1. Examples of anthropologists’ discussion of tribes and chiefs in current international crisis areas include Philip Carl Salzman, Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (New York, 2008), Monsutti, Alessandro, “Anthropologizing Afghanistan: Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters,” Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (2013): 269–85,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hutchinson’s, Sharon Elaine “Nuer Ethnicity Militarized,” Anthropology Today 16, no. 3 (2000): 6–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Obviously, major differences distinguish recent U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan from Micronesia during and after the Pacific War. Our goal here is to reflect on the lessons of this often-forgotten American experience in nation-building.

2. While the authors have each conducted ethnographic and ethnohistorical work in different areas of Micronesia (see citations below), this article also relies on secondary sources, the work of wartime and postwar anthropologists and political scientists involved in proposing and critiquing U.S. policy in the Trust Territory.

3. Our discussion of “Micronesia” focuses on the former Japanese Mandate islands. It thus excludes Guam and Kiribati, which, as American- and British-held areas, respectively, have quite different colonial, wartime, and postwar histories. Note that the Marianas, first contacted by Europeans in 1521, have an even longer experience of global trade and colonialism.

4. Lindstrom, Lamont and White, Geoffrey M., “Introduction,” in Chiefs Today: Traditional Pacific Leadership and the Postcolonial State, ed. White, Geoffrey M. and Lindstrom, Lamont (Stanford, 1997), 1–3.Google Scholar

5. Anthropological research in Micronesia is described in Robert C. Kiste and Suzanne Falgout, “Anthropology and Micronesia: The Context,” in American Anthropology in Micronesia: An Assessment, ed. Robert C. Kiste and Mac Marshall (Honolulu, 1999).

6. Petersen, Glenn, Traditional Micronesian Societies: Adaptation, Integration, and Political Organization (Honolulu, 2009), 129, 131, 138.Google Scholar

7. On the colonial history of the region, see David Hanlon, “Patterns of Colonial Rule in Micronesia,” in Tides of History: The Pacific Islands in the Twentieth Century, ed. K. R. Howe, Robert C. Kiste, and Brij V. Lal (Honolulu, 1994); Francis X. Hezel, The First Taint of Civilization: A History of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in Pre-Colonial Days, 1521–1885 (Honolulu, 1983), and Strangers in Their Own Land: A Century of Colonial Rule in the Caroline and Marshall Islands (Honolulu, 1995).

8. On the Japanese era, see Peattie, Mark R., Nan’yo: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–1945 (Honolulu, 1988)Google Scholar. Micronesians’ wartime experiences are described in Lin Poyer, Suzanne Falgout, and Laurence M. Carucci, The Typhoon of War: Micronesian Experiences of the Pacific War (Honolulu, 2001), and Suzanne Falgout, Lin Poyer, and Laurence M. Carucci, Memories of War: Micronesians in the Pacific War (Honolulu, 2008), and cites therein.

9. Dorothy Richard, United States Naval Administration of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, vols. 1–3 (Washington, D.C., 1957), presents the official history of U.S. Navy administrations. Anthropologists in the military occupation and administration offer different views; see Falgout, Suzanne, “Americans in Paradise: Anthropologists, Custom, and Democracy in Postwar Micronesia,” Ethnology 14, no. 2 (1995): 99–111,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Kiste, Robert C. and Marshall, Mac, eds., American Anthropology in Micronesia: An Assessment (Honolulu, 1999)Google Scholar.

10. Hughes, Daniel T. and Lingenfelter, Sherwood G., eds., Political Development in Micronesia (Columbus, 1974), 5, 21.Google Scholar

11. Francis X. Hezel, Strangers in Their Own Land, 242–367, reviews the history of the TTPI; see also Poyer, Falgout and Carucci, Typhoon of War, 230–314.

12. Meller, Norman, The Congress of Micronesia: Development of the Legislative Process in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (Honolulu, 1969), 381–82.Google Scholar

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14. Useem, John, “Americans as Governors of Natives in the Pacific,” Journal of Social Issues 2, (1946): 39–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. The ambivalence is acknowledged in the 1948 USTT Handbook and in the work of Dorothy Richard, the navy’s own historian of the era. United States Navy, Handbook of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (Washington, D.C., 1948), 45 and passim; Richard, U.S. Naval Administration of the T.T.P.I., vol. 3, 388–93.

16. Petersen, Traditional Micronesian Societies, 143; Laurence M. Carucci, “Irooj Ro Ad: Measures of Chiefly Ideology and Practice in the Marshall Islands,” in White and Lindstrom, Chiefs Today; Julianne M. Walsh, “Imagining the Marshalls: Chiefs, Tradition, and the State on the Fringes of U.S. Empire” (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawaii, 2003).

17. Carucci, “Irooj Ro Ad,” 204–6.

18. Reprinted in Poyer, Falgout, and Carucci, Typhoon of War, 286.

19. Meller, Congress of Micronesia, 133–34.

20. Carucci, “Irooj Ro Ad,” 204.

21. Meller, Congress of Micronesia, 135–37, and “Micronesian Political Change in Perspective,” in Hughes and Lingenfelter, Political Development in Micronesia, 263–77.

22. Alexander Spoehr, Majuro: A Village in the Marshall Islands. Fieldiana: Anthropology, vol. 39 (Chicago, 1949); see also Walsh, “Imagining the Marshalls,” 209–10.

23. See, for example, Jon Fraenkel, “Oceania’s Political Institutions and Transitions,” in State, Society, and Governance in Melanesia (Canberra, 2010), and Walsh, “Imagining the Marshalls.”

24. Carucci, “Irooj Ro Ad,” 209.

25. J. L. Fischer, “The Role of the Traditional Chiefs on Ponape in the American Period” in Hughes and Lingenfelter, Political Development in Micronesia, 170–71.

26. Hughes, Daniel T., Political Conflict and Harmony on Ponape (New Haven, 1970).Google Scholar

27. Paul A. Dahlquist, “Political Development at the Municipal Level: Kiti, Ponape,” in Hughes and Lingenfelter, Political Development in Micronesia, 182–83; Eve Pinsker, “Traditional Leaders Today in the Federated States of Micronesia,” in White and Lindstrom, Chiefs Today, 150–82.

28. Fischer, “The Role of Traditional Chiefs,” 170–72.

29. Meller, Congress of Micronesia, 124–27.

30. Pinsker, “Traditional Leaders Today,” 165–71.

31. See, for example, Hughes, Daniel T., “Continuity of Indigenous Ponapean Social Structure and Stratification,” Oceania 53 (1982): 5–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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33. Lewis, J. L., Kusaien Acculturation, CIMA Report No. 17 (Washington, D.C., 1948)Google Scholar; Paul D. Schaefer, “Confess Therefore Your Sins: Status and Sin on Kusaie” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1976).

34. Pinsker, “Traditional Leaders Today,” 171–72.

35. Glenn Petersen, “A Micronesian Chamber of Chiefs? The 1990 Federated States of Micronesia Constitutional Convention,” in White and Lindstrom, Chiefs Today, 183–96.

36. Pinsker, “Traditional Leaders Today,” 171–72; Oliver Wortel, “Nature, Tradition on Minds of Kosraeans,” Marianas Variety, 25 July 2002, online at http://www.fsmgov.org/press/nw072502.htm

37. Poyer, Falgout, and Carucci, Typhoon of War, 292–94; Poyer, Lin, “Dimensions of Hunger in Wartime: Chuuk Lagoon, 1943–1945,” Food and Foodways 12, no. 2–3 (April–September, 2004): 137–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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39. Gladwin, Thomas, “Civil Administration on Truk: A Rejoinder,” Human Organization 9 (1950): 16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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41. Meller, Congress of Micronesia, 120–22.

42. Pinsker, “Traditional Leaders Today,” 162–65.

43. John Haglelgam, “Traditional Leaders and Governance in Micronesia” (Canberra, 1998); Francis X. Hezel, “Chuuk: Victim of Its Egalitarian Past,” Pacific Islands Report (Honolulu, 2004).

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48. Hunt et al., Micronesians of Yap, 171–73; Poyer, Falgout, and Carucci, Typhoon of War, 286–87, 327; Poyer, “Yapese Experiences,” 247–49.

49. Lingenfelter, “Administrative Officials,” 58–65; Meller, Congress of Micronesia, 152–56.

50. Lingenfelter, Yap, 190–222.

51. Lingenfelter, “Administrative Officials.”

52. Pinsker, “Traditional Leaders Today,” 161.

53. Petersen, Traditional Micronesian Societies.

54. Meller, Congress of Micronesia, 128–29.

55. Vidich, Arthur J., Political Factionalism in Palau: Its Rise and Development, CIMA Report no. 23 (Washington, D.C., 1949), 122.Google Scholar

56. Arthur J. Vidich, The Political Impact of Colonial Administration (New York, 1980; reprint of 1952 Ph.D. diss., Harvard University); Hezel, Strangers in Their Own Land, 277.

57. Robert McKnight, “Rigid Models and Ridiculous Boundaries: Political Development and Practice in Palau, circa 1955–1964,” in Hughes and Lingenfelter, Political Development in Micronesia, 38–53.

58. Roland Force, Leadership and Culture Change in Palau, Fieldiana: Anthropology, vol. 50 (Chicago, 1960); Meller, Congress of Micronesia.

59. Leonard Mason, “Unity and Disunity in Micronesia: Internal Problems and Future Status,” in Hughes and Lingenfelter, Political Development in Micronesia, 254.

60. Meller, Congress of Micronesia, 141–42. In Pohnpei, German policy divested chiefs of land rights, allotted individual titles, and took uncultivated land as government land, policies continued by Japan. In Palau, clans retained title to lands, with parcels registered to individuals. The Marshall Islands saw the least change, with a form of joint ownership by chiefs and commoners; colonial policy codified chiefs’ rights to revenue from resources on specific land parcels. Because of this interest in land, Meller writes, when American officials introduced democratic structures, Marshallese chiefs “had far more to protect through securing a place in the district legislature than did the Ponapean traditional leaders.”

61. Petersen, Traditional Micronesian Societies, 230–31.

62. Poyer, Lin, Falgout, Suzanne, and Carucci, Laurence M., “Micronesia’s Wartime Generation: Experiences and Memories,” Journal of Aging, Humanities, and the Arts 4, no. 4 (2010): 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. Fischer, “The Role of the Traditional Chiefs,” 169–70.

64. The development of handbooks and training schools for U.S. administrative personnel took time and faced challenges; see Kiste and Marshall, American Anthropology in Micronesia.

65. Meller, Congress of Micronesia, 122.

66. McKnight, “Rigid Models,” 34–41. Some American researchers and administrators were aware of these contradictions, even in the first years of occupation; see Falgout, “Americans in Paradise,” and Glenn Petersen, “Politics in Postwar Micronesia,” in Kiste and Marshall, American Anthropology in Micronesia, 145–95. Subsequent decades saw a substantial body of criticism of U.S. postwar policies.

67. For example, in the Marshall Islands, Laurence M. Carucci, “The Source of the Force in Marshallese Cosmology,” in The Pacific Theater: Island Representations of World War II, ed. Geoffrey M. White and Lamont Lindstrom (Honolulu, 1989), 73–96.

68. Useem, John, “Social Reconstruction in Micronesia,” Far Eastern Survey 15 (1946): 21–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69. For a review of constitutional development in the new nations, see Meller, Norman, “On Matters Constitutional in Micronesia,” Journal of Pacific History 15, no. 2 (1980): 83–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a survey of traditional leaders across the Pacific Islands, giving comparative context to the Micronesian cases, see Meller, Norman, “Traditional Leaders and Modern Pacific Island Governance,” Asia Survey 24 (1984): 759–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70. Force, Leadership and Culture Change in Palau, 112.

71. Pinsker, “Traditional Leaders Today.” Article V of the FSM constitution states: “Nothing in this Constitution takes away a role or function of a traditional leader as recognized by custom and tradition, or prevents a traditional leader from being recognized, honored, and given formal or functional roles at any level of government as may be prescribed by this Constitution or by statute.” States could set aside one senate seat for a traditional leader, and there was the option of later creation of a Chamber of Chiefs, but neither of these options has been implemented.

72. Carucci offers a detailed description of how this occurred for modern Marshall Islands chiefs in “Irooj Ro Ad.”

73. Fraenkel, “Oceania’s Political Institutions.”

74. Francis X. Hezel, “A Hibiscus in the Wind: The Micronesian Chief and His People,” Micronesian Counselor 20 (December 1997); Petersen, Traditional Micronesian Societies, 232.

75. Haglelgam, “Traditional Leaders and Governance.”