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Micronesia—A Changing Frontier

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Karl J. Pelzer
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Dependent areas under American administration have always been a heavy financial burden on the American taxpayer. The Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, comprising the whole of Micronesia except Guam, will certainly prove no exception. That Micronesia will prove an economic liability is, however, less important than the possibility that it will also be a heavy political liability.

The humanitarian conscience of the Western world would in any case be quick to enforce its highest standard upon a rich government like that of the United States. A country striving to assert leadership in the development of backward areas all over the world will itself wish to meet these standards in its sole trust territory. However, the material well-being of the Micronesians when under Japanese rule, the great devastation wrought by the war, and the predominantly strategic interests so far dominant in the United States policy in the area—all will make it difficult even for a benevolent American administration to win the approval of the Micronesians. For it to make a record there which will help it in its struggle to win the confidence of colonial peoples elsewhere will be even more difficult.

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Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , January 1950 , pp. 251 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1950

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References

1 In 1946, the writer spent several months on Truk and had ample occasion to observe these diffrences. They seem to depend in no small measure on the geographic location of the communities in relation to the administrative centers. The nearer the community is to the administrative center the greater is the acculturation process.

2 Guam, for example, was discovered by Magellan in 1520; Palau was discovered by Villalobos in 1543.

3 It is interesting to note that Spanish Capuchin monks carried on the tradition of Spanish Catholicism from 1901 on. According to Laura Thompson, the Spanish padres“were propagating in prewar Guam a southern European type of Catholicism and culture,” a fact which slowed down the Americanization of Guam. Thompson, Laura, Guam and Its People, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1947, p. 186.Google Scholar

4 The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Reduction of Truk, Washington, 1947, p. 2.Google Scholar

5 For a discussion of the limitations of “unsinkable aircraft carriers” see Brodie, Bernard, A Guide to Naval Strategy, 3rd ed., Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1944, pp. 228–229.Google Scholar

6 Letter of February 11, 1948 to the Secretaries of State, Army, Navy, and the Interior. Letter of May 14, 1949 to the Secretaries of the Interior and Navy.

7 See James, Roy E., “The Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands” in America's Pacific Dependencies, by Emerson, Rupert and others. New York, 1949, pp. 109–134.Google Scholar

8 Navy Department, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Handbook on the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, prepared at the School of Naval Administration, Hoover Institute, Stanford University, Washington, U. S. Govt. Printing Office, 1948Google Scholar, Chap. XVI, “Health and Sanitation.”

9 Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Information on the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands transmitted by the United States to the Secretary-General of the United Nations pursuant to Article 88 of the Charter. Prepared by the Navy Department, Washington, D. C. July, 1948 (OPNAV-P22ߝ100E).