Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014. xiv, 312 pp. (Ilustrations, maps.) US$55.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-3846-1.
In writing a biography of Tosiwo Nakayama, the first president of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Pacific historian David Hanlon has, in a larger sense, written a twentieth-century history of this island nation. No other leader was as central to the conception, birth, and early years of the FSM as Tosiwo Nakayama; his story is Micronesia’s story.
Hanlon’s plot-line is mainly chronological, a birth-to-death account of Nakayama’s life, 1931–2007. Introducing his readers to the story’s setting, Nakayama’s “world of islands,” Hanlon writes against the prevailing colonial gaze that views this region as comprised of “tiny islands”—minuscule, isolated, and insignificant dots of land. He invokes the Pacific writer Epeli Hau‘ofa to describe Nakayama’s birthplace—Namonuito Atoll, west of Chuuk Lagoon, with a land area of 4.5 square kilometres—in a “more enlarged way” (17), pointing out its linkages via ancient seafaring trade-and-tribute ties to Yap 1300 km to the west, and by clan ties to Chuuk Lagoon and the Mortlock Islands 500 km to the east. Situating Nakayama within this expanded island world, Hanlon also notes the pre-colonial clan connections and oral traditions that link Chuuk with Pohnpei and Kosrae to the east, as well as the nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial histories that provide a larger context for Nakayama’s personal connections, both through marriage and through his own paternity, to prominent Japanese traders who settled in Micronesia.
In the early chapters, readers view from the vantage point of Nakayama’s Japanese-Chuukese family how the Japanese colonial era played out in Chuuk, from the early years of the Nan’yō chō (South Seas) government when Chuuk received considerably less administrative attention than did Palau and Saipan, to the sudden transformations that accompanied the arrival of the Japanese Fourth Fleet in February 1941, when the Nakayama family was forced to move from the administrative headquarters in Toloas and take refuge on the rural island of Tol. Hanlon describes the forced repatriation to Japan of Nakayama’s father following the war, the changed fortunes of the family, and the hardships of the postwar reconstruction era. He reads into these experiences a formative political lesson for the teenaged Nakayama: “being caught in the crossfire of war ultimately taught Nakayama and others the importance of autonomy and self-government” and furthermore, that “the overall ineptitude, indifference, and aloofness of American administrators convinced Nakayama that only Micronesians could effectively and appropriately govern their islands” (60).
In the next two chapters, we see the introduction of American-style schools in the 1950s and American-style political development in the 1960s and 1970s through the frame of Nakayama’s educational experience and early career in government, which closely paralleled the trajectory of educational and political development during the Trust Territory period. Hanlon notes that “exposure to the Trust Territory government through school and employment had convinced Tosiwo Nakayama that island peoples needed to govern themselves” (91).
Hanlon gives particular attention to the dozen years of Nakayama’s life from 1975 to 1987, a period that was crucial in the life of the nation as well as the life of the man, from the first Constitutional Convention to the conclusion of Nakayama’s second four-year term as president of the FSM. Readers gain an appreciation of Nakayama as a master legislative navigator and political architect, as he and other leaders confronted the principal challenges to constituting the island nation: dealing with separatist movements by the Marianas delegation, followed by the Palauans and Marshallese—and later attempted by the people of Faichuk, the western region of Chuuk Atoll; deciding upon the role of traditional leaders in the new nation; debating the Constitution’s relationship to political status; implementing the concept of federalism and weathering the continuing clashes between the national and state governments; and managing the struggles between the executive and legislative branches of government over questions of jurisdiction, authority, and finances. Hanlon’s account of Nakayama’s eight years as FSM president (1979–1987), is an astute review of the process of nation building the FSM underwent: completing the negotiations with the US over the Compact of Free Association and haggling with US congressional committees over continuing financial support for the fledgling nation, seeking international recognition from foreign governments and regional and international organizations, resolving a plethora of political and diplomatic issues such as war reparations for Micronesia, and becoming a full participating member of crucial international bodies such as the Law of the Sea Convention and the United Nations.
Hanlon gives much less attention to the last twenty years of Nakayama’s life, when he was out of the political limelight, in declining health, and beset by the death of his wife and the legal troubles and indictments of close relatives.
Making Micronesia is a very readable, balanced, and eminently well-researched account of Tosiwo Nakayama’s contributions to the creation of the Federated States of Micronesia as a nation. It is also a compelling portrait of an island leader of exceptional modesty, honesty, and decency. This is a book that deserves a careful reading by students of Pacific Studies and especially by young Micronesians, who will appreciate Hanlon’s careful scholarship and sympathetic analysis. It is an especially timely book for citizens of the FSM; as I write this review, Chuukese voters are debating a referendum to secede from the FSM. Appreciating Nakayama’s vision and tireless work on behalf of Micronesian unity and “self-government, … self-dignity, self-respect, and self-reliance” (108) is all the more important today.
Donald Rubinstein
University of Guam, Mangilao, Guam