Lifting the Bamboo Curtain: Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the Reading Course Here is a scenario that should be all too familiar to observers of contemporary international relations: a rogue state operating under an impenetrable veil of secrecy is suspected of illicit militarisation at the edge of its territory; an international inspection regime proves ineffective; startling allegations of impropriety are made at a key international forum; a conflict gathers. Familiar as this image might seem, the real-life scenario referred to here is not one of the twenty-first century, but of the interwar period.  This rogue state was neither Iraq nor North Korea, but Japan.  The failing inspection regime was operated by the League of Nations.  The allegation aired at the League: that Japan was fortifying a series of Micronesian islands which were held under a League mandate.1  It was a particularly provocative claim because any act of  fortification  or  militarisation  in  the  mandated  islands  was  explicitly  prohibited  by international law and a series of agreements signed by Japan.2 The mandate fortification allegation has been remarkably persistent.3  For more than seventy years, the extent to which Japan fortified or militarised the Caroline, Mariana and Marshall island groups of Micronesia during its two-decade trusteeship of the region has been a matter of considerable uncertainty and historical debate.  Indeed, for the better part of seventy years, the fortification issue has dominated the study of Japanese rule in Micronesia.   At various times since the accusation was first aired, it has been denied, revived, presumed true, reconsidered, and rejected: in short, there is much dissent ­ and much material of interest to the historian ­ within the historiography. The  purpose  of  this  essay  is  to  examine  the  fortification  historiography  and  trace  its development, providing a historiographical basis for a forthcoming thesis that compares ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 This allegation was first raised by the League's Permanent Mandates Commission in 1932: see League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission (hereafter: `LN-PMC'), Minutes of the twenty-second Session, (11 November, 1932): 114.  The charge was later raised by the LN-PMC in 1934 and again in 1935: see Minutes of the twenty-sixth Session, (6 November 1934) 90-94; and Minutes of the twenty-eighth Session, (2 November 1935): 127, 134. 2 Article 4 of Japan's mandate charter, issued on 17 December 1920 and based upon Article 22, Part 1 of the League of Nations Covenant stated that `no military or naval bases shall be established or fortifications   erected in the territory.' Article 19 of the Washington Naval Limitations Treaty of February 6, 1922 stipulated that `no new fortifications or naval bases shall be established in the territories and possessions specified; that no measures shall be taken to increase the existing naval facilities for the repair and maintenance of naval forces; and that no increase shall be made in the coast defenses'.   See Richard Dean Burns, `Inspection of the Mandates, 1919-1941,' Pacific  Historical Review 37, 1 (1968): 446-8.   The Convention between the United States and Japan of February 11, 1922 reiterated the pledge that Japan made in the League mandate agreement for the benefit of the United States, which was not party to the Treaty of Versailles.  See U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1922, vol II, (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938), 600-4.      3 Mark R. Peattie, Nan'y_: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 1988), 230; Burns, `Inspection of the Mandates,' 457. Page 2 of 19 Continued Mandated Islands, Page 3 Copyright 2006 nopukob.com