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Paradise with Rough Edges

about the islands of Micronesia


TIME Magazine - Time Inc. - Jan 16, 1978
A Time article written when the islands of Micronesia were still united as one under the UN Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

Welcome to dropouts, bureaucrats and bone pickers

To get the flavor of America's far-flung Pacific territories, TIME Correspondent David De Voss island-hopped for 2½ weeks. His impressions:


"Ladies and gentlemen," the intercom Li crackles, "out of the left side of the cabin are the remains of the Japanese Imperial Fleet." Banking sharply into the sunset, the Air Micronesia 727 circles the Truk lagoon. Coral reefs color the water in pastels of orange, yellow and green, interspersed with the darker shapes of sunken hulls. "It was on Feb. 16, 1944, that we spotted 'em," the voice continues enthusiastically. "Our fighters dive-bombed all day, and next morning when they finished mopping up, more than 60 ships were on the bottom." Only after a second turn around the exposed mast of the aircraft transport freighter Fujikawa Maru does the plane begin its descent.

Air Micronesia—"Air Mike," as it is known locally—is the pony express of the Pacific. Three times each week the airline's two jets, both coated with Teflon to fight the corrosive effects of salty coral runways, hop among Micronesia's six island airports on Truk, Kwajalein, Yap, Ponape, Majuro and Palau. It is a measure of the region's isolation—the nights range up to 1,451 miles nonstop—that no plane travels without a mechanic and spare parts. Says Captain Lee Minors, 43, who prepped for atoll landings on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Hornet in the 1950s: "This is the last place in the world where flying is fun. No fancy strobe lights or air controllers out here. Just dots that shimmer toward you through the void."

Most of the dots, and all of the void, are of vital concern to the U.S. military. Unless they have specific clearance, Air Mike passengers are barred from leaving the plane during refueling stops on Johnston, a storage dump for poisonous gas; nobody gets off at Kwajalein, a target for missiles test-fired from California. Says Commander David Burt, Navy liaison to the trust territory government: "The fact that they're smack dab in the middle of the ocean makes all these islands important."

They also have a flavor of 19th century colonialism. On Kwajalein, 500 natives often perform jobs of equal status with those of the 3,000 Americans, but are forbidden access to the golf course, swimming pool, free movies and subsidized food available to the outsiders. For security reasons, only Americans can live on the island. Every night the natives must commute by boat three miles to Ebeye, a slum island where 7,000 people are segregated on just 73 acres.

In addition to controlling Kwajalein, Johnston, Midway and Wake islands, the military has reserved substantial acreage in Palau and the Marianas. The highest naval profile is on Guam, where two-thirds of the island—including the best beach, the only lake and the one patch of tillable soil—remains off limits to the population save for 8,800 U.S. servicemen and Pentagon civilian employees.


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