Colonial Consequences of the Japanese Empire in the Mariana Islands

Understanding colonial cultural impacts on Indigenous ways of living have come to the fore in recent years.

In 2015, both Canada and Australia have urged governments to acknowledge difficult histories such as residential schools and frontier violence in order to advance the process of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

Similarly, in the Mariana Islands, scholars have focused on examining colonial impacts on Chamorro and Carolinian identity, largely in response to increased militarisation of the islands by the United States (U.S.) government.

Examining the cultural identity of Indigenous peoples in the Marianas works to support Indigenous self-determination and resist further colonial actions by U.S. occupiers.

Despite excellent work on Spanish and U.S. influences on Indigenous culture in the Marianas, little work has thoroughly examined the colonial cultural impact of the Japanese Empire in Micronesia.

As a result, scholarship endorses a narrative that characterises Chamorro culture as a hybrid of Chamorro and Spanish or American cultural elements.

Without an adequate analysis of Japanese colonial cultural impacts, we neglect to fully understand contemporary Indigenous culture in the Marianas Islands, which were occupied by three to four different colonial powers. My project begins to address this gap by analysing the material remains of Japanese colonialism in the Mariana Islands.

Working with the community, my project will record materials and oral histories from the Japanese Period in order to understand Japanese influences on Indigenous culture.

The project will further our understandings of Japanese imperialism, its effects on the people of the Mariana Islands and provide necessary analytical comparisons from a part of the Mariana Islands currently underrepresented in the literature.

Furthermore, this work will contribute to a growing body of research on the ways Indigenous groups negotiated their identity during colonial periods.