War at the Margins: Indigenous Experiences in World War II

Sápmi

Sámi, especially in Finland and Norway, underwent several evacuations as front lines rolled across their homeland. In the Winter War, when the USSR attacked Finland (November 1939), residents of Petsamo on the northeast border were taken to safer areas for several months. After Finland allied with Nazi Germany, the three-year-long Continuation War dislocated those living along the contested USSR-Finland border. The largest movement came when the September 1944 armistice obliged Finns to drive out the German Army (Lapland War), forcing evacuation of civilians living between the retreating army and its base in northern Norway.

In Finland, the Lapland War altered relations between local people and the German soldiers with whom many had formed amicable ties. The evacuation notice ordered people to leave immediately, taking only what they could carry; they had to kill, sell, or abandon livestock and property. With the help of German Army trucks and personnel—still seen as friendly at the start of their withdrawal—northern Finland was cleared in just over a week, an enormous achievement in the sparsely settled, roadless region. About 2,000 Sámi were among the 168,000 civilians who left, either to join other Sámi in neutral Sweden or to less familiar Ostrobothnia in southwest Finland. In northern Norway, though, many people evaded evacuation, distrusting Nazi orders and fearing new dangers. Norwegians, including Sámi, packed up and buried possessions, slaughtered reindeer and other stock, and fled—but about a third of the seventy-two thousand inhabitants hoped to wait out the German retreat, overwintering in forest or mountain hideouts to avoid the soldiers who continued to search for them.8

The evacuation, coming after years of other wartime stresses, separated and impoverished families. One Sámi villager recounted his losses: his mother had died before the war, his father died of illness as a refugee in Ostrobothnia, one sister’s family was murdered by Soviet partisans attacking across the border, another sister had walked the family’s cows to Sweden and stayed there to marry, a brother had taken his reindeer into the Lapland hills—leaving this fourteen-year-old and his younger brother to weather the evacuation with the help of other kin.9

Though the experience of Sámi evacuees who spent the 1944–1945 winter in southern Finland was difficult, even traumatic for some, it increased Sámi-Finnish interaction and changed postwar life. Many Sámi had never been to the south and spoke little Finnish. The unfamiliar landscape and farming lifestyle was disorienting, and prejudices of southern Finns made for a rough start. Refugees suffered from illness and high infant mortality. Nonetheless, many remembered Finns as hospitable hosts, sharing scarce food and treating evacuees well. Over time prejudices diminished and people adjusted. Older Sámi found solace in religious activities; the young enjoyed socializing and dances, and a few married Finns. Many had some schooling in Finnish and quickly learned more, but language remained a problem for elders and brought home to Sámi the need to become fluent. Birget, the Sámi attitude of uncomplainingly coping with unavoidable change that had gotten them through the German occupation, helped them survive evacuation.10

During that evacuation winter, Sámi learned much about Finnish life, including practical knowledge about agriculture and economics that proved useful after the war. Finns in turn gained some appreciation of Sámi culture. For the first time, a large group of Sámi lived in one place, and they began to perceive themselves as a distinct group. This led to the founding in spring 1945 of Finland’s first organization by and for Sámi, the Sámi Liitto, which immediately enrolled two hundred members. Formed to deal with evacuation and war damage, later advocating for economic and cultural goals, Sámi Liitto asserted their war service, demanding equal status for Sámi language and culture, “not out of pity but because Saami have earned it.”11

Aleutian Islands

The people of the Aleutians saw their home become a battleground in June 1942. At the time, most Aleuts lived in small communities subsisting by hunting, fishing, trapping, and seasonal wage work, and had little communication with the mainland. Fortification of the Alaska coast began in 1941, with a US base at Dutch Harbor. Alaska became a defensive area, closed to travel and subject to censorship and blackout. Japan bombed Dutch Harbor on June 3–4, 1942, then invaded Kiska and Attu. Kiska held only ten US Navy personnel (two were killed, the others sent to Japan as POWs), but Attu’s village of forty-two Aleuts was overwhelmed by 1,200 Japanese soldiers who occupied it for three months. In September, they removed the Attu people to Hokkaido where they lived as prisoners for the rest of the war, their fate unknown to relatives in Alaska.

The US government quickly evacuated Aleuts from the other Pribilof and Aleutian Islands. People on Atka were told to leave while breakfast was still on the table and clothes still in closets; a demolition crew then burned the village. The several hundred people in the Pribilofs were moved in a similar rush several days later. Like Sámi evacuees, Aleuts took only what they could carry. Hunting, fishing, and trapping equipment, boats, livestock, furniture—all had to be abandoned. A lack of planning and discord between military and civilian authorities led to improvised transport and housing for refugees, and racism added to the stress (for example, white civilians were allowed to stay on Unalaska but the military wanted Aleuts removed). Civilian and military officials even fought afterward about who should pay evacuation costs.12

Conditions in the hastily arranged relocation camps in mainland Alaska were poor, with inadequate accomodations, deficient diet, lack of medical care, disorganization, and overall neglect by the American government that had relocated the evacuees. They coped with hardships and homesickness by working available jobs, organizing their camps, and grappling with the many agencies competing to manage their lives.13

At war’s end, the return of Aleutian and Pribilof Islanders was delayed by money issues, racism, and ongoing military-civilian squabbles. Most were not allowed back until April 1945, by which time as many as a quarter had died from tuberculosis, pneumonia, or other diseases. Even then, they were not necessarily allowed back to their original homes, and four villages were never permanently resettled. Homecoming was sobering. They had lost many personal possessions to Japanese attack, hasty evacuation, and US military use of their property. Distressingly, much of the destruction was by American soldiers and sailors, who looted souvenirs, vandalized Aleut homes, and even stole icons from churches.14

Last to return were the Attu internees held in Japan since September 1942. Crowded into a house in Otaru on the west coast of Hokkaido, nearly half died from illness and starvation. They kept up morale by celebrating the Russian Orthodox church calendar, resisting when they could, and keeping alive their desire to return and bring home the cremated remains of their dead. The twenty-five survivors returned to the United States months after war’s end but were never allowed back to Attu; they were relocated elsewhere in the Aleutians.15

Scarred by their exile, Aleut elders seldom spoke of the war years, and the United States had its own reasons for silence. Only in the 1980s was this history acknowledged. But the evacuation changed Aleuts’ relationship with the government. Despite separation and suffering, they kept their religious faith, worked together, and learned to protest effectively. Like Sámi, they became more aware of their place in the national order. For some, the experience turned into a decades-long fight for redress from the United States and Japan. Activists doggedly pursued reparations long after the end of the 1951 War Claims Commission, and in the 1980s succeeded in gaining a compensation trust, an apology from the US government, and public discussion of the racialized evacuation.16

Peleliu

After US victories at Saipan and Tinian in western Micronesia in mid-1944, Tokyo tightened its defensive ring closer to the home islands. Units stationed in the Palau Islands were left without reinforcement, subject to Allied blockade and bombing. The town of Koror on the largest island of Babeldaob, the capital of prewar Japanese Micronesia, was largely destroyed. Paluans and Japanese on Babeldaob were struggling to survive starvation and continual air attack by the time the US Marines invaded the nearby small island of Peleliu in September 1944.

Peleliu Island had been changed by war well before then. From 1936 to the early 1940s, Japan sealed off the area to build an airfield and extensive fortifications. After the first air raids in March 1944, the military took over Peleliu’s villages; civilians sheltered in caves and on the tiny Rock Islands, where they lived for five months. As bombing intensified, Japanese authorities asked Palauan chiefs to take in people from the outlying islands. The district of Ngaraard in northern Babeldaob volunteered to accept the thousand refugees from Peleliu and Angaur. In late August, two weeks before the US invasion, Peleliu’s population was shuttled to Babeldaob, where they lived for the rest of the war—and most of them for much longer. Peleliu people today still commemorate the generosity of those in Ngaraard who harbored them.17

As the refugees crowded in with host families, Babeldaob, too, was under fire. Palauans sought safety in caves or camped in forests near their gardens. After securing Peleliu, the United States used its airfields to strafe and bomb Babeldaob every day and sometimes at night for the next year. Public life, from funerals to schools, ceased. Work had to be done after dark or between air raids; fishing was especially hazardous; Japanese commandeered food; hunger was constant. An estimated 150 to 225 Palauans died (of all causes) in the seventeen months Palau was under attack.18

Living between the Lines: Chin Hills

The Burma-India highlands had been governed before the war by a civilian Frontier Service. After the British retreat, the colonial civil government re-formed at Simla, India, but in fact the border hills were under military rule. As the IJA advanced through the Chin Hills in March 1944, officials tried to prepare people for war. Norman Kelly told headmen they would have to evacuate when the Japanese invaded, remove food and livestock, destroy bridges, and hinder the enemy with ambushes and traps; he warned that once villages were empty, Allied forces would bomb and shell them. Preparations continued to the last minute: forming a home guard, digging air-raid trenches, addressing shortages of rice, salt, iron, cloth, and lamp oil—recognizing that if the British did not retake the hills quickly, the lack of essential trade goods would cause people to turn to the enemy. As the Japanese approached, many villagers withdrew to the safety of the forest. The IJA quickly established itself in key villages and strategic points and called on Chins to join them, threatening reprisals against villages that failed to obey.30

Chins were now trapped between the two armies, which leapfrogged along the few passable tracks—as General Slim said, at one point the Tedim (Tiddim) Road was “a Neapolitan ice of layers of our troops alternating with Japanese.”31 Intelligence reports told the British that Chins were “loyal to the Government,” but were not prepared to risk their lives to help it. Sokte and Siyin chiefs petitioned to remove British troops from their villages to avoid Japanese reprisal, even offering a personal escort to see officers safely to India. Levy officers struggled to recruit soldiers and labor, pleaded with higher-ups for airdrops of food, salt, and medicine, courted chiefs and headmen, and kept up morale with village-to-village “flag marches” covering hundreds of miles.32

The IJA countered not only by running their own patrols but also by offering rewards for turning in enemies. When a Z Force officer asked a headman what he was going to do about a posted notice offering a reward for them, “‘Nothing,’ replied the headman. ‘We don’t want to give you away.’ And then added quite seriously as an afterthought, ‘And if we did, what would be the good? We should be no better off as they would pay us in Japanese notes which are rubbish!’” The IJA took harsh measures to hunt down British agents, imprisoning or torturing Chins to extract information. Mong Nak, chief of a small village near an unsuccessful levy ambush, brought gifts to the Japanese at Haka to forestall reprisals, but was imprisoned, tortured, and forced to lead them to a levy position. He was released after promising loyalty when the camp was found empty. Like the British, Japanese also used persuasion. Sam Newland reported on a February 1944 meeting in Haka at which they treated chiefs and elders to a feast of boiled beef, soup, and rice and an IJA major gave a speech decrying foreign exploitation and urging cooperation with Japanese “brothers.” Newland’s informant on this was a young Haka chief hired by the Japanese as an interpreter—who also supplied Newland with intelligence.33

It was hard for local people to evaluate the situation. The British spread stories of Japanese atrocities, but they heard different reports from itinerant traders and others who had dealt with them. “Asia for Asians” promises of independence attracted some, but demands for food and livestock and executions of suspected British loyalists caused disaffection.34 Some headmen reached out to the invaders as soon as they arrived; some (sometimes the same ones) offered intelligence to the Allies. As we saw in chapter 2, many Kuki sided with the Japanese and the INA. War exacerbated their sense of oppression, as the British recruited or conscripted thousands of men for work, refugees and laborers brought new diseases, crop failure and loss of livestock were severe, and lack of imports cancelled the value of improved wages. Given the situation, Kuki could see the arrival of IJA-INA forces as a promise of freedom.35 But whichever side the hill people chose—or if they simply tried to escape the conflict—what was clear to everyone was the danger to their persons, their labor, and their property.

Living between the Lines: Papua and New Guinea

At its peak in the Southwest Pacific, Japanese control extended across Dutch New Guinea and much of northeastern New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands. The overwhelming invasion and the hasty departure of British and Australians gave the impression of certain and permanent victory. The myth of white superiority dissolved when Europeans fled in confusion, plantation managers abandoned indentured laborers, and the victors humiliated white prisoners.36 All this lent impetus to the initial phase of Japanese occupation.

The new rulers retained much of the existing colonial framework, appointing village headmen and enforcing discipline, paying for goods and labor, and taking care not to harass women. They dismantled white authority and Christianity, spread propaganda, and set up Japanese-language schools (as in Wewak, chapter 5). Home media carried uplifting stories with photos of smiling children in school and workers wearing caps decorated with the rising sun. Like Europeans, their racial ideas categorized villagers as “primitive,” but they saw them as friendly and generous and thought of themselves as liberating them from European oppression.37

The war’s ideology was irrelevant to most people facing the reality of invasion, nor was this New Guinea’s first regime change. As a Madang Province man said, Australians had pushed out the Germans, Japanese pushed out the Australians, then Americans and Australians pushed out the Japanese. “It is beyond us. We can do nothing. When a kiap [colonial officer] tells us to carry his baggage we have to do it. When a German told us to carry his baggage we had to obey. When a Japanese told us to carry his baggage we had to do it. If we did not we might be killed. All right, there it is. . . . that’s just how it is, that’s life.”38

Initial landings in force on New Guinea’s north coast and islands overwhelmed the small European presence, and the construction of the hundred-thousand-man base at Rabaul (New Britain) cemented Japanese power. The large island of Bougainville was strongly held by sixty-five thousand troops, who quickly built airfields and naval bases and forged relationships with Bougainville people. But there was no unanimity in such decisions, and the foreigners’ war magnified internal conflicts. Intervillage rivalries and Christian sectarianism intersected Japanese and Allied aims, as villages, clans, and individuals took sides, often with tragic results and long-lasting pain.39

In places, the invaders were able to retain goodwill throughout most of the war. Kaliai villagers on New Britain recall no atrocities or rapes and little or no confiscation during two years of occupation. They worked for the Japanese, but it was not forced labor; the Japanese evacuated them to safety during Allied air raids.40 Around Buna (eastern New Guinea)—where the May 1942 invasion marked the start of the Kokoda campaign—some Orokaiva people worked for and with Japanese and turned over European civilians and Allied soldiers to them. Embogi Agena, a leader of one of the groups that delivered two Anglican women missionaries to execution, was among at least twenty-one Orokaiva men hanged by the Australian Army after it recovered the territory, despite the questionable legality of executing Islanders for treason (chapter 2).41

It would be hard to exaggerate the danger for civilians caught between the two armies, subject to demands and punishment from both sides. The Markham-Ramu Valley and Sepik areas were “effectively a no-man’s-land.” Historian Hank Nelson describes the situation in Morobe District (northeast New Guinea), where people were trapped between Australian troops inland and Japanese coastal bases: “Both sent reconnaissance, foraging and fighting patrols through the intervening country, both demanded cooperation with themselves and banned assistance to the enemy. Both called airstrikes against hostile villages (not always accurately), shot men working with enemy troops and used other forms of violence to stiffen support.”42 Such dilemmas could not be resolved: when Australians ambushed a Japanese unit guided by six New Guineans, and the surviving Japanese fled, abandoning their guides, the Australians shot them: “We could not—dared not—tolerate local natives guiding Japanese.”43

After the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway (May–June 1942), Allies expanded air and sea superiority and began to press back the enemy on land. With their supply lines cut, Japanese troops faced desperate conditions. Describing his unit’s horrific retreat across the mountains from Finschhafen in 1943, Masatsugu Ogawa recalled friendly reponses in villages they passed (a skilled linguist, he conversed in Tok Pisin). The Japanese had nothing to give villagers at this point, “Yet their kindness lasted to the very end of the war.” But relations elsewhere worsened as the military position deteriorated and Japanese made onerous demands for labor and goods, plundering gardens and killing those who resisted. A captured diary entry from November 1943 says, “In order to win we are not pacifying the natives, but are forcing to work at the point of a gun. I don’t know when they will revolt. It is just like having a bomb under you while you are working.”44 Reports from this phase of war reveal extreme punishments, rapes, reprisal killings, cannibalism, and other atrocities. Even suspicion of collaboration led to death, as in the Timbunke massacre (July 1945) where Japanese killed nearly a hundred people in reprisals for presumed aid to the enemy. As the Japanese weakened, Islanders killed soldiers in retaliation or in response to Australian Army payments.45

Civilians on the other side of the lines, in Allied-held areas, experienced the inverse: conditions improved as the campaign progressed. Still, military needs transformed their lives. Civil rule was superseded by the Australian Army, with Papua and New Guinea administrations combined in April 1942 when ANGAU formed to manage civilian affairs (as in Burma, many colonial officials were given military rank). Besides supporting combat, ANGAU was tasked with civil policing, governance, and producing food and essential materials—all exacerbated by intensive labor recruitment (see chapter 9), floods of refugees, diseases, and food shortages. Most formal schooling ended, since the female Christian missionaries responsible for much of it had been evacuated, though New Guineans in some places worked hard to keep schools open even under difficult conditions.46 Propaganda encouraged loyalty through radio broadcasts, leaflets, and trips to Australia for local leaders. As Allies reclaimed territory, people appreciated the return of stability and medical care—but the welcome was short-lived, as ANGAU conscripted men for labor despite their families’ need to repair destroyed gardens and homes.47 The total loss of Papua New Guinea lives is unclear; one estimate is at least fifteen thousand killed by military action and tens of thousands more by starvation or sickness.48

As an example of life between the lines, Lieutenant-Colonel (and anthropologist) Ian Hogbin told the story of Busama village on the Huon Gulf, which he studied soon after the Japanese had been driven out. They had landed at nearby Salamaua in March 1942, and for the first months there was little trouble; they paid for supplies and only occasionally used labor. But at the start of 1943, Allied forces drew near and the Japanese drafted men to carry supplies to the front lines. “The natives faced danger on both sides—if they ran away they were shot by the Japanese, and if they advanced our [Allied] fire confronted them. Several lost their lives . . . .” Allied air raids devastated the coast. Busama village was destroyed; its six hundred people moved inland to live in huts, their belongings and livestock gone. After eighteen months of Japanese occupation, Australians recaptured Busama in the drive to retake Salamaua. They in turn hired workers to help with clean-up and to build a convalescent camp. Then ANGAU conscripted nearly all able-bodied men as carriers for the next phase of war. Remaining villagers were tasked to make thatch for the military. People had no time to cultivate gardens; livestock and fishing canoes and nets had been destroyed; they survived on sago, a famine food, and scanty army rations. Subsistence was so impaired that supplemental rations were needed until the start of 1946. It took six years for life to return to normal as people recovered, rebuilding on their old village site in mid-1947.49

Central Pacific Islands under Japanese Occupation

Japan held parts of the British Gilbert Islands for nearly two years. As elsewhere, occupation meant strict security and Japanization policies. After an August 1942 US raid on a seaplane base on Butaritari (Makin), an apparent reprisal bombing of the tiny village of Keuea killed forty-eight Islanders and wounded thirty others. In mid-1943, men were conscripted for labor as fortifications were built. Most Islanders were evacuated from danger zones before the US invasion of November 1943, but on Tarawa, those who remained could not escape the battle that killed more than 4,700 Japanese and a thousand Americans. After US victory, Islanders joined mopping-up patrols to guide, interpret, carry gear, and bury the dead. Civil servants who had hidden their uniforms, official records, and the portrait of King George VI that had hung over the district officer’s desk brought them out again. But civilian British rule did not return; rather, the islands were held under US military administration and used as a base to push the offensive into Japanese Micronesia.50

Japan also occupied the British-controlled phosphate islands of Nauru and Ocean Island (now Banaba) in mid-1942, after most Europeans and many Chinese had been evacuated. Allies never reinvaded these islands, but neutralized enemy garrisons by blockading and bombing until they surrendered in October 1945. On both islands, Japanese used Islander and imported Asian labor for phosphate mining and other work. As food shortages worsened, they shipped thousands of men, women, and children from Ocean Island to Nauru, and from both islands to Tarawa, Kosrae, and Chuuk, where they were set to work in agriculture or other tasks. As British subjects (that is, civilian internees) they were given lowest priority for scarce rations. Of the 1,200 Nauruans sent to Chuuk, 461 died of malnutrition, illness, Allied bombing, and mistreatment. 51

Conditions remained desperate for the more than four thousand people still on Nauru—Japanese troops, Asian laborerers, Chinese, and nearly 1,500 Islanders from across the region. In July 1943, the Japanese murdered forty-nine leprosy patients; another sixty Islanders died from bombings, malnutrition, illness, accidents, or were executed for stealing food or other crimes. After most Ocean Islanders had been removed, nearly 150 young men retained for labor were massacred in August 1945—after the end of war. The testimony of the only survivor, Kabunare Koura, led to war crime trials in which fourteen Japanese were found guilty and the commander was hanged.52

After the war, Banabans and Nauruans were repatriated from scattered exiles. Some seven hundred Banabans, with Gilbert and Ellice Islanders, went to Rabi in Fiji, an island purchased for them by the British Phosphate Company, where they struggled to rebuild their lives. Only after mining ended in 1979 has a small community resettled Banaba. Nauru’s reunited population, too, was reduced and in poor health, but rejected resettlement. Instead, they turned their experience of hardship into a drive for self-reliance. Over the postwar decades, they fought for control of the phosphate industry and a way to stay at home. Nauru became independent in 1968.53

Living between the Lines: Guam

An American territory since 1898, Guam held at the start of war only a small contingent of US Navy, US Marines, and Guamanian Insular Force Guards. Military planners held no hope of defending the island; they evacuated most US citizens, leaving Islanders nearly unprotected when Japan invaded on December 8, 1941.

Lacking resources for armed resistance, Guam’s people evinced strong passive defiance throughout the two and a half years of occupation. Japan immediately garrisoned the island with fourteen thousand soldiers, but the bulk of the troops left after a few months and a small civil administration took charge. Worried about Guam Chamorros’ American affiliations, officials managed the population with identity registrations, economic controls, and use of Chamorro investigators from Saipan and Rota (chapter 4). Soon Guam had Japanese schools, Japanese priests for the Catholic churches, and an intensive propaganda program. Despite strict security, Islanders had some success in hiding radios and protecting escaped US sailors, but executions and harsh intimidation at the start had been effective in quelling active opposition. After Japan’s imperial strategy shifted to defense in mid-late 1943, Chamorro men were conscripted for construction and women for agricultural work. The Japanese military returned in strength in March 1944, replacing civilian rule.

American planes bombed Guam heavily from February 1944. Japanese authorities gathered people into interior camps, perhaps to protect them, perhaps to ensure they did not help the enemy. Islanders who had maintained a stealthy resistance eagerly awaited the US return, which came in July 1944. As invasion neared, mistreatment increased, including killings, rapes, and several massacres—altogether, some seven hundred Guam islanders were killed. When Merizo village men learned of massacres there, a few days before the invasion, they attacked Japanese soldiers, making Merizo the first village to be liberated. Active resistance was now possible, and Chamorro men joined Americans as guides and fighters.54

The United States turned Guam into an advance base to press toward Japan, rapidly rebuilding harbors, airfields, and other facilities destroyed by bombing and invasion, and adding more. By late 1945, Guam’s 212 square miles held more than 160 installations with more than two hundred thousand personnel, overwhelming the 21,838 Chamorros. Military landholdings, employment, and governance have dominated the island ever since. The massive initial land takeover was scaled back after the war, but nearly 30 percent of Guam remains under military control. Japan’s invasion of Guam altered US views of the island and changed its future—from being a barely recognized American fringe territory to a focus of strategic interest, which continues to the present day.55

Living between the Lines: Japan’s Micronesian Islands

After Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1935, it began military construction in Micronesia, with the Marshall Islands eventually fortified as the empire’s eastern edge, Chuuk as host of a major Imperial Japanese Navy base, and installations on many other islands, in some cases displacing entire communities. Islanders at first supported the emperor’s cause, buoyed by decades of familiarity and Tokyo’s initial success. But the current of war reversed, and in September 1943 the islands’ role shifted to become a defensive bulwark for Japan. Civil officials were replaced by military. Troops poured in to garrison certain islands, imposing tight new security, labor demands, and rationing.

After victory at Tarawa, fighting pushed into prewar Japanese territory, starting with the US invasion of the Marshall Islands in January–February 1944. Japan drew its defensive line ever closer to the home islands, stalling attackers with heavily fortified positions that were gradually abandoned as the perimeter shrank. As the war was fought over and through Micronesia, physical destruction was traumatic and longlasting. Major land battles took place on Kwajalein, Enewetak, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, and Peleliu; islands not invaded were bombed and blockaded. In most cases, authorities evacuated Islanders ahead of battle, though the geography of Kwajalein and Enewetak Atolls left civilians in the midst of combat. Two hundred or more Micronesians died at Kwajalein, where some men employed by the Japanese fought alongside them. On Enewetak, Islanders were interspersed with Japanese defenders. Trapped during the battles, some were able to surrender safely to landing parties; others were killed or injured.56

Using bases built on the conquered islands, US forces isolated and bombed remaining Japanese installations. While neighbors of the new American facilities were appreciating peace and plenty, those on bypassed islands suffered ever-greater food scarcity and harsh security that led to the arrest and torture of suspected Allied sympathizers; Korean workers and Marshallese on Mili Atoll were executed after a rebellion. Air raids pounded garrisoned islands month after month. Pohnpei, for example, suffered an estimated 250 bombings between February 1944 and August 1945. A Pohnpei woman in a farm labor group remembers the daily rhythm set by the bombers: workers started at 5:00 a.m., paused to hide in their bunkers and eat breakfast during the 8:00 a.m. air raid, then returned to the rice fields after the all-clear sounded.57

Marshall Islander John Heine recalls how his youth was shaped by the progress of war. When it began, he was a schoolboy of about nine years old, seeing Japanese flags and hearing banzais as he walked around Jabwor town. Then security tightened. A group of Japanese searched his house; “They took my father. That was the last I saw of him for three months.” They later detained his mother for a month. He himself was conscripted for labor. He escaped during an air raid, hiding in the bush for eleven months until—after US forces secured Kwajalein and Majuro—he could swim out to a landing craft. He then volunteered to serve as a scout to help round up surrendering Japanese.58

Saipan was the first central Pacific Island where Americans had to deal with large numbers of civilians. It had been developed under Japanese rule, with an urban center at Garapan and an immigrant population of some twenty to twenty-five thousand Japanese, Okinawans, and Koreans far outnumbering the fewer than five thousand Islanders (Chamorros and Carolinians/Refaluwasch). Invading US forces had to decide whether to consider Islanders as enemy combatants, since they were neither Japanese citizens nor soldiers, and it was not clear how they would respond after three decades of incorporation into the Japanese Empire.59 During the Battle of Saipan (June–July 1944), local Chamorros guided and in some cases fought alongside imperial soldiers. But for the most part, Islanders—who had assisted and obeyed the Japanese in defensive preparations—simply hid and sought safety. Vicente Camacho recalled, “That was the worst time of all. If we turned to the left there were enemies, if we turned to the right, there were enemies. No matter where we turned, up, down, east, west, it was enemies everywhere.”60

American military policy distinguished “natives” from enemy civilians, though they were often intermingled and to US troops often indistinguishable. The victors detained civilians in stockades along the beach until permanent camps could be set up, with Chamorros and Refaluwasch interned apart from East Asians. Soon some Islanders were working for the Americans as scouts and as camp guards. The battle, and diseases in the internment camps, left some ten to twelve thousand civilians dead, including almost a thousand Micronesians.61

After the battles of Saipan, Guam, and Tinian, the Allies controlled the region by August 1944, but bombing and mopping up continued. American forces did not reach some islands until months after the war ended. To Micronesian Islanders, these “new chiefs” were a nearly unknown quantity—as the Islanders were unknown to the Americans, who rushed to draft civil affairs plans and struggled with their new colonial role. Inverting the loss of “white prestige” when the Japanese invaded European colonies, in Micronesia it was the Japanese who lost face. Seeing the formerly powerful Japanese disarmed, stripped naked, and shipped off or interned as POWs, and noting the strength, wealth, and friendliness of Americans quickly transformed attitudes. Still, Micronesians struggled through a long period of adjustment. The deportation of civilian Japanese and Okinawans deprived the islands of skilled tradesmen and businessmen and split the many intermarried families. The Islanders had lived through generations of foreign rulers: Spanish, German, Japanese, and now American. From their perspective, international arrangements were transitory and beyond their control; they had no option but to deal with each successive regime. Victory put Micronesians under US occupation until the end of the war and under US Navy Military Government for years after it.62

Because the term “occupation” is most often used to refer to German or Japanese control of invaded lands, we may forget that Allies also occupied conquered or reconquered territory. Martial law, whether by defenders or enemy invaders, regulated civilian life with new and unfamiliar strictures and conditions. Wherever civilians came under—or even near—military rule by Allies or Axis, the greatest impact came from war’s unending demand for labor.