange notation. It read,
“I am aware that I am only to translate information relating to land but the following report of the governor to Berlin was so interesting I thought I would translate it as well."
Her translated notation stated,
“In conclusion,” the governor wrote, “ the residents of the island saw a strange sight in the sky. There was a huge, round object that came down out of the sky to tree top level and hovered for awhile. Then just a rapidly as it had appeared -- it shot up at great speed and disappeared. We imagined it must have been a balloon from one of the warring nations.”
There was no war at the time. The Spanish American War had been concluded followed by a bankrupt Spain’s sale of the islands to Germany which were then placed under that nation’s administration on July 18, 1899. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep a copy of the intriguing document describing the strange object seen over Ponape. I leave it to the reader to ponder what it might have been.
Maps and Pacific Discoveries
The map you place before you to transport your mind from one location to a place farther away is one of the oldest and most basic forms of human communication. The idea of drawing a map to convey a sense of relationship between different places evolved long ago and independently among many people in many parts of the globe. The first recognition by Europeans of the Pacific's existence came with the printed world map in 1507 by Martin Waldseemuller only a few years before Magellan set sail on his historic voyage of discovery of Pacific Islands for the West.
People were making crude maps before they developed written language. Indeed, one of the most unique forms of cartography was developed by Pacific islanders. The stick charts of the Marshall Islands were devised entirely without the aid of mathematics. Marshallese stick charts were made of palm strips tied by coconut (coir) fiber with cowrie shells used to represent islands in the Ratak and Ralik chain.
The charts mnemonic (assisting the memory) designs were primarily concerned with relationship of island directions and, to some extent, ocean swell patterns. The charts are known as Rebbilib stick chart.
Antonoio Pigafetta, (1491 - 1534?) , Magellan’s chronicler, made a crude woodcut map in 1522 of three Mariana islands. It was the first map ever produced of the islands but without the coordinates of longitude and latitude. The possibility for calculating longitude could not have been possible at the time of the voyage in 1521 since a crucial discovery by Galileo Galilei, (1564 - 1642), for making this determination was not made until 1583 and indeed still had not been perfected by 1714 when the British Parliament passed an act “For Providing a Publick Reward for the Discovery of Longitude at Sea.”
As it turned out the determination of longitude, (east and west of some fixed point, now Greenwich, England (the “Zero” or Prime Meridian), depended upon a chronometer -- an accurate clock for measuring noon at different locations. The method for determining the other coordinate, latitude, (north and south of the Equator), had long been known as a result of a cross staff, later a sextant. Prior to being able to fix one’s longitude it was, at least, helpful to know what ocean one was in.
Petrus Plancius, (1552-1622), the 16th century Dutch cartographer, depicted Saipan as “Sepan” on a map (circa) 1550 along with Magellan’s original name for the Marianas archipelago, "Las Isles de las Velas Latinas," (The Islands of the Latine Sails), because the triangular shape of the sails used on native canoes were similar to those used on Mediterranean vessels.
In anger over the islanders, presumably from Guam, taking property from his ship, Magellan renamed the islands "Las Islas de los Ladrones," (Islands of the Thieves), a place-name which remained on maps for many years thereafter.
Sharing has always been an attribute of the islanders. “You take what you want in fruit and water and we will take what we want -- fair enough,” they may have thought. So, possibly as a result of a cultural misunderstanding, an unfortunate place name was affixed to maps.
In 1668 their name was changed a third time to “Las Marianas” in honor of Mariana of Austria, widow of Philip IV of Spain. It’s not generally known, but English Captain James Cook, (1728 - 1779), had the same experience with islanders when he encountered the Sandwich Islands, later renamed the Hawaiian Islands.
Fascinated by metal, the indigenous would dive under his ship and pry out the long iron nails from the ship’s bottom and also take his long boats.
One might have expected the Marianas would have been located and visited by a Japanese or Chinese mariner since they are situated almost on the doorstep of Asia. Yet Western recorded history tells us this was not the case. At any rate, I have been interested in many facets of the island's history since my own arrival four hundred and fifty years after Magellan and discovered that the island’s geography has been far more prominent in the affairs of western nations than their size and resources would appear to warrant.
Being a map maker, combined with an interest in economics, history and geography, my fascination with the islands began with the recognition of a curious fact -- a Western navigator and explorer from the opposite side of the planet first discovered the Marianas in the 16th century for the West. Ferdinand Magellan, while in the service of Spain in 1521 located the islands in the vast expanse of the Pacific, at a time so distant from the present that Hernando de Soto had not yet set sail for the New World and what is now Florida.
Mapmakers must strive to maintain the confidence people place naturally in the science of cartography. No other type of graphic presentation allows a textual explanation of area relationships when depicting the geographic proximity of one point of interest with another while imparting an accurate impression of the area to be studied or visited as does a map.
In a somewhat similar way as one tries to interpret a face, cartographers attempt to give a soul to the map of a country or island. People no longer limit themselves to the mere knowledge of an area’s position on the globe and it’s meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude, its boundaries or the location of its mountains or beaches, they also exhibit an interest in the major events in an area’s history and culture which lend themselves quite well to depiction on a map.
As an economist and cartographer I enjoy the diversion of preparing special purpose historical maps. Several of the more unusual cartographic problems that have been evaluated for presentation and publication within the Pacific Ocean area include: the Mystery Surrounding the Disappearance of Amelia Earhart.; Yap - “Island of Stone Money” ; Bikini Atoll - “Nuclear Grave of World War II Warships” ; Pohnpei - and the “Ruins of a Lost Pacific Civilization” and the Dive Map of the Ghost Fleet of the Truk Lagoon locating the World War II sunken shipwrecks of the Japanese Combined Fourth Fleet.
I have tried to recount only a few of the many culturally moving and humorous experiences that occurred over the years since much of the economic assistance in which I was engage does not lend itself to subjects of general interest.
I will be forever grateful for the opportunities that came unexpectedly my way and for the wonderful friendships I have been fortunate enough to have made.
William H. "Bill" Stewart