Japanese in Micronesia (1922-1937): Impact on the Native Population

Abstract

By 1937, Japanese immigrants and their children constituted fifty-five percent of the 113,277 inhabitants of the Japanese Mandated Islands -- the Carolinas, Marshalls, and Marianas (except Guam). On just the statistical basis alone, it is obvious that the contact milieu not only differed in scale from that of the German administration, -- when the entire foreign population was estimated to be 200, including eighty Japanese -- but that it was to have a tremendous impact upon the Micronesian population. In the most complete study of the Japanese Mandated Islands written by a Japanese authority -- Pacific Islands Under Japanese Mandate (1940) -- Yanaihara Tadao stated, "The rapid increase in Japanese immigration and the static condition of native population, have radically transformed social conditions on the islands. The influence of Japan on the islands is, therefore, not only political or economic, but also to a considerable extent social." Yanaihara here acknowledged the Japanese immigrants' impact on the Micronesian population, but did not attempt to present a systematic study of the impact.