User:Mr Tan/C

Early contacts (19th century–1914)
The earliest Japanese contact with the Marianas dated back to the 1840s when Nakahama Manjiro and several accompanying castaways made several stops on some of the islands. During his stopover, Manjiro wrote accounts of Chamorro customs, which were later published under the title of Drifting Toward the Southeast. Japanese merchants began settling on the islands at the end of the 19th century, and a few married Chamorro wives. These merchants mostly manned trading stores that dealt with the copra and coconut oil trade.

Japanese colonial era (1914-1940)
The Japanese navy entered the Marianas in October 1914 and forced out the German colonial administration. Naval officers congregated mostly at Saipan. Small-scale settlement of the Marianas followed suit, particularly in Saipan. In 1915, some seventeen Okinawan fishermen settled arrived in Saipan. Sugar cultivation was introduced to Saipan the following year at the direction of Japanese firms, notably Nishimura Takushoku and Nanyo Shokusan. Between 1916 to 1918, some two thousand Japanese fishermen, farmers and Korean labourers settled down in Saipan and worked in sugar plantations. The enterprises collapsed as a result of bankruptcy and mismanagement by 1919, and at the same time leaving the settlers behind. In 1921, a Japanese entrepreneur, Matsue Haruji bought over the sugarcane enterprises in the Marianas and employed the Japanese settlers in Saipan. The following year, Matsue shipped in another thousand farmers from the Ryukyu Islands to Saipan, where they worked as tenant farmers for Matsue's company, Nanko. Nanko briefly met with some logistical setbacks between 1922 to 1923 and suffered heavy losses as a result. Matsue subsequently undertook radical measures to revamp the sugarcane enterprise, and from 1925 onwards Matsue expanded Nanko's business operations in other parts of the Marianas, firstly Tinian and then Rota. As labour demand increased with the expanding business operations, more farmers from Okinawa and the Tōhoku region migrated to the Marianas. Japanese settlers usually congregate in Saipan and Garapan, both of which developed into small towns by 1925.

Matsue secured a land lease from the colonial government on Tinian in 1926. Within the island itself, Matsue directed the construction of Nanko's headquarters in Songsong that resulted in the development of a small town. The rest of the island was planned for agricultural purposes to accommodate sugarcane plantations. Tinian witnessed an exponential growth in its immigrant population, and 9,000 immigrants settled on Tinian between 1930 and 1933. Within the same year, a district office was estalished on the island and Songsong was formally renamed as a town. A similar land lease was also secured for Rota in 1930, and Matsue also directed the development of a new urban centre in the southern portion of the island. Immigrants consisted of both single men as well as married couples with children; and agricultural land that were identified to be the most fertile were allocated to the latter group. The growing influx of the Japanese immigrant populace prompted the colonial government to reallocate the indigenous Chamorros from their traditional lands within the island n 1936. The indigenous populace were relocated to Tatacho, another village that was built by the colonial administration, although most of them expressed grievances for the loss of their traditional lands.

The Japanese population reached almost 40,000 in 1935, the majority of whom consisted of Okinawan settlers. The rate of Japanese immigration to the Marianas slowed down from the 1930s onwards as more Japanese settlers chose to settle in other parts of Micronesia, notably Palau. Although Okinawan settlers constituted the largest immigrant groups in the Marianas, mainland Japanese settlers generally distanced themselves from the Okinawans, even from people of the top administrative ranks. The colonial administration supported efforts to encourage the Okinawans to adopt Japanese cultural norms at the expense of their traditional culture, but efforts to assimiliate them were largely unsuccessful. Several influential Japanese figures, notably two authors, Ishikawa Tatsuzo and Nonaka Fumio, described the Okinawans as "coarse" and "unruly" during their personal encounters with Okinawan settlers in Garapan and Tinian. The colonial government became increasingly disturbed with the prospect of lifestyle preferences that Okinawan settlers led may paint a negative image of Japanese settlers in Micronesia. From the late 1930s onwards, the colonial government stopped encouraging Okinawans to immigrate to Micronesia, including the Marianas. A campaign was launched to oversee the gradual deportation of Okinawan settlers from the Micronesia, but was halted in late 1941. At the same time, Okinawan settlers in the Marianas were encouraged to venture into the charcoal and shopkeeping business in favour of working as farmers or farm labourers in the sugarcane industry.

World War II (1941-1944)
Civilian settlement of the Marianas declined sharply from the late 1941, especially after the Japanese attack on Attack on Pearl Harbor. From the late 1930s onwards, several thousand conscript labourers from Korea, Okinawa as well as a few Japanese convicts were shipped to the Marianas to facilitate war preparation efforts. As compared to other parts of the South Pacific Mandate, attention was given to equipping the Marianas as a depot to supply food and war ammunitions for the Japanese military forces. Japanese defeats in the various battles in the Pacific War, notably in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign to the Allied forces between 1943 and 1944 prompted the military administration to evacuate Japanese civilians from the Marianas. Intense fortification of the Marianas followed suit from early 1944, and army and military garrisons were shipped to the islands. Schools and factories in the islands were closed down, and Japanese civilians who chose to remain behind were roped in to assist in war preparation efforts. In particular, residents of Saipan and Garapan were evacuated and relocated to other parts of the Marianas, and buildings in both cities were used for accommodating troops and used as food and ammunition storage shelters.

When American forces invaded Saipan in 1944, some 5,000 out of its 8,000 Japanese civilians perished, often through air raids while others committed suicide from hand grenades or jumping off cliffs. Another 4,000 were also killed in Tinian in the air raids, and fewer people committed suicides as compared to those on Saipan. A few remaining civilians managed to escape shortly before or at the start of the invasion, but most were killed en route back to mainland Japan. When the invasion of the Marianas concluded by August 10, 1944, a total of 13,000 Japanese civilians were interned, mainly from the Northern Marianas but also a few from Guam.

American administration (1945-present)
Within the internment camps, Japanese (including Okinawans), Koreans and Micronesians were subjected to separate sets of military laws, and were systematically repatriated from October 1945 onwards. Efforts were made to repatriate the Japanese troops first, and by early January 1946 about three-quarters of all Japanese nationals were repatriated. Japanese civilians were only repatriated from 1946 onwards, as the military administration debated on the feasibility of the deportation of Japanese civilians who had settled in the Marianas and intermarried with local women. A compromise was reached between the Truman administration with the deputy commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, Raymond A. Spruance to allow long-term Okinawan residents to remain in the Marianas, although they were only permitted to resettle on Tinian. Most Okinawans chose to be repatriated to Okinawa, citing reasons that they lacked any emotional attachment to the island. Almost all civilians were repatriated by July 1946, while a few Japanese military prisoners-of-war were detained and roped in to assist reconstruction efforts in the islands. The remaining Japanese military prisoners-of-war were gradually repatriated in stages until December 1947.

Some eleven Japanese men remain in the Marianas, all of whom were married to Chamorro or Carolinian wives. The use of Japanese was strongly discouraged within the first few years after the Japanese surrender, and people mixed Japanese-Chamorro heritage encountered various forms of racial discrimination among islanders, such as name calling. Most Japanese-Chamorros identified themselves as Chamorros, played active roles in the post-war reconstruction of the islands' economy. In the 1940s, a few Japanese-Chamorros were appointed to managerial positions in shareholding companies in the Marianas, notably Agrihan and Saipan Importers. Within the first two decades after the Second World War, Japanese nationals were faced considerable restrictions in visiting the Marianas. These restrictions were gradually relaxed in phases between the 1960s and 1970s, during which Japanese businessmen placed significant investments in the tourism industry and embarked on several joint ventures with local enterprises. In the mid-1980s, at least a thousand Japanese expatriates were living in Guam, most of whom were businessmen and their families, or employees of Japanese companies that have established business interests in the islands. Japanese tourists also accounted for 80% of all tourist arrivals in Guam around the same time. In the Northern Marianas, a thousand residents of Japanese heritage were left stateless as a result of an interpretation made by the United States Department of Justice on the eligibility of American citizenship for the Mariana Islanders in the 1970s, which excludes people who were born to parents of Japanese nationality. An August 1988 court ruling restored the citizenship status of the affected residents.

Japanese Marianas
The Marianas, specifically Saipan, was the first place in Micronesia where large-scale Japanese settlement took place. Saipan's official census in 1920 indicated that 28 percent of Saipan's population was Japanese, and another 5 percent was Korean. Carolinians and Chamorros on the island constituted the remainder, just under two-thirds of the island's population. Within the Marianas, large-scale Japanese settlement took place in Saipan from 1916 onwards, followed by Tinian in 1926 and Rota in 1930. Until 1930s, Japanese immigrants in the Marianas mainly consisted fishermen and farm labourers who were single, and males outnumbered females by five to one. The colonial government subsequently encouraged some married Japanese couples immigrate to the Marianas, and females consisted some forty percent among the immigrant populace in 1935. Throughout the Japanese colonial period, at least half of the Japanese immigrant populace in Micronesia lived in the Marianas. Japanese immigrants in the Marianas constituted two-thirds of all Japanese in Micronesia in the 1920s, and peaked at 75-80% in the mid-1930s. Subsequently, Japanese migrated to other parts of Micronesia in increasing numbers, especially Palau in the mid-1930s, and proportion of the Japanese population in the Marianas relative to the rest of Micronesia dropped to 57% in 1939. Within the Marianas, most Japanese immigrants settled in Saipan, which accommodated around 60% of the Japanese population in the Marianas throughout the 1930s.

The Japanese immigrant population outnumbered the Chamorros and Carolinians by ten to one by 1939, and towns in Saipan and Tinian consisted almost entirely of Japanese, Okinawan or Korean immigrants. The Japanese immigrant populace also witnessed a higher birth rate as compared to the Chamorros and Carolinians, and also contributed to the sharp increase in the Japanese population in the Marianas. Between 1931 to 1937, the average birth rates among the Japanese stood at 51.6%, as compared to 38.9% among the Chamorros and Carolinians collectively. Within the Japanese immigrant populace, Okinawans formed a majority from the early days of Japanese rule in the Marianas. In 1935, about 25,800 out of the total immigrant population of 42,500 came from Okinawa prefecture, while another 1,700 came from Kagoshima prefecture. In particular, Okinawans dominated the workforce of the Nanko, and a 1936 census showed that Okinawans made up 74% and 50% its workforce of Saipan and Tinian respectively. Between 1943 to 1944, Japanese settlers were evacuation from the Marianas–principally mainland Japanese led to an increase in the proportion of Okinawans within the immigrant populace. and the reinvasion of the Marianas resulted in the deaths of many Okinawans in the Marianas. At the time of Japanese surrender in 1945, Okinawans consisted 80 percent of the Japanese population, while mainland Japanese and Koreans made up the remainder.

Economy
In the first few years of the Japanese colonial era, copra trade played an instrumental role in supporting the Marianas' economy. However, as most Japanese firms were based in Saipan, trading activities and communications with the rest of the world were confined to the island. Rota and other smaller islands were ignored by the Japanese administration of administration, and trade with Japan was virtually non-existent. After two typhoons struck Saipan and Rota in October and December 1914, the colonial administration allowed limited interisland contact and trade.

As sugarcane outputs increased in the 1920s, it gradually became an important factor in supporting the islands' economy. The first sugarcane farms were established in Saipan in 1916 by private enterprises, although they soon faced bankruptcy due to logisitical failures in farming practices. Subsequent successful attempts made by Nanko to introduce sugarcane farming from 1924 onwards motivated Nanko to extend its sugarcane farming operations to Tinian and Rota. Nanko developed a tenant-farming system to facilitate its daily production output, in which farmers were assigned plots of land to cultivate sugarcane, and sugarcane produce were sold to Nanko. Throughout much of the 1920s, Nanko sourced heavily on Okinawans to facilitate farm operations, and shipped in several thousand labourers annually to meet up with its company's expanding operations. Under Nanko's direction, daily sugarcane production output in the Marianas increased from 3,000 tons in 1924 to 12,000 tons in 1928. The colonial administration granted substantial cash grants to Nanko which enabled it to expand its manufacturing productions as well.