The American “strategic trusteeship” of Micronesia, awarded by the United Nations after the Japanese defeat in World War II, is today giving way to a new political status for the islands. Tucked under the wing of the Federal Government since 1947—first as a ward of the Navy and* then of the Interior Department—the two thousand islands and atolls extending over three million-square miles of the Western Pacific are familiar only to those Americans old enough to have followed news of the war in the Pacific and of early A-bomb tests.

The Micronesian chain begins with the Marshalls, 2,200 miles southwest of Hawaii—Bikini, Enewetak, and Kwajalein are here—and ends with the U.S. Territory of Guam, 1,600 mile east of Manila. To the west of the Marshalls are the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM)—Truk and Yap among them. Above Guam stretch the islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), and below, the Republic of Palau.