Federated States of MicronesiaMicronesia

People reached the Caroline Islands roughly 2,000 years ago, sailing outrigger canoes from island Southeast Asia and the islands to the south. The high islands (Pohnpei, Kosrae, Chuuk's lagoon peaks and Yap) could feed large chiefdoms, while the low atolls around them lived by fishing, taro pits and long-distance exchange. Navigation by stars, swells and birds tied the region together long before any map did.

On Pohnpei, a dynasty known as the Saudeleur ruled the whole island from about the 12th century. Its seat was Nan Madol, nearly a hundred artificial islets built on the reef from stacked basalt columns, with royal residences, tombs and ceremonial halls linked by canals. Oral history says the Saudeleur grew harsh and were overthrown by the culture hero Isokelekel, after which Pohnpei split into chiefdoms led by paramount chiefs, the Nahnmwarki, whose titles still carry weight today. On Kosrae, a similar walled centre grew at Lelu, on a small island off the main coast.

Spain claimed the Carolines in 1886 and built a fort and mission at Kolonia, whose wall still stands. After losing the war with the United States in 1898, Spain sold the islands to Germany, which pushed copra plantations and forced road labour. On Pohnpei the Sokehs people rose in 1910; the revolt was crushed, its leaders were executed and the community was exiled to Palau. Japan seized the islands at the start of the First World War and ran them under a League of Nations mandate, bringing tens of thousands of settlers, sugar and fishing businesses, schools and a naval build-up in Chuuk (then Truk).

After 1945 the islands became part of the UN Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands under US administration. English, American schooling and the dollar arrived, along with nuclear-age strategic interest in the whole region. In the 1970s the districts negotiated their future; Palau and the Marshall Islands chose separate countries, while Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae adopted a federal constitution in 1979. The Compact of Free Association took effect in 1986, giving independence with US defence, funding and the right to live and work in the United States. Its economic terms were renewed in 2023–24 for another two decades.

Chuuk Lagoon is a ring of reef about 60 km across with volcanic islands inside, a natural harbour that Japan turned into its main forward base in the central Pacific. Airfields, fuel depots, seaplane bases and gun positions covered the islands, and the Combined Fleet anchored in the lagoon for long periods in 1942 and 1943. Allied planners called it the Gibraltar of the Pacific, though by early 1944 the heaviest warships had already moved away.

On 17 and 18 February 1944, US carrier aircraft struck the lagoon in Operation Hailstone. Over two days they sank dozens of merchant ships, auxiliaries and smaller warships and destroyed hundreds of aircraft. Further raids followed, and the base was then bypassed and left to starve until the end of the war. Many of those killed were never recovered, and some wrecks still hold human remains.

The sunken fleet now lies at depths from a few metres to more than 60 m. Freighters such as the Fujikawa Maru and the San Francisco Maru carry trucks, tanks, aircraft parts, shells and sake bottles in their holds, and coral has grown over masts and guns. The lagoon is one of the world's great wreck-diving sites, and the whole collection is protected by FSM and Chuuk State law as a historic site and war grave.

Diving has its own ethics here. Removing anything is illegal, penetration dives need training, and fuel oil still leaks from some wrecks, which worries both islanders and conservationists. Japanese veterans' groups have held memorial services, and remains recovered by authorised teams are returned to Japan. Above water, Weno has bunkers, a lighthouse and guns that make a short land tour between dives.

Yap is the most visibly traditional state. Villages are linked by stone paths, meeting houses stand on stone platforms, and many men and women still wear the thu (loincloth) or grass and woven skirts at ceremonies. Society is organised by land: each estate carries a rank, and people's standing flows from the land they belong to. Outer-island communities stretching east towards Chuuk were once linked to Yap by a tribute and exchange system known as the sawei.

Yap's best-known object is rai, stone money. Discs of limestone, some taller than a person, were quarried in Palau, hundreds of kilometres away, and brought back by canoe, and later by the ship of the Irish-American trader David O'Keefe in the 19th century. Their value depended on size, workmanship and the story of how they were won; a stone lost at sea during transport could still be owned and traded because everyone knew it existed.

Rai still change hands in marriages, land deals and apologies, though ownership is recorded by memory rather than by moving the stone. Rows of discs, called stone-money banks, line village paths. For visitors, the rules are simple: go with a guide or permission, pay the village fee, carry something in your hand as a sign of peaceful intent, and never touch or climb the stones.

Custom law sits alongside the constitution. Chiefs' councils advise on tradition, and the state protects village rights to land and reef. Yap Day each March brings dance competitions and games that are among the best chances to see living culture, and the state's reefs, with resident manta rays in the channels, have made careful tourism a small but real part of the economy.

On Pohnpei, the evening belongs to sakau, the local kava. Pepper roots are pounded on a flat stone with rhythmic strikes that carry across villages, then squeezed through hibiscus bark into a coconut-shell cup. In ceremonies the first cups go to the highest titles in strict order; in town, roadside sakau bars serve it by the cup to workers after dark. It is thicker and stronger than most Pacific kava, and it slows everything down.

Christianity arrived with American Protestant missionaries in the 1850s and Spanish and German Catholics later, and it now shapes the week. Kosrae, converted almost entirely by Congregationalists, keeps the strictest Sunday; Chuuk and Pohnpei split between churches; church choirs and feasts are the centre of community life. Custom and church often reinforce each other, with titles, feasts and funerals serving both.

Migration is the other constant. The Compact lets FSM citizens live and work in the US without a visa, and tens of thousands have moved to Guam, Hawaii, Arkansas, Oregon and beyond. Money sent home supports many families, and flights on the island-hopper are full of relatives travelling for funerals and holidays. The population at home has fallen since 2000, raising hard questions about schools, land and the future of island languages.

Climate change adds pressure. Low atolls face king tides, salt in taro pits and drought, and the national government has made sea-level rise a central issue in its diplomacy. Visitors will not see this directly in the towns, but on the outer islands and in conversation it is never far away.