Conflicted Childhoods in the South Seas: The Failure of Racial Assimilation in the Nan'yo

~'f w-. -------------------------~; . Conflicted Childhoods in the South Seas: ~-The Failure of Racial Assimilation in the Nanyo

1: BRUCE MAKOTO ARNOLD•

~be Japanese empire's attempt to establish a formal schooling system within icronesia beginni1zg in 1918 followed similar East Asian attempts. The

&6jten:sible purpose of these schools was to fu!fi/l Japan's League mandate "'·iibfigatiom to civilize and educated the natives. However, the real purposefor '0these schools was to create a marginalized indigenous population that would aid 'i]apan in its overseas commercial and political goals. This research demonstrates ·· -· at the marginalization of the nati'l.!e Micronesian children actually hindered

Japanese state's abilities to transform the indigenous population into second'?.t/ass cilium.

I ·<;:- .

, . 'i_._~AJ--· __ • ~ter the :esolution of the F~rst World War, t_housands of ~mall .:> tslands m the central Pacific Ocean remamed largely msu-_,;' . ated from the wave of colonial expansion that had already ~E~onsumed larger countries, islands, and kingdoms throughout the l ::;t>acific Rim. Spain and Germany had laid claims in this vast area-

l~now known as Micronesia-but outside of some nascent attempts

"-fo exploit the region economically, both colonial powers generally ~ignored the native people inhabitants of the region's islets .and atolls.

r/;.~ Unlike those Western nations, Japan's interest in the region had

l~gun even before Commodore Matthew C . Perry steamed into :E_·. do_Bay in 1~53 t~ compel the ~hogunate to end over ?5? years of ,self-Imposed 1solatwn. By that hme, many forward-thinking lead

~~~rs in Japan saw the economic, political, and defensive benefits of ~f'":expansion into the "south seas." When the Japanese empire came Jt ln __ t o possession of the islands after the First World War, Japan was ~(already a regional colonial power with formalized imperial policies. ~.!he~e policies w_ere base~ o~ simil:U: European notio~s of e:'Pan~i s10rusm, but also mcluded md1genous 1deas about Japans place m the ib ~;;.•

II.-B~cc Makoto A rnold is an M.A. Candidate at Louisiana State University ahd ; . __ Agricultural and Mechanical College (Baton Rouge, Louisiana).

~· ~

So 'CI:It: T\JP"J'S HlSTORJCAL R£Vl2W

region as a hegemonic power. Japan's colonial rhetoric was steeped in Japanese-born and adopted forms of philosophy, history, religion and views of social status, culture, and race. Japan's newly-acquired "south seas" possessions were not another testbed for its colonial philosophy, but the first opportunity to implement that system in a region where realities of race, culture, distance, and international goals wildly diverged from Japan's previous imperial experiences in Korea and Formosa, where the native population were viewed as historically and visibly East Asian. At the center of this experiment were the Micronesian children, who were ostensibly guaranteed an education by the League of Nations mandate system that governed Japan's Pacific Island territories.

Historians have generally agreed that the system developed by the Japanese colonial administration was hardly about education at all. Mark Pettie summarizes the conventional view, writing that the developed system was a "showpiece to demonstrate Japan's commitment to its mandate obligations," when in effect its true function was "a means to perpetuate Japanese rule and to keep the indigenous population in a state of perpetual dependence.''1 While this · is generally true, the reality of the system was much more personal to the children of the South Seas islands. Through the Japanese educational structure, the Japanese overseas government in Micronesia went to great lengths to root out indigenous soci.al, political, and cultural institutions and replace them with a Japanese system designed to bolster Japanese commercial desires in the region. At its worst this development exposed native youth to harsh living condi-. tions and a militaristic foreign ideology that did not resemble their peoples' traditional beliefs. Additionally, measurable results of edu- .. cational instruction were limited by the Japanese administration's lax system of controls over its teachers, the denial of support for continued schooling after graduation, the inability to create an academic environment relevant to the indigenous population, and the J apanese's refusal to see Micronesians and their children as anything beyond primitive and nearly unteachable.

H owever, the Japanese view of their Micronesian charges allowed the native Micronesian children to carry on with theirtraditions, history, language, and culture--unlike the children who were educated in Japan's East Asian colonies. Even with their dubious and self-serving

ean.flicted Childhf)O(/s in th~ South Seas

the Japanese state and its colonial education system were inefbecause the Japanese could not move past their beliefs on race

assimilation. By understanding the Japanese ~tate's atten:-pts to the children of the South Seas in companson to the1r East

colonies we can see that instead of marginalizing Micronesian .• children, the J~panese system empowered them by overlooking their ·agency and the resilience of their indigenous customs.

Ruling Through Race and Class

Japan acquired its South Seas possess_ions fo~ally from Article 22 of the League of N ations Covenant (mcluded m the Treaty of Versailles and ratified on 10 January 1920), which created a mandate. trustee system for former German territories, "owing to the spare

·. ness of their population or their small size, or their remoteness from ·the centers of civilization." This "Class C" mandate-known colloquially to the Japanese as the Na~'yo ("so~th seas")-included o;er 1 400 of the Micronesian Islands m a reg10n of the western Pacific of over three million total square miles with an area roughly 1,~00

: roiles from north to south, and 2,500 miles east to west. Consisting of the Marianas, the Marshalls, and the Carolines, the J~p~ese island possessions began 600 miles to the west of the Philippmes, and roughly 5,000 miles to the west of San Francisco. z

The islands' Japanese colonial government, the Nan'yo-cho, was headed by a governor, headquartered at Koror, Palau, who reported

' directly to the Japanese Prime Minister. The entire _mandate was bro. ken into five districts (Mariana, Yap, Central Carolines, Eastern Car. olines, and Marshalls), each with its own branch governor.

3 Further-

more the seven-article mandate gave the "Emperor ofJapan ···full pow:r of administration and legislation over the territory~ in order to "promote to the utmost the material and moral well-bemg and the social progress of the inhabitants."4 The Japanese were not allowed to fortify the islands with military bases; slave trade and forced la~r were prohibited (the latter with a few excepti~ns), as was the tr~ing of natives for militaristic purposes outs1de of peacek~p~ng. Additionally, the mandate stipulated rights to freedom of relig10n, including the right for missionaries from any denomi~tion to n:avel freely among the islands. Although the ~an~ate. offictally p:oVlded

··benevolent goals for the Nan'yo's occupatlon, lt did not proVIde any

"l'HE TtJFTS HJSTORlCAL REVI~'W

guidelines for how the natives were to be viewed racially or culturally by the Japanese. ; .

Japan's colonial-era rhetoric, like that of other imperial powers, · . was steeped in the language of race. Even before Japan started to · , . spread its influence beyond its home islands, their language ofjusti- .. '· fication relied on both indigenous Japanese and imported inferences, notions, and conceptions of racial and cultural superiority. Historian Louise C. Young noted three mod~rn phases of homegrown and external Japanese adaptations of race theory beginning in the "late nineteenth century when Confucian ideas of proper place in social hierarchies and Shinto beliefs in the divine ancestry of the Japanese people were overlaid by the framework of Western racial science.» These Western imports included the concept of Social Darwinism · .·· and the "European confusion between national, ethno-linguistic, .. and phenotypical definitions of race."·1 Later, as·the Japanese state .· formalized their administration of their colonies, "debates over , · whether it was possible and appropriate to J apanize colonial subjects . set in motion a process of defining and articulating the nature of dif- • ference between Japanese and other Asians in a colonial context."" .. · The third phase was "the enthusiastic embrace of the idea of racial · assimilation," which was "justified by the blend of mythohistotical, Confucian, and pseudoscientific construction of race that had evolved over the previous half century."'~ These views of race had a · profound effect on Japan's administration of the Nan 'yo, particularly · since it was an overseas possession, drastically different in compari~ ·. son to its mainland continental colonies. ·

TI1e primary feature that distinguishes Japanese connner1ta1 and "overseas" expansion is not the interstitial existence of between Japim and its colonies, but the perceived gap between the • racial characteristics of the Japanese and its colonial subjects. sense of racial alienation was exacerbated by the distance from the Nan 'yo to the home islands of Japan. In the case of Japan's continen~ .. tal possessions, the primary race over which the Japanese reigned_ was Asian, whereas in its overseas colonies, the natives were not · Classified as santo-kokomi, or "third class persons','' Micronesians . · were considered uncivilized and· not perceived as hearty or hard- .· ·. working stock. Therefore, the Japanese saw them as unfit to contribute substantially to the region's economy, unlike the Chinese (For- .•. ·

Conflicted Childhoods in the S(JU/h SeM

· mosans), Koreans, and even Okinawans who were, at the very least, ·. · of the A sian race. 8 Initial reports to the League of Nations were · in the language of racial stratification, and revealed the J apa-

prejudices and an overall lack of willingness to see the native ·-t~~···"U'~·- as anything other than uncivilized, abjectly backwards, and unsuited for intellectual pursuits such as government . . · The first report to the League, submitted in 1921, indicated, at

· · rhetorically, that the Japanese understood their mandate obliga-, and highlighted their efforts to bring the region into modernity. • Early reports were carefully worded, knowing full well that they ~ould be viewed critically by the rest of the world. Schools were established

the islands and Japanese medical professionals were instructed to treat and cure any illnesses or diseases, and to instruct the natives

modern hygienic standards.9 The Japanese strove to improve the lives of the natives by promoting livestock production and the

. 'elimination of pests. However, by the next year, the Japanese began ·to use the Spencerian rhetoric of race and societal development to

the limited educational opportunities available to the natives. the Japanese described the Nan'yo as a place where human

devel~oprne111t was at such an infantile state that the natives would not able to benefit from higher education in the least. Instead, upper

,,, , .... ~.v·u school could be "established for practicing education relating agriculture, carpentry, and other manual arts."10 In 1933, the Japa

were reported to the League that some groups, particularly those ·m•mu1 u,,,.; the region around Yap in the Western Carolines were "sav

whom it was rather difficult to keep in order."11 Correspondingly, .~i·-'""~·4·~ felt if the natives were trained for administrative posts, their

social status would marginalize them from their own people, opted natives from taking civil posts. The Nan'yo-chii ~gan to

1111J'1"'""'" its formal education doctrine even before recelVlng the mandate, and had built their system on top of tomin gakko

\•••·•uu..... school), which had been constructed early on by occupynaval forces. These schools were meant to educate and civilize the

. 'Educating the Nan'yo

their core, these public schools were similar to Japan's other coloschools. They demonstrated that the Japanese were benevolent

iH£ 'l'UFTS HlSTOA I CAL ll.E\'l:kW

occupiers who labored to bring the people of the Nim'yo into civilized fold of nations. The 1922 report to the League ~""·""'"'11ze<1 the goals of the system:

The objective of natives' schools is to enable native children to •: · enjoy the benevolence of his Majesty the Emperor of Japan, to teach the Japanese language, to give moral · training to ordinary knowledge and art necessary to life.13

In later reports, the stated goals of the educational system were left . largely unchanged, but the reports were amended to inform the · League that Japan sought "the bestowal on children of moral education as well as such knowledge and capabilities as are indispensable to the advancement and improvement of their lives, attention being" · simultaneously paid to their physical development."14 Clearly, the Japanese colonial administration was well aware that the League was . watching their progress and they intended to show their serious- . ness for the mandate's health by civilizing the next generation of : Micronesians.

From April1 to March 31, 1923, "Children not habitually using .·· the Japanese language"15 (Nan'yo natives) were educated in public schools that began to appear in the most populated cities of a particular region (kogakko, which differed . from Japanese "elementary schools," which were set aside for "children habitually using the Japanese language"). 1~ Kogakko offered a standardized curriculum approved by the Japanese Bureau of Education. Racially Japanese teachers-who were ostensibly required to have the same qualifications as an elementary schoolteacher in Japan-were aided by native-speaking assistants who acted as translators.17 Assistants were chosen after they were given a character assessment and a test that gauged their proficiency in eight fundamental academic subjects, including Japanese.1s Initially, the Japanese established some three~ year schools (honka), relying on a quota system to select regional males, eight years or older, to receive instruction. Months later, girls were encouraged to enroll and the system became co,:-educational. Soon thereafter, the Nan'yo-cho added two years of tipper-division courses (hoshuka) for a minority of students who showed promise at the lower division. A small number of students who were fifth grade graduates were then selected to travel to one of two carpentry

within the mandate or one of several agriculrural stations they received vocational educations. 19

•

In the lower-division public school, teachers nommally devoted one-half of a student's twenty-four hour weekly

to Japanese language instruction. Stud~nts studied ~th and written Japanese using the languages two sylla~anes

and hiragana) and the Chinese-character-based Ideosystem (kanji}. The intended goals for teaching Japanese was:

to teach ordinary words, characters in daily use and easy written language; to make the pupils fluent in the practical app~~ation of what they have been taught; to foster in them the abihty to express themselves correctly in the language, e~pecially to enable them to acquire such degree of mastery as w1~ ena?le ;hem to experience no hindrance in using the language m daily life, special stress being laid on practice ... 211

By 1922 the Nan'yo-cho established seventeen public schools that . enrolled '1 432 males and 784 females taught by thirty-eight Japanese teachers (twenty-three male and fifteen female) and eighteen

.·· · assistants. By the outbreak of Japan's war on mainland China · in 1937, twenty-four public schools existed within the_ mandate that employed sixty Japanese teachers and twe~ty'-four n~u;~ translator/

.. 'assistants who taught 3,097 pupils {2,448 m lower-dJV1SlOD and 649 ' in upper-division courses ).21 At that time, some 21.8 percent of the . Nan'yo's male and 18.7 percent of its females had reportedly been

educated within the systern.22

In addition to their language studies, first graders supposedly ~derwent one hour of "morals" training per week. four hours of

. ··•· arithmetic, one hour of drawing, two hours of singing, two hours of . ·•· .. physical exercise, and an hour each of"manual work," agricul~, and · ·.· housekeeping.23ln the second and third grades, lesson plans stipulated · that students learn to count up to 1,000 and subtract, add, multiply, and . divide any numbers within this range. Japa~~se lan~age instruction

continued to promote and advance compos1tto~, calligraphy, conversation, and reading comprehension through third grade. If a student went on to the upper division, instructors were supposed to empha

. ·. size practical skills such as agriculture, houseke~ping, and handicrafts, · ·· which changed the course structure somewhat . . The one hour each of

86 TH~ TUFTS HUTORICAL .M.~Vl.EW

morals, drawing, singing, and physical education along with the four hours of arithmetic (using numbers up to 10,000) would remain, but language instruction dropped to ten hours, and manual work, agricui- .· •.. ture, and housekeeping were changed to four hours apiece. Throughout the course, the only textbooks students received were Japanese . · readers, and teachers could choose to omit subjects, at their discretion, if they believed that they were not necessary.2; In addition to the . standard school curriculum, Nan'yo, students celebrated Kigensetsu Day (the date of Japan's founding), the birthdays of the both emperors Meiji and Hirohito, and New Year's Day. The staff and students assembled ~o sing the national anthem and other songs appropriate ·.· to that holiday and to receive a lecture from the principal about the . significance of the day.26

The Realities ofNan'yo Public Schools

Although the Nan'yo's schools were certainly organized on paper, their reality differed wildly in concept and execution. Pedagogy focused on drill and rote memory, which was common throughout the Japanese empire. The use of corporal punishment and harsh discipline were also brought to the islrui.ds from Japan's coritinen- ·• tal possessions. Oral history from the island is rife with children's complaints of frequent beatings, slaps, and strikes upon the head .· with objects such as sticks.27 In one instance, a student was "slapped until his face was 'covered in blood'." for making · an unauthorized visit to his home island and was later forced to stand out in the sun. as punishment on several occasions.28 One Palauan boy summarized · his experience within the education system succinctly:

Vernacular was completely eliminated from the curriculum. Students were punished if they spoke their native tongue. Most subjects were taught by rote-memorizing. Group reading was a common way of teaching reading. Corporal punishment was the usual way of discipline and school children were slapped or hit on the head with the fist or bamboo if they misbehaved.29

· The native teaching assistants could not intervene, since they were under the supervision of the primary Japanese instructor.

In theory, schooling was supposed to become universal, but pub~ lie schools could not meet demand and never accepted the full num-

. . omfticted Childhoods in the South &as

ber of eligible students available at any one time. On Saipan, which i;;· ..• ,ro.rdt:CI one of the best attendance records, approximately 68% of

Saipanese children were in school~ 1923; ~s figure had risen 87.55% by 1935.30 Students, except m rare. orcumstance~, were

'l>..exot:cu:a to provide their own food and lodgmg, further d1scour-. 'aging some from attending. When a student was acce~ted . he or · she stayed at home, but if a student was from an outer 1sland ~d · located to a district school, he or she would generally lodge Wlth r~ rives If a relative was not available, the local chief was often

· :a;ped ~s the de-focto guardian for un-sponsored children.31

And if these conditions were not enough, nearly all of the ~lassroo~s were crowded, often with upwards of eighty stu~ents, w~1ch was m st~rk

· ontrast to many of the places where the children hailed from, wh1ch ~ . u may not have even had e1ghty people.

. - On Truk, the Japanese opened the region's first p~blic school on the island ofDubon in 1922. Upper grades of the publtc schools were

· to emphasize agricultural subjects, but t~e r~ality for the students on . Truk was that this "meant mostly working m a vegetable gard~n f~~

the teachers and was not regarded by the students as educatiOn .. For the most part, islanders quickly despised their agricultural dut1es because the most common Japanese fertilizer, human excrement, was considered foul and disgusting to the native population.

34 Although

taught for four hours a week, mathematics never advanced beyond simple arithmetic; those who graduated from the fi~ ~rade were supposed to know how to use fra~ons, but research mdicated that few did.35 One researcher was surpnsed to find that a Trukese graduate had difficulties using fractions to "to figure out how much [a] trader owed them for their bag of dried coconut meat."

36

. Although Japanese language instruction constituted .ov~r half ~f a lower-division student's course load on paper, there 1s little eVIdence to demonstrate that that natives were able to master it. The Japanese reported to the League that they expected students who went through both the lower and upper-d~s~ons w?uld have a firm grasp of the Japanese language, but the realines of life on ~he mandate did litde to promote its proper usage of the language.

3' Trukese

children were generally poor speakers of the language as few could distinguish between voiced and "u~voiced ~ons?nants, and woul~ characteristically mispronounce h by leavtng 1t out altogether.

88 TU~ TUFTS JIJ S TOR I CAl. RE VI tW

T hus, the word for "bee," hachi, would be pronounced by a Trukese · child identically to the word for "taste," aji. Additionally, it was found that most of the Trukese students who had graduated from . the system could barely read a newspaper, much less any directives ·.· · · issued by the N an'yo- cho.39

Some Japanese administrators expressed sympathy for the natives' plight. Their reports, which often contrasted with official League reports, demonstrated that the natives had more potential than the Nan'yo-cho credited them. Yanaihara Tadao, a colonial scholar sent to observe the mandate as a member of the Permanent Mandate Commission, opined that the consensus belief that the native islanders could not be educated was unfounded. Yanaihara believed that the islands' natives only appeared backward because . ·· "their lack of cultural background, [their lack] of opportunities for mental development, their poor and insufficient nourishment, and · · their low resistance to diseases."40 H e further stated that "the natives of the south seas . . . are despised as inactive and averse to hard . work," to which he replied "these failings . . . are not necessarily to be regarded as their intrinsic racial characteristics, but as merely reflective of the political and social conditions under which they live and of the stage of their cultural development."41 Yanaihara opined that the great natural resources afforded by the verdant tropical region provided the islanders with little motivation to labor as hard as they did once "the western powers . . . set their yoke of slavery upon" them.42 H e further went on to assess that the school system, in general, graduated students who had few opportunities t o use their acquired skills within the colonial substructure, and that the educational system then in place did not "take into consideration . the practical side of native life and [was] likely to make the student . · • · a mere highbrow among his people."43 He assessed that "the average intelligence of native children is by no means low; some even equal the Japanese children" and that the fa ilings of the educational system resided in the fact that "the text books used in p ublic schools h ave little relation to their daily life and that native dialects are seldom used at school," and as such, any lowered estimate ()f native intelligence was "ill-founded ."44

What stood as an enigma to this formal system were the pri~ vate missionary schools that existed within the N an'yo. For all the

Cotifiicted Childhf)f){/s in the South &as

ontrol exerted by the Japanese, the administration generally stayed ~lear and allowed the mission schools to educate the natives as they saW fit. By 1936, a total of fourteen missionary schools throughout

,- the mandate'--six Roman Catholic, seven Protestant, and one Bud~r--were. educating 1,523 pupils using a combination ofJapanese

. , foreign (26), and native (seven) instructors . ., Some of ~e schools, such as a Catholic institution on Palau, only o~ered religious instruction after hours, but others were comprehens1ve scil?ols

. offering fundamental academic skills as well as courses on the B1ble, ·geography, ~rithmetic, ~hysi_ology, and language instruction for Jap

. · .. anese, English, and native dialects.~6 Some of the Protestant schools ·. ·. offered advanced theology courses and produced a fair share of · the region's evangelizerS.47

Comparisons to Continental Schooling

..• 'fhe goals for the compulsory edu~ational ,systerr: in the ~a~ 'yo were essentially the same as they were m Japan s prev10usly-eXIstmg con

. ·rinental colonies. In Korea and Taiwan, as in the Nan'yo, schools ... · were established for native children that taught Japanese language, : •morals" and civic duty, and fundamental academic subjects. I n Tai. wan, students could choose between Japanese public schools or Tai

wanese private schools, which were usually C onfucian-based, so as · · long as the school taught Japanese language as well as Chinese. ~8 _By

1920, nearly forty percent of the eligible Taiwanese males and rune · .· percent of the females were attending public schools, which far out-

stripped traditional C hinese school attendance! 9 Similarly, Koreans were initially given the option to attend native schools so as long as

• • the native school instructed students in Japanese. · The biggest differences between continental and overseas schools were the opportunities available to a native student after graduating. Historian Mark Peattie summarized that th.e overseas syst~m "placed emphasis on honest, hard wor~, and ob~dience to .aut.h?nty, but did so without raising the students expectatlon about mdlVldual advancement or self-fulfillment.'.so In his example, the public school at Koror had outside of it a "concrete pillar that b ore four Japanese ideographs in gold-plated brass, admonishing all who entered to be diligent, honest, obedient, and mindful of their obligations," whereas ·at the Japanese elementary school across town stood a statue of a

'J'liE 'ruy·rs HJ STOillCAL REVJ}!)'V

schoolboy, Ninomiya Sontoku, carrying a bundle of firewood on his back while "reading from an open book as he strode forward." In that example, "diligence and hard work were symbolized ... but also the joy of reading and independent study, which promised advancement. "5

' Except in rare circumstances when an islander was adopted into a Japanese family or if he or she attended one of the missionary schools within the Nan'ya, there was little hope for a native inhabitant of the mandate to advance on to higher education or an administrative post, even within the mandate government itsel£

In contrast, from the outset of Japan's colonization of Taiwan in the last years of the nineteenth century, Japanese public schools · for natives were only established in the rich areas of the island and higher educational institutions were created to train teachers and doctors (who could only practice in Taiwan) as the colonial administration thought those professionals were in short supply.s2 In addition to the standard public school curriculum, teachers often taught classical Chinese in order to' attract wealthier students from the island's gentry. 53 H a native student's parents were wealthy, a Taiwanese student could study at higher educational institutions (including middle school, higher school, and university) in Japan. 54 Beginning · in 1919, the colonial administration created agriculture and com~ mercia! colleges, which were far iri advance of anything seen in the mandates.55 During the 1920s, further modifications to the system were made to allow a small number of well-qualified Taiwanese students who were fluent in Japanese to enter the Japanese elementary school system and all post-elementary school systems were open to Japanese and Taiwanese alike. 56

In Korea, the state promoted the study of Confucianism, ostensibly to promote "traditional" values, but the elements of philosophy that were stressed were the ones designed to promote ideals such as filial piety, which developed a sense of respect for those in authority. 57 In 1911, the Japanese government promulgated the Chosen Educational Ordinance to ensure that the Korean school system created "loyal and good subjects" for the emperor. Textbooks were rewritten to place the H ermit Kingdom in a historiCally and culturally subordinate position to Japan "to root out so far as possible Korean culture and patriotism.'>S8 A thirty-one volume history published in 1913 stressed "the theme that Koreans had been hapless

Conflicted ChildhoodJ in the South Seas

.•• aDd disorderly until, finally, Japan had graciously assumed the role . •. of their protector and benefactor. "s9 By 1919, ~82 public schools for

children existed, in contrast to five m1ddle schools and two girls' high schools. Like everywhere else,Jap_ane:e lan~age instruc-tion became primarily important, and movmg mto h1gher schools was difficult, particularly ones run for· the benefit of Japanese students. Japan's ingress into mainland China also greatly affected the lives of daily students; they were no longer allowed to use Korean or

. learn Korean literature at any level in the public school system. Many were siphoned off to work in ':ar-rela~ed indu~tries-m~es

· working in units under Japanese sold1ers or m factones, and g1rls sewed uniforms or prepared gift packages for Japanese troops. By t939,just 5.52 percent of Koreans were attending pri~ary sch.ools, 0.13 percent in secondary schools, and 0.12 percent m vocatlo~al schools. Fewer than three natives in ten-thousand were attending vocational schools or colleges and only one in one-hundred-thousand was attending a university.60

Because the people of the Nan'ya were marginalized, Japanese offi~ cials did not place great emphasis on native education, and islanders, unlike continental subjects, were never expected to become an integral part of the Japanese empire, which was happy to export its own (often marginalized) labor force. By 1936, there were o:er

. 56,000 Japanese living on the islands whil~ the native r>P~atlon was estimated at just over 50,000. The natiVeS and therr children were viewed as backwards and crude-views that were part of a racial stereotype that had been developed long before the Japanese ever inherited the mandate as a partial spoil of war. From the very beginning, natives were criticized as being uncivilized and brutish, and human development was "in its infancy."61 This attitude greatly affected natives' lives while living under the mandate.

Because the Japanese public school system did not offer native children a chance to advance onto further schooling as it did in

· .· • Japan's continental colonies, the assimilation of manda~e islanders · •. into the Japanese cultural sphere was greatly reduced, which allowed

the mandate islands to retain a great deal of their culture when com-. pared to other Japanese colonies. In Taiwan, for instance, the pull

TRE 'f'Ul?'TS HIS'l'ORI CAL REV l £'V

of Japanese post-elementary and higher education opportunities . created a sub-class of marginalized natives who were neither truly Taiwanese nor Japanese. Urban Taiwanese who had successfully · competed alongside Japanese students often felt they "Were more likely than their rural counterparts to accept Japanese values as well as Japanese modern conveniences."62 Mter the war, Taiwanese who were educated in the Japanese system were often the island's brightest, but could not well survive in post-war China. These students had an excellent grasp of]apanese, but knew little of classical Chi- ·· nese or Mandarin, the latter of which became the post-war "national language." It was particularly difficult for teachers and other professionals educated in the colonial system, because Japanese was banned in post-war Taiwan. 63

Micronesians were not subjected to the official rewriting of their entire histories to serve the needs of their colonizers as happened

. in Japan's continental possessions. Children were allowed to learn about their culture from natiye teachers and those with whom they lived. If the Japanese had valued the youth of Micronesia as they did Korean and Taiwanese children, then their subjects would have been culturally subjugated. Korean textbooks and cultural practices were forcibly changed so that Koreans could be molded to the Japanese "national character" and conform to Japanese "national morals}'64

Because natives in the Nan'yo relied primarily on oral histories to pass information down from one generation to the next, their historical and cultural legacies remained relatively intact. Also, since the islands were not suited towards heavy industry, the children, for the most part, were spared the onerous duty of having to work in factories producing war material. By the end of the war, Koreans were torn between insufficient schooling, which hindered their ability to learn Japanese, and the order to cease speaking Korean. Near war's end, seventy percent of Koreans were illiterate in Korean while. eighty percent were illiterate in Japanese. The islanders in the Nan'yo freely spoke their native tongues both in the classroom and at home and with relatives or the village chief, allowing their na,tive languages to stay intact throughout colonization and the war. .

It is obvious from the Japanese reports to the Le~gue of Nations that the Nan'yo-cho and their "civilizing" efforts were a failure. In 1932, the Japanese responded in the negative when their representa-

Conflicted Childhoods in the South Seas 93

. rive was asked if they were training the natives for .admini.strat ive ·. posts, and, when asked agai~ in 1936, the re~resentattv~ replied that

the tribal structure of the Islands made natives unfi~ for th: sp~. cial duties inherent in administrative work."65 There IS tru.th m. this . statement, as the indigenous structure had been deeply mgramed

for hundreds of years in the Nan'yo. Islands within the mandate had governed themselves socially and politically for centuries using wellestablished local laws, rules, customs, and social mores, and operated

. in relative efficiency thanks to their stable, traditional environment. y~aihara even went so far as to promote the instruction of Japanese

. language to the natives so as not to promote one of.t~e islands' Ia! . guages over another, which would have created a pnVlleged class.

In the long run, the greatest failure of the Nan'y6-ch6's educational system was not its inability to assimilate the children of the Nan'y6 into the Japanese empire, but its inability to marginalize them. Although the schools introduced by the Japanese were not

' particularly rigorous or expansive and o~e~ated unde.r the assump-.. tion that the islanders were unable, unwilling, and wtthout need of .. ' a comprehensive and progressive institutional . system, ~ey ':"e~e,

indeed schools, and began an educational tradmon that Is snll m place today. Most of the islands of the mandate were transferred

. to the United States after the Second World War, and schools on , those islands are now regionally accredited as are schools in Amer

ica. Islanders now have the opportunity to complete schooling to the high school level, and can continue on to one of the .region's several tw·o-year colleges or nearby institutions of higher education such as

· . the University of Guam or the University ofHawai'i. Thus, through ·· ·. their own inefficiency and inability to see the islanders as capable of

assimilation into their society, the Japanese provided them with the impetus to expand and promote the best of their own.

18

inability to see the islanders as capable of assimilation into their society, the Japanese provided

them with the impetus to expand and promote the best of their own.

1 Mark R. Peattie, Nan'yō: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-

1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1988), 90.

2 Paul H. Clyde, Japan's Pacific Mandate (New York: The MacMillan Company,

1935), 1.

3 The structure of the mandates is covered in Peattie, 69-71.

4 League of Nations, “Mandate for the German Possession in the Pacific Ocean

Lying North of the Equator,” June 28, 1919.

5 Louise Young, Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime

Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 364.

6 Young, 365.

7 Ibid.

8 Laurel Heath, “Education for Confusion: A Study of Education in the Mariana

Islands, 1688-1941,” Journal of Pacific History 10, no. 1 (1975), 31.

9 Japanese Government (South Seas Division), Second Annual Report to the

League of Nations on the Administration of the Territory Under Japanese Mandate, 1921, 17.

10 Ibid.

11 League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission, “Minutes of the Twenty-

Fourth Session,” July 10, 1933, 90.

12 Abe Goh, “An Ethnohistory of Palau Under the Japanese Colonial

Administration” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1985), 147.

13 Japanese Government, Second Annual Report, 35.

19

14 Japanese Government (South Seas Division), “Article I, South Seas Bureau

Ordinance No. 32, 4 January 1922,” in Annual Report to the League of Nations on the

Administration of the South Sea Islands Under Japanese Mandate for the Year 1925.

15 Japanese Government (South Seas Division) Annual Report to the League of

Nations on the Administration of the South Sea Islands Under Japanese Mandate for the Year

1934, 16.

16 Ibid., 15.



1926, 44; there were no stated requirements for interpreters, however.

18 Heath, 29 and Japanese Government, Annual Report...1921, 21 and Annual

Report 1925, 104.

19 Breakdowns of the educational structure can be found in J. L. Fischer, “The

Japanese Schools for the Natives of Truk,” Human Organization 20, no. 2 (Summer 1961), 84-5

and Tadao Yanaihara, Pacific Islands Under Japanese Mandate (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh,

LTD, 1939), 240-2.

20 Japanese Government, Annual Report...1934, 54.

21 Yanaihara, 241.

22 Ibid., 244.



1924, 25-28.

24 Francis X. Hezel, “Schools in Micronesia Prior to American Administration,”

20

Pacific Studies 8, no. 1 (Fall 1984), 105 and Japanese Government (South Seas Division) Annual

Report to the League of Nations on the Administration of the South Sea Islands Under Japanese

Mandate for the Year 1932, 70-72.

25 Elizabeth Kelley Anttila, “A History of the People of the Trust Territory of the

Pacific Islands and Their Education” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1965), 232.

26 Japanese Government, Annual Report...1934, 48-49.

27 Fischer, 85; Fischer's article is based on primary sources from field surveys

conducted in the Nan'yō.

28 Ibid.

29 David Ramarui, “Education in Micronesia: Its Past, Present, and Future.”

Micronesian Reporter 14, no. 1 (1976), 7.

30 Heath, 29.

31 Fischer, 85.

32 Hezel, 106 and Ramarui, 10; Although Ramarui is a secondary source, Ramarui

was alive and attended public schools during the Nan'yō-chō's administration.

33 Fischer, 85.

34 Anttila, 204.

35 Fischer, 85.

36 Ibid.

37 Heath, 31, and Japanese Government, Annual Report...1925, 52.

38 Fischer, 85.

39 Ibid., 84-5 and Yanaihara, 246.

40 Yanaihara, 7.

21

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid., 247.

44 Ibid., 246.

45 Anttila, 233-4.

46 Ibid., 233.

47 Ibid., 234.

48 W.G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism, 1894-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1987), 147.

49 E. Patricia Tsurumi, “Education and Assimilation in Taiwan under Japanese

Rule, 1895-1945,” Modern Asian Studies 13, no. 4 (1979), 620-1.

50 Peattie, 93.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid., 618.

53 Ibid., 619.

54 Ibid., 623.

55 Beasley, 147.

56 Tsurumi, 624.

57 Robert T. Oliver, A History of the Korean People in Modern Times: 1800 to the

Present (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1993), 115.

58 Ibid., 116.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid., 117, 146.

22

61 Japanese Government (South Seas Division), Second Annual Report, 6.

62 Tsurumi, 628.

63 Huang Chih-Huei, “The Transformation of Taiwanese Attitudes Toward Japan in

the Post-colonial Period,” in Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 1895-1945, ed. Li

Narangoa and Robert Cribb (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 302.

64 Oliver, 116.

65 League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission, “Minutes of the Twenty-

Second Session,” (1932), 112 and League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission,

“Minutes of the Thirtieth Session,” (1936), 178.

66 Anttila, 229.

23

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Japanese Government (South Seas Division). Second Annual Report to the League of Nations on the Administration

of the Territory Under Japanese Mandate, 1921.

___________________________________. Annual Report to the League of Nations on the Administration of the

South Sea Islands Under Japanese Mandate for the Year 1924.









League of Nations. “Mandate for the German Possession in the Pacific Ocean Lying North of the Equator,” June 28,

1919.

League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission. “Minutes of the Twenty-Second Session,” 1932.

__________________________________________. “Minutes of the Twenty-Fourth Session.” July 10, 1933.

__________________________________________. “Minutes of the Thirtieth Session,” 1936.

Secondary Sources

Abe, Goh. “An Ethnohistory of Palau Under the Japanese Colonial Administration.” PhD diss. University of Kansas,

1985.

Anttila, Elizabeth Kelley. “A History of the People of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands and Their

Education.” PhD diss., Universtiy of Texas at Austin, 1965.

Beasley, W.G. Japanese Imperialism, 1894-1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Clyde, Paul H. Japan's Pacific Mandate. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1935.

24

Fischer, J. L. “The Japanese Schools for the Natives of Truk.” Human Organization 20, no. 2 (Summer 1961): 83-

88.

Heath, Laurel. “Education for Confusion: A Study of Education in the Mariana Islands, 1688-1941.” Journal of

Pacific History 10, no. 1 (1975): 23-37.

Hezel, Francis X. “Schools in Micronesia Prior to American Administration.” Pacific Studies 8, no. 1 (Fall 1984):

95-111.

Huang Chih-Huei. “The Transformation of Taiwanese Attitudes Toward Japan in the Post-colonial Period.” In

Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 1895-1945, edited by Li Narangoa and Robert Cribb.

London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, 296-314.

Oliver, Robert T. A History of the Korean People in Modern Times: 1800 to the Present. Newark: University of

Delaware Press, 1993.

Peattie, Mark R. Nan'yō: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945. Honolulu: University of

Hawai'i Press, 1988.

Ramarui, David. “Education in Micronesia: Its Past, Present, and Future.” Micronesian Reporter. Vol 14, no. 1

(1976):9-20.

Tsurumi, E. Patricia. “Education and Assimilation in Taiwan under Japanese Rule, 1895-1945.” Modern Asian

Studies 13, no. 4 (1979): 617-641.

Yanaihara, Tadao. Pacific Islands Under Japanese Mandate. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, LTD, 1939.

Young, Louise. Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1998.

Conflicted Childhoods in the South Seas: The Failure of Racial Assimilation in the Nan'yo

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