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Catastrophe on Peleliu: Islanders' Memories of the Pacific

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Catastrophe on Peleliu: Islanders' Memories of the Pacific > The Asia-Pacific War 60 Years On: history & memory Catastrophe on Peleliu: Islanders’ memories of the Pacific War The American invasion of Peleliu in September 1944 was one of the bloodiest and hardest-fought battles of the Pacific War. The 11,000 Japanese defenders dug over 500 caves into the island’s mountains and forced U.S. forces to spend 73 days blasting them 134°30’E out. In the end, only 300 Japanese survived and the island lay shattered and burned. The 850 native inhabitants had been evacuated before the fighting, but were devastated to find upon their return that their homeland had been churned into a wasteland. Stephen C. Murray trol of land, the scarcest and most valu- white coral deforested by fire and explo- able resource on any island. Kin groups sives, so barren and altered by military apanese and American perspectives are identified with particular parcels, construction that many refused to Ngaraard Jon the Pacific War and the Peleliu most of which are still held communal- believe it was truly their island. ‘We cried Babeldaob campaign have been recounted exhaus- ly, all of which are named and have sto- and cried’ one woman recalls. Their five tively, but the calamity the war visited on ries behind them: how they were villages and nearly all the tangible the ‘ad ra Beliliou, the people of Peleliu acquired and who lived on them. One’s reminders of their former lives - homes, - eviction from their homeland, their identity and history are inextricably con- council houses, burial platforms, olang’, struggle to survive the war, their efforts nected to place, to land, and to the tales piers, farms, even parcel boundary to rebuild and their painful postwar of that land. The landscape itself serves markers - had been demolished. Within memories - has largely been ignored. as the repository of a group’s history, the caves in the mountains lay thou- Koror My research in 2002-03 thus sought to through its named parcels and beaches, sands of unburied Japanese, whose spir- document the experiences of the gener- landmarks, and olang’. These are natu- its, Palauans believed, could harm the ation of Peleliu residents who survived ral or man-made features - stones, trees, living. With so much of Peleliu’s past Ulong Koror N the war, and to understand how they stone burial platforms, a garden - that residing in the human and natural land- remember that era and interpret its his- serve as mnemonic devices to recall scapes, their destruction meant that the torical meanings. important stories. It’s not surprising, war was not just one more stratum of Urukthapel then, that the war memories of the ‘ad history laid down on the previous 3,000 Rock Islands To do so one must first appreciate that ra Beliliou are strongly coloured by their years’ worth. Instead, it abraded much the people of Peleliu conceive of his- perspectives on what happened to their of the history that had come before; it Eil Malk tory differently from Japanese and lands as productive resources, as the obliterated everything except what sur- Americans, and use different meth- foundation of their social organization, vivors carried in their memories. ods to retain and transmit it. Second, and as bearer of their past. Palau because land is such a vital element in The American forces provided the the culture, people’s conceptions of War and survival returnees with quonset huts and food in land and the ways it was affected by For most of the 30 years that Japan ruled a new settlement, gestures much appre- 7°N the war provide the primary frame- Palau and Micronesia (1914-44), its ciated after the year of hardship. But the Peleliu work through which they structure interest in the colony was the exploita- Americans abandoned the airbase in their memories of war and consider tion of local resources. But as war 1947, leaving the people to fend for its aftermath. Their memories con- approached, Japan made the fateful deci- themselves on an island whose fishing trast markedly with those brought to sion to locate Palau’s main airfield on grounds had lost productivity and whose Angaur 1 5 10 15 20 km the island today by tourists from the Peleliu. Authorities uprooted two of the meager soil had been paved over, poi- two former belligerents. island’s five villages and seized their soned, and washed away. Gardening was lands for the facility. Two other villages confined to taro swamps, and fish were globalized economy today. Yet only the war, curious about a site where its scars Peleliu is one of the traditional political accepted these refugees, whose way of less plentiful than before the war. actual return to place will provide the remain so evident, an island once divisions of the Palau archipelago, life had so abruptly been wrenched from opportunity to renew ties to the one site deemed worthy of great sacrifice but which lies in the Pacific Ocean just them. Clans gave home sites and garden Postwar memories each person considers his true home, now insignificant to ‘history’. The native north of the equator and 550 miles east plots to the newcomers, and everybody Much of postwar life on Peleliu is com- the repository of his family’s history, and inhabitants and what the war meant to of the Philippines. Palau is a sovereign made awkward accommodation amidst prehended in residents’ vexations over source of his identity. them are superfluous to these pilgrim- nation that in 1994 signed a 50-year this unprecedented misfortune. land tenure systems disrupted by colo- ages, an attitude the islanders are well compact of free association with the nialism and war. Japan and the suc- After the United States opened Microne- aware of: ‘We’re invisible to outsiders’, U.S. Sixty years after the invasion, evi- Nobody anticipated the same fate would ceeding U.S. administration both sia to tourism in the 1960s, Peleliu one chief put it. dence of the conflict on Peleliu remains befall the whole island, but as American claimed half of Peleliu as government quickly attracted Japanese veterans and more visible than on any comparable air attacks mounted in intensity in mid- land. The U.S. effort to relinquish this bereaved families, who were particular- Japan and the United States have raised site in the Central Pacific. Today’s 575 1944, the entire population of Peleliu land to the public was done in a manner ly anxious to cremate the thousands of monuments honouring their dead and residents are clustered in a single village was evacuated. They were taken in by blamed for creating endless disputes remains in the caves. The island also declaring commitments to peace. The (an equal number live in Palau’s urban the people of Ngaraard, a village on a among clans, lineages, and individuals. became a magnet for right-wing nation- ‘ad ra Beliliou describe them as the olang’ centre, Koror), and to an outsider’s eye large island to the north that escaped This Gordian knot is slowly being alists, who erected a Shinto shrine and of the foreigners, stones that encode the rest of the island appears to be large- invasion. For the next 12 months the ‘ad untangled by Western-style Palauan monuments praising their fallen heroes. their memories of the war, their versions ly unused. Beneath the re-grown forests ra Beliliou hid in the jungles to escape courts that are now the sole source of Ever sensitive to matters affecting fam- of the past. The islanders respect those dotted with small gardens and taro pad- American air patrols that attacked all vis- legal title. People complain that deeply ilies, the islanders express great sympa- memories and grasp well their essence dies lie guns, fortifications, caves filled ible targets; gardening, gathering, and private family histories have to be thy toward those who lost kin there. - what the Imperial Army and the U.S. with weaponry (and in some, the fishing at night kept them one step revealed in public court proceedings to Nonetheless, off and on since the late Marines did to each other, and to Peleliu, unburied dead), and tons of unexplod- ahead of starvation. Some trekked to bolster land claims. 1960s they have prohibited the collec- in the autumn of 1944. Travellers to the ed ordnance. It is this seemingly ‘pris- other villages seeking relatives and food. tion of remains out of fear that once all island, by contrast, understand little of tine’ quality of the battlefield that draws This dark year is remembered as a phan- The five ancient villages have never been had been taken away, Japanese tourism, what happened to the native population history-minded travellers. tasmagoria of fear, hunger, illness, and rebuilt, a source of great distress to the and the vital income it produced, would engulfed by that catastrophe. Address- occasional sudden death, made all the elders as time removes the last people stop. When Japanese Diet officials ing the ignorance of such visitors, anoth- History and land worse by the uncertainty over what had who can remember the way of life and pressed to reverse the prohibition, the er chief, Obakle’ol, noted that ‘they are In the kin-based society of Palau, happened to their homeland in battle. the all-important physical features of the magistrate Saburo seized the chance to only here for a short time’. This gentle, knowledge of the past centres on his- communities. The reasons for delay are voice Peleliu’s resentment at the cava- considerate comment reveals Palauans’ tories of families and clans, especially The succour they received from other many, lack of capital for reconstruction lier treatment its citizens had endured particular conception of history and its on how they came to hold power or communities in Palau is not forgotten.
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