The Yap Island Controversy: How Japan Gained Submarine Cable Sovereignty in the Pacific

Wetherall, William (1968). The Yap Island Controversy: How Japan Gained Submarine Cable Sovereignty in the Pacific.

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Abstract: The Yap Island Controversy was one of those historical events that is typically discarded by the historian when it becomes necessary to limit a general history text of moderate size to the pinnacle events. The controversy has been selected as a topic, however, by way of which the dissonance that served to betray latent Japanese-American tensions following World War I might be effectively portrayed. Other events could have been selected to portray as much, but what is unique about the Yap Island Controversy is that it was almost purely an American-Japanese affair whereas other obstructions to Japanese activities in Asia were sponsored by the European nations as well. It is true that Japan had the nominal backing of her Secret Treaty partners in connection with the disposition of Yap and its cables, but this factor seems to have been as unimportant as the island and its cables. What is believed to have been of ultimate importance in the Yap Island Controversy was Japan's display of her readiness to face the United States as an unmitigated equal in the Pacific arena.