Marshall Islands

The Marshall Islands are two parallel chains of coral atolls across the central Pacific, Ratak, ‘sunrise’, to the east and Ralik, ‘sunset’, to the west. An independent republic, the country is freely associated with the United States under a compact. Each atoll is a ring of narrow islets around a lagoon, vast at Kwajalein, and the land barely rises above the sea, so storm waves can wash across inhabited islets. Dry northern atolls are left to seabirds.

Micronesian voyagers settled the atolls by two thousand years ago, steering by stick charts, frames of palm ribs tied with shells that marked islands and the bend of ocean swells. The name honours John Marshall, a British captain who passed in 1788. German rule from 1885 gave way to Japanese in 1914. Between 1946 and 1958 the United States tested nuclear weapons at Bikini and Enewetak, and fallout from the Bravo test of March 1954 fell on Rongelap. The compact brought independence in 1986.

Land passes down the mother’s line, and every Marshallese belongs to a clan whose chiefs, the iroij, hold rights over it. Missionaries reached Ebon in 1857, and church choirs fill Sunday. Women weave pandanus into mats and the handbags of Bikini islanders resettled on Kili, and jekaro, sap tapped from coconut palms, is drunk or boiled into syrup. Compact funds, tuna licences, copra and a vast ship registry, whose flag flies on tankers that never come near the islands, pay the bills.