Marshall IslandsṂajeļ

The Marshall Islands form two parallel chains, Ratak (sunrise) in the east and Ralik (sunset) in the west, 29 atolls and five solitary islands across a huge area of ocean. People arrived about two thousand years ago and learned to live on land with thin soil, little fresh water and no hills. Breadfruit, pandanus, coconut, arrowroot and fish sustained them, and food preservation such as fermented breadfruit carried them through droughts.

Marshallese navigators were among the most skilled in the Pacific. They made stick charts from palm ribs and shells, showing how ocean swells bend and meet around atolls. The charts were teaching tools, memorised on land rather than carried at sea, where navigators felt the swell patterns through the hull of their canoes. Traditional canoe building and sailing are now being revived by a Majuro training programme.

Society is organised around matrilineal clans. Land passes through the mother's line, and every parcel has three layers of rights: the iroij (chief), the alap (head of the lineage) and the rijerbal (the people who work it). Land cannot be sold outright to foreigners, and even in Majuro most plots are held under this system. For a visitor, this is why every beach belongs to someone and why permission and small fees are normal.

Christian missions arrived from Hawaii in 1857, and the church became central to community life, with choirs, feasts and Gospel Day in December. First-birthday parties, kemem, are the great family feasts, where hundreds of guests eat and every visitor takes food home.

Germany declared a protectorate in 1885 and ran the islands through the Jaluit Company, which traded copra and taxed islanders in dried coconut. Jaluit became the colonial capital, with stores, churches and a small German settlement. In 1914 Japan took the islands and, under a League of Nations mandate, brought settlers, schools and, in the 1930s, a secret military build-up.

By 1941 Japan had airfields and seaplane bases on Kwajalein, Maloelap, Wotje, Mili, Jaluit and Enewetak. In early 1944 US forces seized Majuro almost unopposed and fought hard battles at Kwajalein and Enewetak. The other Japanese bases were bypassed and bombed, and their garrisons, cut off from supply, suffered famine until 1945; Marshallese living on those atolls suffered with them.

The relics remain. On Taroa in Maloelap, Japanese fighter wrecks, a power plant and gun emplacements lie in the palms. Wotje and Mili have guns and bunkers; Jaluit has the ruins of its seaplane base. Majuro itself kept the US airstrip and grew into the modern capital around it.

In 1946 the United States asked the 167 people of Bikini to leave their atoll so it could test atomic weapons 'for the good of mankind'. They were moved to Rongerik, where they nearly starved, then to Kwajalein and finally to Kili, a single island without a lagoon. Over the next twelve years the US exploded 67 nuclear devices at Bikini and Enewetak, including the largest American test ever.

On 1 March 1954 the Castle Bravo test, at about 15 megatons, was far larger than predicted. The wind carried fallout over inhabited Rongelap and Utirik, where children played in the white ash. Islanders suffered burns, and later thyroid diseases and cancers; Rongelap was resettled too soon and evacuated again in 1985. Japanese fishermen on the Lucky Dragon were hit too, which turned the test into a global story.

Enewetak's people were also displaced. Waste from the clean-up was sealed under the concrete Runit Dome, which is now cracked and threatened by rising seas. A Nuclear Claims Tribunal awarded compensation that was never fully paid, and the issue remains central to relations with the US; the renewed Compact includes money that the Marshallese government links to this legacy. Bikini Atoll was listed by UNESCO in 2010.

For visitors, the story is best approached in Majuro, through the museum, the 1 March remembrance day and conversation, gently. Most families have some link to the displaced atolls, and many feel the story is still unfinished.

The Marshall Islands became self-governing in 1979 and fully independent in 1986 under the Compact of Free Association. The US provides defence and grants, keeps the missile-testing range at Kwajalein, and lets Marshallese live and work in the US without visas. The Compact's economic terms were renewed for 20 years in 2023–24.

Migration has reshaped the nation. Tens of thousands of Marshallese live in the US, with large communities in Springdale, Arkansas, and in Hawaii and Washington. The home population has fallen, and families spread across the Pacific send money home and fly back for funerals, kemem and Christmas.

Climate change is the existential issue. Most land is less than two metres above sea level; king tides already wash over roads and graves in Majuro, and saltwater spoils wells and taro pits. The government has studied raising islands, building sea walls and relocating, and has pushed hard in climate negotiations. Poet Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner's address to the UN in 2014 made the islands' case to a global audience.

Majuro itself is a thin strip: the road runs for about 50 km from the airport area to Laura with the lagoon on one side and the ocean on the other, so close in places that both are visible at once. That view explains the country's politics better than any statistic.