Honolulu, Hawaii
September 20, 1969
The Marshall Islands are the closest of Micronesia’s six districts to Hawaii and the U. S. Mainland. But a friend suggested I stop there last, saying: “If you see that first it could be a lasting negative impression of the Trust Territory and what the U. S. has done. If you go at the end it will be sobering, but you may like it better.”
Right he was. For here you find some of the saddest impact of United States policy and neglect. Here on lonely islands you also find beauty that is physically unspoiled, yet which raises poignant questions about the people who remain there. And here in the Marshalls you get a final lesson in the dimensions and depth of the Micronesia problem.
A thousand bits of land strung around 34 low-lying coral atolls and islands make up the group which runs in two parallel chains called “Ratak” (Sunrise) and “Ralik” (Sunset) running some 800 miles northeast from near the equator. There are 19,000 Marshallese on only 70 square miles of land scattered across 180,000 miles of ocean. In logistic terms, it is the Trust Territory’s biggest problem.
Coral atolls are one of nature’s great wonders, ancient mountains sunk in the sea leaving only the outer ring of coral that had once grown around the base. From the air, you see a necklace of dark green islands fringed with golden beaches, pounding surf, and bright green water — a band of vibrant color in an irregular oval shape perhaps 25 or more miles long around a sheltered lagoon.
From high above all atolls are beautiful. On the beach it can be something else. It would seem, in fact, that the greatest problems are where the U. S. has intervened most.
There is Ujelang Atoll, 300 miles from anything, where we put the Marshallese we evacuated from the nuclear test site in Eniwetok. There at the far end of an inadequate and infrequent shipping line some 350 people have been living on an island plagued by rats and short of food after typhoons ripped away the topsoil. At one point the people became desperate enough to stage a sit-in on a visiting government supply ship to win attention to their problems. In July the U. S. by way of expiation gave these islanders slightly over $1 million, presumably to be used in a trust fund. Whether that will really meet the emotional as well as material needs is not known.
There is Kwajalein, the largest atoll in the world. Over 60 miles long, it is the focal point of the U. S. Pacific missile test system. Missiles from California and elsewhere splash down in the vast lagoon or are test intercepted by anti-missiles fired from this area. Most of the billions of dollars in facilities are at the ends of the long target lagoon, especially on Kwajalein Island.
The many Marshallese workers are not allowed to live on Kwajalein Island, but instead are ferried back and forth from nearby Ebeye. There, in one of the world’s highest population densities, some 4,000 people live on 76 barren acres. The wages are attractive, but the well-documented ghetto life of these transplanted people continues to appall those of conscience. Says one older American who lives on Ebeye and works with its problems:
“Tragedy is the only word I know for what’s happening. Half of the people are children. They play in what pass for streets by the block housing the army built. But they have no incentive to learn. They grow up sponging off their parents in this phony setup out of their culture. But what happens when they want to get married? Where will they go? What will they do?…. I didn’t think things on Ebeye could get worse, but they do.”
Among Ebeye’s population have been some 1,470 Marshallese transplanted from 15 “Mid-Corridor” islands to the north. These islands are near the missile target area where there is some undetermined chance people could be injured by an errant ICBM. Confrontation may not be in the Micronesian character, but as in Ujelang (and perhaps with some suggestion from Peace Corpsmen as happened in Ujelang) the Mid-Corridor people have staged a protest. Thirty-one took part in a “sail-in” back to their islands in June to underscore demands for more compensation to live on high-cost Ebeye. The result was reportedly cancellation of a missile test at considerable cost and promises their pleas would get a top-level hearing. The protesters returned to Ebeye but another sad Micronesian issue had been dramatized.
Majuro’s Elusive Charm
Majuro, the atoll that is the district center of the Marshalls, is not an issue, although in appearance it is miserable enough in spots to qualify as a tropical slum. Certainly, the image of neglect often overpowers the natural beauty and pleasant human scene.
“You’re lucky to come after the roads have been fixed,” says a Marshallese friend as we bump in from the airport through grey coral mud and ruts worthy of the early American West. It’s all the sadder because the road was once paved but fell apart for lack of care.
An official says: “Air service from Honolulu and shipping direct from San Francisco have broadened our horizons. But there’s still some of that end-of-the-line feeling as far as Saipan headquarters goes.”
Sight seeing on Majuro can be a sobering tour among the Trust Territory’s more unsightly shacks of tin and weathered wood. In one direction, the single main road and the island end in a junk heap of old cars and assorted rubbish. The center of Majuro is known as D-U-D for the initials of its three districts, and some have been unkind enough to say the name is appropriate. Downtown D-U-D is largely a few commercial buildings and a cackling government chicken project. Yet in my stay they managed to have a small traffic jam and parking problem in front of the three-story building that, going up, includes a general store, the hotel, and the local legislature. Top government officials live in a more fashionable area; it has the essentials of electricity and running water long denied some other sections, but in truth the houses would hardly excite the average middle class homebuyer in the U. S.
Out the other way, by the airport, there is a pleasant beach. Some 30 miles and perhaps two hours of bumpy riding further around the narrow atoll is the quiet, more traditional community of Laura.
There is no overlooking the negative physical aspects of Majuro. Yet there is a positive side. Some find an offbeat charm. It might be noted that a well-known San Francisco artist, Bill Mayo, was depressed enough in his first couple of days to book boat passage for another district, but then he began to see beauty and stayed on. As an island shipping and commercial center, Majuro has developed a cosmopolitan island society.
The business scene features an interesting combination of islanders and young Americans such as Jerry Kramer, who with Marshallese partners runs a trading company, and Mike Noland of Honolulu, who is seeking to build a resort hotel. The Marshalls produce more than half of the Trust Territory’s major export, copra, and are home base for several private trading vessels, a rarity in Micronesia. “When you consider this and the money the Ebeye people make on Kwajalein, we may have more private income than all other five districts combined,” says one businessman proudly. Imports on Majuro and Ebeye are also high; among other things, it’s said the two islands manage to consume more beer than any other district, more than 6,000 cases a month.
While some businessmen talk about a “do it ourselves” economic effort, it’s obvious major government help is needed. More seems to be coming. Head Start, community action, and other War on Poverty programs are operating in some hopeful ways.
The Trust Territory government is belatedly putting in some of the needed improvements. The million-gallon capacity of the general water supply is being increased to four million. That may be impressive, but is less so when you consider the U. S. military financed effort on Kwajalein has a reported 15 million gallon capacity for fewer people.
Downtown D-U-D – hotel at right
An Ending On Arno
The government’s well-written Micronesia handbook says of these islands: “Mere etchings of coconut palms and coral, the Marshalls have produced fierce warriors, have survived the ravages of war and the shocks of the atomic age, and still manage to epitomize the ideal of the tranquil island society.”
To find this tranquility, however, it is necessary to get away from the district center. So it was I went to Arno atoll ten miles across the open sea from Majuro.
In the summer season, you can go by outboard, leaving at dawn and shooting the breakers in a narrow pass through the reef. You plow along in a choppy sea with spray flying everywhere, and there is a point when the thin line of Majuro’s palms drops from view and your boat is alone on the ocean. Then the hazy line of Arno floats up on the horizon ahead.
As you approach, there is a shout from one of the two Marshallese boatmen. He sees birds, which means a school of big fish has driven a school of smaller ones to the surface where the birds can catch them. The boat roars off in that direction, now trailing strong nylon hand lines with lures and heavy hooks.
Soon you are plunging through clouds of screaming birds and a sea churning with big fish jumping and flashing silver in the morning sunshine. Unfortunately, they are too big and manage to break several hooks and lines. A smaller one is pulled in, a 20 pound shining blue tuna. As you go on toward the island, three or four clouds of birds are in sight, each chasing a separate school.
At Arno, the boat shoots another shallow pass in the reef, dodging great rocks of coral into a lagoon of clear green water. Edged with atoll islands, the lagoon stretches off over the horizon.
We went to Arno Arno, the island that gives the atoll its name. Crescent shaped, five miles long and a quarter-mile wide in spots, it is good sized as atoll islands go. At first it seemed the island was uninhabited. No one was in sight along miles of dazzling white sand beach or in the shade of the thick palms that stand behind. But as our boat approached, a few people appeared on the beach, among them Jetmar Jetnil, the local judge. We jumped in thigh deep and waded ashore carrying the fish while the boat went down the lagoon.
Arno Arno seems idyllic at first sight, a garden of palm and breadfruit trees with simple thatch and wood houses set back from the quiet lane that runs down the island. People you pass are smiling and healthy looking. It is, in fact, a lovely place, a dream of a coral atoll come true. Yet that is far from all.
For breakfast, Jetmar led us off to the little house occupied by the only outsider on the island, Sister Rose Patrick, a Maryknoll nun over from Majuro for a month. As we sat on mats over the pebbled floor, Sister served coffee, fried the fish, and talked with Jetmar about the island’s problems.
One was a shortage of Western food. There were enough breadfruit and coconuts and the few fish people caught from canoes in the lagoon. But many people of Arno have become accustomed to such things as pancakes for breakfast, canned meat, and coffee. Now the two stores were out of not only such staples as rice and flour but everything except a few packages of menthol cigarettes and bottles of hair oil. Part of the problem is Micronesia’s old transportation hang-up. But there is also a lack of purchasing power. Besides the dwindling copra market, there is a lack of interest and the fact many of the young people go off to live and work at the district center or elsewhere.
Sister Rose Patrick said there were people who didn’t remember how to make salt when the stores ran out. She told of another atoll where the people had been told that if they had serious problems and their radio failed they should stand in a circle when a plane came over. That finally happened, and relief ships were rushed to the area — only to find that the emergency was that the store had run out of cigarettes and sugar.
What emerges is a picture of a people moving between an old culture of simple yet adequate means and costly outside ways they find increasingly attractive. In many atolls, for example, there are no more of the fleet Marshallese sailing canoes that can be used for ocean fishing. People now use outboards but sometimes find it hard to get and pay for the gas.
It was not a busy day. With Jetmar’s son, Boaz, as an English-speaking guide, Mike Noland and I walked around meeting some of the 200 people strung along the island. There was a blind man who makes copra and builds houses … a girl in a red dress who worked at the Lucky Store … the government medic who operates with few supplies and a radio in a 20-year-old shack from navy administration days … a half-blind, wrinkled old woman who is the island chieftess … one of the two policemen who comes by on a bike … a man whose front porch is decorated with a picture of John F. Kennedy and a map of Disneyland … an old couple whose children have moved away and are too weak themselves to climb for coconuts or gather food on the reef …
One learns that toilet facilities are either the bush where pigs root or the ocean beach which flushes itself at high tide.
At midday we stop by a house with a radio, listen to the short-wave news, and doze awhile in the heat. Later we wander down by the beach and Jetmar’s family sends out drinking coconuts and plates of fried fish and breadfruit. As usual flies descend and cover everything. But it is delicious. I dive in the lagoon and spend an hour with mask and snorkel fascinated by the fish and coral.
An Arno Album
Boaz at the beach
Arno’s main lane
Women singing farewell
Sister, friend and their house
Medical aide at dispensary
A Personal Farewell
So the day goes. At late afternoon Sister, Jetmar, and others sit on logs by the beach with us and talk. Boaz uses his big knife to show me the various kinds of coconuts — the young green ones where you drink the water, the ripe old copra nuts sliced up for eating as at a cocktail party, and the spongy center of the sprouting nut which is candy for Marshallese children.
It was pleasant, but as the sun started down behind the palms I was relieved to see the outboard come up the lagoon. Yet it was then in the long shadows that a procession of women and children wound up the lane carrying flowers and woven palm baskets of food and singing a slow sweet song. I asked Sister what it meant. “It’s for you,” she said. “Whenever anybody comes to the island for the first time they do this in appreciation.”
The procession wound up in a semicircle in front of me when the song, a Marshallese farewell, ended, a woman, handsome and pregnant, stepped forward and spoke. Sister translated: “She is saying how nice it was of you to come to their island and how sorry they are to see you leave. She is explaining that this is a poor island, but they hope you will accept these gifts of food to take with you…”
The woman placed a lei of plumeria and hibiscus blossoms around my neck while the others came forward and put the baskets of coconut drinking nuts, cooked breadfruit, and broiled fish at our feet. Again Sister translated as I spoke in thanks, saying that I, too, came from an island but that Arno to me then seemed the most beautiful island in the world. I thought of expressing a hope their hospitality would never be dimmed by tourism, but I didn’t because it was their life and their island needs something. In the end, I hoped they would get the kind of visitors their warmth and quiet dignity deserves.
The boat had arrived off the beach by then and the food was put aboard. Some of the people came down to the water while we waded out. They stood there in the long afternoon shadows, waving as the boat moved out and down the island to the now-calm pass in the reef and open ocean beyond. The smell of the sea mixed with the aroma from the food baskets and flowers. We headed for the sun going down behind Majuro.
Postscript
Micronesia should end there, I guess. But there is one more less bucolic incident, which seemed to say something. That night we were visiting local taverns on Majuro in a final bit of research. Two of the government’s larger inter-island ships were in port, and fighting broke out among the crews, not bitter battles with clubs and bottles but some pretty good swinging brawls that provided a kind of floorshow for the uninvolved spectator ready to duck behind the bar.
No country can be judged by its drunken sailors, but these incidents had some interesting sociological aspects. They seemed to begin between Palauans and Saipanese groups with Ponapeans and other island groups later clashing in. (Local Marshallese remained non-violent.) You could take the fights as an expression of various Micronesian inter-district hostilities. But as the struggles moved from bar to bar the picture became more confused. The climax came about midnight with perhaps 50 men slugging and slipping in the mud and ruts in front of the hotel. As such fights go, it was pretty good, and the cautious local policemen sat in their jeep on the fringes.
Next day before the plane to Hawaii came; I went to the home of a young Marshallese official. “Too bad,” he said of the fight. “But one thing I noticed. Last year when those crews fought here it went strictly on local lines. A Palauan would get in a fight and all the other Palauans would jump in behind him. This time there were Palauans trying to hold back their people and cool it. Same with the Saipanese and others. That’s progress.”
Received in New York on October 15, 1969.
Mr. John Griffin is an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner on leave from the Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu, Hawaii. This article may be published with credit to Mr. Griffin, the Honolulu Advertiser, and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
