The disposition of the former Japanese mandated islands, now occupied or to be occupied by American armed forces, is a perplexing question. To consider the prospect of returning them to Japan is unthinkable to those who know the cost in American lives of their taking—a cost paid only because the American public was too apathetic and inadequately informed in 1918 to accept a manifest responsibility.
Yet the American to date has not distinguished himself as a colonizer. This would seem to be more due to a lack of interest in the attempt than to any basic deficiency or inaptitude inherent in our national character. It can certainly be said that the matter is one that has received very little study from official sources until naval authorities added it to their amazingly expanded field of operations in the last war.
However, without some form of subsidy, another fighting word until quite recently to the “rugged individualist,” it is doubtful whether or not the islands could be developed in the interest of the native population if we assert our sovereignty over them.
Not much logic can be adduced to lure the average American family from the comfort of high-standard living within the States to these relatively poor volcanic peaks and coral atolls. Such an adventure, and the word is used advisedly, will appeal only to those who are kindred spirits to the settlers of our one-time ever advancing western frontier, and no finer material for the purpose can be found anywhere.
The writer has made the effort to read every authoritative book available, not only on the islands in question, which are, by the way, the Marshalls, the Carolines, and the Marianas, but also on the larger island groups that lie to the west and south. Gradually, from pages of the experience of the best observers who have traversed and studied these small land areas in the terrific reaches of the Pacific Ocean, has been formulated the pattern submitted herewith, in all its vulnerability and imperfection, in the hope that others more able will find therein the seed for a more workable plan that may eventually accomplish the objective.
Stated roughly and for brevity, in the form of an operational plan, the idea is as follows:
Task Organization
(a) Naval Forces Occupying Invaded Islands
(b) Military Government Section
(c) Medical Corps, U. S. Navy
(d) Naval Colonizing Section
(e) Naval Air Transport Service.
(1) Our forces confronted with problem of permanent occupation and development of seized islands.
(2) Naval Occupation Forces, through Construction Battalions etc., have built and arc operating large barrack areas with housing, messing, water supply, sewage disposal construction largely accomplished. Military Government Program is developing procedures for proper administration of native populations and their relations with occupying detachments. Medical Corps is solving problems of disease and pest control. Naval Colonizing Section will move into island areas after settlement of the war with Japan, to set up permanent colonizing units for naval personnel and their families as hereinafter provided.
(3) (a) Naval Occupation Forces, through Construction Battalion personnel and similar agencies, will make surveys for suitability and conversion of housing, messing, hospital, and public utilities facilities already existent in the Marshalls, Carolines, and Marianas to permit naval settlements capable of accommodating colonizing personnel.
(b) Military Government Program will prepare surveys dealing with population, native and naval, required to fully utilize the natural potentialities of each island, stressing local governmental and educational requirements.
(c) Medical Corps will develop plans to control island health, contemplating both naval and native families in residence.
(d) Naval Colonizing Section will organize, formulate missions,* tasks, and objectives, and survey present naval personnel, officer and enlisted, to ascertain number of individuals who will move their families on basis of three-, five-, or ten-year tour of duty.
(e) Naval Air Transport Service will formulate plan for providing rapid mail, passenger, and cargo service in post-war period to these “frontier” colonies.
(4) All units comprising this Task Organization are components of the United States Naval Service. Logistic support will be provided by Chief of Naval Operations.
(5) Integral units will maintain headquarters as follows: Naval Occupation Forces as disposed presently until termination of hostilities and the existing emergency; Military Government Section at Guam Island, the Marianas; Naval Colonizing Section at Saipan Island, the Marianas; Naval Air Transport Service, Pacific Wing, at NAS, Honolulu. These dispositions are made to best utilize existing facilities. Naval Communications Service will be utilized for administrative traffic.
The Task Organization outlined above introduces one component not presently in being, the Naval Colonizing Section. If we were to write the mission for such a section, it would read as follows:
To recruit from the present Naval Establishment a force of married officers and enlisted personnel who have indicated a willingness to take up residence with their families for a tour of duty, minimum duration to be stipulated in advance, in one of the islands mandated to the Japanese Government by the peace conference following the first World War; to utilize as practicable facilities and camp areas, with their buildings and public utilities now on the islands in establishing model communities for both the families of naval personnel and native populations; to develop the natural resources and commerce of the islands for the benefit of the native populations; all with the avowed purpose of permanently and everlastingly tying these outpost islands to the sovereignty and economy of the United States of America.
There are other phrases needed, but that would be the sense of it.
Nothing is gained by enlarging on what the Naval Colonizing Section should be. If it ever becomes a reality a hundred highly trained specialists will pool their best efforts to decide in detail how large it will be, how distributed, how housed, fed, and entertained and what will be its activity. In current naval terms, its tasks and objectives will be written.
What will be accomplished? Thousands of typical American families (and who are more typically American than our bluejackets?) will colonize fifty Pacific islands. They will live for a set term of years as residents of idyllic tropical islets, in carefully regulated communities, administered by the United States Navy. Their children will receive the best medical care and the best educational facilities (through high school) a paternalistic government can provide. Many of these youngsters will attend colleges in Hawaii, the Philippines, and the mainland. Hundreds of families will elect to remain permanently, supporting themselves by farming, trade, or on pension.
The natives will gradually elevate themselves to become useful citizens of the same community. Proper medical care will eliminate the scourge of disease that our whaling ships brought to the islands a century ago. An interchange of agricultural crops and products will benefit both areas.
Naval and naval air bases of adequate strength and distribution will eliminate the threat of another Pearl Harbor. From these bases our fleet, surface and air, will police the vast Pacific, accepting at long last a manifest destiny that we have selfishly avoided for nearly half a century.
There remains only to quote some authorities for the serious student who consults the evidence before casting his weight for or against.
One of the most complete travel accounts was written by Captain Charles Wilkes, U. S. Navy, who for four years (1838-42) explored the Pacific and Antarctic Oceans in a flotilla of tiny ships, the largest of which, the Vincennes, was of 780 tons. His account of the “United States Exploring Expedition,” published by Congress, gives us an early claim to many of these very islands.
Money, in How to Manage a Colony, Forbes in Naturalists' Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, and Wallace in Malay Archipelago, are among the early commentators on colonial governments and their effects on native populations. The faults and virtues of the great colonizing powers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—Dutch, English, Portuguese, and French—arc all discussed at length.
More recent writers who discuss island government seriously or in passing are Ripley in Trail of the Money-Bird, Crockett in The House in the Rain Forest, Dulles in America in the Pacific, Fairchild in Garden Islands of the Great East, and Price in Japan’s Islands of Mystery.
Most of these people agree that the Dutch system, based on using and backing the tribal princes and headmen, is the most satisfactory and profitable to all concerned. However, Price tells us that even the Japanese, despite patently imperialistic motives and reprehensible methods, were making headway with the natives of Palau, Saipan, and other Micronesian Islands.
Ninety years ago, Alfred Wallace, one of the greatest philosophic naturalists of all time, stated in simple language the essential concept of all attempts to successfully colonize the Pacific. It has to do with the development of the native population, which must be made to thrive and expand as a race if the islands are to be brought to their full potentiality. In Chapter 17 of his Malay Archipelago, written in 1859, he tells of the model colonies founded by the Dutch in the northern arm of Celebes.
Forty years ago the country was a wilderness, the people naked savages, garnishing their rude houses with human heads. Now it is a garden, worthy of its sweet native name of “Minahasa.” Good roads and paths traverse it in every direction; some of the finest coffee plantations in the world surround its villages, interspersed with extensive rice-fields more than sufficient for the support of the population.
The people arc now the most industrious, peaceable and civilized in the whole Archipelago. They arc the best clothed, the best housed, the best fed, and the best educated; and they have made some progress toward a higher social state. I believe there is no example elsewhere of such striking results being produced in so short a time— results which are entirely due to the system of government now adopted by the Dutch in their Eastern possessions. The system is one which may be called a “paternal despotism.” Now we English do not like despotism—we hate the name and the thing, and we would rather see people ignorant, lazy and vicious, than use any but moral force to make them wise, industrious and good. And we are right when we arc dealing with men of our own race, and of similar ideas and equal capacities with ourselves. Example and precept, the force of public opinion, and the slow, but sure spread of education, will do everything in time; without engendering those bitter feelings, or producing any of that servility, hypocrisy and dependence, which arc the sure results of a despotic government. But what should we think of a man who should advocate these principles of perfect freedom in a family or a school? We should say that he was applying a good general principle to a case in which the conditions rendered it inapplicable—the case in which the governed are in the admitted state of mental inferiority to those who govern them, and are unable to decide that which is best for their permanent welfare. Children must be subjected to some degree of authority and guidance; and if properly managed they will cheerfully submit to it, because they know their own inferiority, and believe their elders are acting solely for their good. They learn many things the use of which they cannot comprehend, and which they would never learn without some moral and social if not physical pressure. Habits of order, of industry, of cleanliness, of respect and obedience, are inculcated by similar means. Children would never grow up into well-behaved and well-educated men, if the same absolute freedom of action that is allowed to men were allowed to them. Under the best aspect of education, children are subjected to a mild despotism for the good of themselves and society; and their confidence in the wisdom and goodness of those who ordain and apply this despotism, neutralizes the bad passions and degrading feelings which under less favorable conditions are its general results.
Now there is not merely an analogy—there is in many respects an identity of relation, between master and pupil or parent and child on the one hand, and an uncivilized race and its civilized rulers on the other. We know (or think we know) that the education and industry, and the common usages of civilized man, are superior to the usages of savage life, and, as he becomes acquainted with them, the savage himself admits this. He admires the superior acquirements of the civilized man, and it is with pride that he will adopt such usages as do not interfere too much with his sloth, his passions, or his prejudices. But as the wilful child or the idle schoolboy, who has never been taught obedience, and never made to do anything which of his own free will be was not inclined to do, would in most cases obtain neither education or manners; so it is much more unlikely that the savage, with all the confirmed habits of manhood and the traditional prejudices of race, should ever do more than copy a few of the least beneficial customs of civilization, without some stronger stimulus than precept, very imperfectly backed by example.
If we are satisfied that we are right in assuming the government over a savage race, and occupying their country; and if we further consider it our duty to do what we can to improve our rude subjects and raise them up towards our own level, we must not be too afraid of the cry of “despotism” and “slavery,” but must use the authority we possess to induce them to do work, which they may not altogether like, but which we know to be an indispensable step in their moral and physical advancement. The Hutch have shown much good policy in the means by which they have done this. They have in most cases upheld and strengthened the authority of the native chiefs, to whom the people have been accustomed to render a voluntary obedience; and by acting on the intelligence and self-interest of these chiefs, have brought about changes in the manners and customs of the people, which would have excited ill-feeling and perhaps revolt had they been directly enforced by foreigners.
In carrying out such a system, much depends on the character of the people; and the system which succeeds admirably in one place could only very partially be worked out in another. In Minahasa the natural docility of the people has made their progress rapid; and how important this is, is well illustrated by the fact, that in the immediate vicinity of the town of Menado are a tribe called Banteks, of a much less tractable disposition, who have hitherto resisted all efforts of the Dutch Government to induce them to adopt any systematic cultivation. These remain in a ruder condition, but engage themselves willingly as occasional porters and laborers, for which their greater strength and activity well adapt them.
No doubt the system here sketched seems open to serious objection. It is to a certain extent despotic, and interferes with free trade, free labor and free communications. A native cannot leave his village without a pass, and cannot engage himself to any merchant or captain without a Government permit. The coffee has all to be sold to Government, at less than half the price that the local merchant would give for it, and he consequently cries out loudly against “monopoly” and “oppression.” He forgets, however, that the coffee plantations were established by the government at great outlay of capital and skill; that it gives free education to the people, and that the monopoly is in lieu of taxation. He forgets that the product that he wants to purchase and make a profit by, is the creation of the government, without whom the people would still be savages. He knows very well that free trade would, as its first result, lead to the importation of whole cargos of arrack, which would be carried over the country and exchanged for coffee. That drunkenness and poverty would spread over the land; that the public coffee plantations would not be kept up; that the quality and quantity of the coffee would soon deteriorate; that the traders and the merchants would soon get rich, but that the people would relapse into poverty and barbarism. That such is invariably the result of free trade with any savage tribe who possess a valuable product, native or cultivated, is well known, to those who have visited such people; but we might even anticipate from general principles that evil results (would happen. If it here is one thing rather than another (to which the grand law of continuity or development will apply, it is to human progress. There are certain stages through which society must pass in its onward march from barbarism to civilization. Now one of these stages has always been some form or other of despotism, such as feudalism or servitude, or a despotic paternal government; and we have every reason to believe that it is not possible for humanity to leap over this transition epoch, and pass at once from pure savagery to free civilization. The Dutch system attempts to supply this missing link, and to bring the people on by gradual steps to that higher civilization, which we (the English) try to force upon them at once. Our system has always failed. We demoralize and we extirpate, but we never really civilize. Whether the Dutch system can permanently succeed is doubtful, since it may not be possible to compress the work of ten centuries into one; but at all events, it takes nature as a guide, and is therefore more deserving of success, and more likely to succeed, than ours.
This is a long quotation, but it makes sense in the light of nearly one hundred years that have passed since it was written.
The Navy and its personnel know some thing of a system that is “to a certain extent despotic.” When he reads, “A native cannot leave his village without a pass,” many a reservist bluejacket and officer will shake his head and smile wryly. He knows what it is to live under the same system. And he also realizes that, with all its faults, it is necessary and gets the job done.
To sum up briefly, my thesis is this. The price of the former Japanese mandated islands has been too high, and their value too great to ever relinquish. The United States Navy is the proper agency to colonize and administer these islands, utilizing almost entirely components already a part of the naval establishment. The concept attributed by Wallace to the Dutch, that native populations are in effect children and should be dealt with as such, should be the foundation of our policy in bringing the natives of these islands eventually to our own standard of living. When, as in the Philippines and the case of the Chamorros on Guam, natives show a high degree of receptivity, the civilizing process does not take long.
*The successful accomplishment of the mission depends on the proper utilization of facilities now under control of Naval Occupation Forces; the genius of the Naval Military Government Program in properly applying the lessons of the great colonizing powers, notably the Dutch and English, plus the American genius for solving any problem seriously attacked; the success of the Medical Corps in stamping out yaws, malaria, and island ailments in the native populations; the adequate support provided for American families of naval personnel who elect to accept the challenge of this new frontier, administered by the officers placed in charge of the Naval Colonizing Section; and the quick tic with home, by mail and in person in emergency, with loved ones within the continental limits of the United States, provided by the Naval Air Transport Service.