Yap, the Pacific Island Japan Has Almost Forgotten: Former Japanese Colony Celebrates Its History and Culture on Yap Day
Poole, Robert Michael (2018-05-25). "Yap, the Pacific Island Japan Has Almost Forgotten: Former Japanese Colony Celebrates Its History and Culture on Yap Day". The Japan Times.
- Has attachment: File:EQZV8NAD.pdf
Abstract: In 1902, the Empire of Japan and the British Empire signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance to resist Russian expansion. In doing so, the two countries agreed to support the other in the event of a war involving multiple powers. So, in 1914, Japan responded to Britain’s declaration of war on Germany and its allies by offering its help in return for Germany’s Pacific possessions. Within months of Japan declaring war on Germany, it seized almost all of its Pacific islands. With the war concluded, the establishment of the Treaty of Versailles by the League of Nations — the world’s first intergovernmental organization created to pursue world peace — saw Germany stripped of much of its land, including that of its protectorates and colonies. Faced with a choice about the status of Germany’s Pacific protectorates, the League of Nations decided to give all Pacific islands north of the equator (except Hawaii) to the Empire of Japan, a decision based on Britain’s promise to Japan and signed into law under the League of Nation’s South Pacific Mandate of 1919. The population of Japanese in Micronesia exploded. The number living on Yap jumped from 97 to nearly 2,000 within a few years, on an island of only 7,000. The four future states of the Federated States of Micronesia (including Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae) were home to around 100,000 Japanese by 1945.
