The Pacific Theater: Island Representations of World War II

White, Geoffrey M., ed. (1990). The Pacific Theater: Island Representations of World War II. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1146-4 978-0-522-84401-6.

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Abstract: The Pacific Theater: Island Representations of World War II examines World War II as a transformative social and cultural event as experienced by Pacific Islanders themselves, rather than as a conventional military history. Drawing on ethnography, oral histories, and island narratives, the volume shows how wartime encounters with Japanese and American forces disrupted colonial hierarchies, reshaped ideas of power and reciprocity, and permanently altered Islanders’ understandings of history and identity. The contributors argue that the war became a key historical rupture—often dividing time into “before” and “after”—and that its meaning has been preserved through stories, songs, and moral commentary that continue to inform contemporary island societies. 

For the islands that now form the FSM, the book emphasizes World War II as the decisive break between Japanese colonial rule and an enduring American strategic presence. Case studies from Pohnpei, Sapwuahfik (Ngatik), and the wider Eastern Caroline context show how Micronesians interpreted the collapse of Japanese authority, the overwhelming scale of U.S. military power, and the comparatively egalitarian social relations introduced by American troops. Islanders made sense of these experiences through local frameworks of hierarchy, reciprocity, myth, and historical memory, integrating global war into Micronesian moral and political worlds. These wartime experiences contributed directly to postwar political consciousness, new expectations of external powers, and the distinctive path Micronesia followed toward trusteeship, autonomy, and eventual nationhood within the Federated States of Micronesia.