Books about RMI
You can read reviews or buy the books by clicking on the title at the beginning of the text which takes you to the relevant page on the Amazon store or on Blurb.
A Dream of Atolls A Marshall Islands Portfolio
By Floyd Takeuchi
Described as a “love letter to the islands of his birth,” “A Dream of Atolls” is writer-photographer Floyd K. Takeuchi’s first book about the Marshall Islands comprised solely of photos taken by the veteran journalist.
“A Dream of Atolls” is a large coffee table style book that features 26 of Takeuchi’s photographs of Majuro and Jaluit Atolls. The subjects range from islets framed by endless sky and glassy seas to a large, ocean-going Marshallese canoe under sail to residents of Jabor, Jaluit captured by an impromptu photo studio Takeuchi set up on the outside walkway of the Lieom Jaluit Hotel.
“There’s a delicate beauty to the Marshall Islands,” says Takeuchi, whose parents, Clarence and Sachiko Takeuchi of Hawaii, worked for the Trust Territory on Majuro during most of the 1950s. The family lived on Saipan from 1964 to 1982. “Unlike high islands, which often have waterfalls, and dramatic mountain peaks, atolls quietly make their beauty felt. It might be in how a palm frond casts its shadow, or the sound of surf breaking on a distant fringing reef,” he said.
Read more of this story at the post A Dream of Atolls on this site.
“A Dream of Atolls” costs $96.43 plus shipping. Blurb.com delivers to the Marshall Islands. A full preview of the book is available at the Blurb.com website at no charge.
Our Ocean’s Promise: From Aspirations to Inspirations: The Marshall Islands Fishing Story
By Giff Johnson
Our Ocean’s Promise traces the evolution of Marshall Islands fisheries development and administration from its embryonic stages in the 1970s to becoming one of the most progressive and forward looking in the Pacific island region.
The nation has gone from being a bystander selling a few licenses so distant water fishing nation fleets could reap the benefits to playing a key role in the Parties to the Nauru Agreement group that controls ocean waters where over half the world’s skipjack tuna is caught. Since 2010, the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority has seen commercial tuna fisheries revenue increase 10-fold while implementing a world-recognized conservation and management regime that, together with its partners in the PNA, is maintaining catch levels for all four tuna species at sustainable levels.
The narrative of Our Ocean’s Promise details the development of the commercial tuna fishery in the Marshall Islands and new efforts to engage in many aspects of the tuna “value chain” — from the catch to delivery of tuna products to retailers. The book includes a detailed chronology that highlights national and regional fisheries milestones.
The book is available in Kindle ($1.99) and print versions ($26.15).
About the author: Giff Johnson has lived and worked in the Marshall Islands since the mid-1980s. He edits the weekly Marshall Islands Journal and is a regular contributor to several regional and international news media.
Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders
By Walter Pincus
The most important place in American nuclear history are the Marshall Islands―an idyllic Pacific paradise that served as the staging ground for over sixty US nuclear tests. It was here, from 1946 to 1958, that America perfected the weapon that preserved the peace of the post-war years. It was here―with the 1954 Castle Bravo test over Bikini Atoll―that America executed its largest nuclear detonation, a thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima.
And it was here that a native people became unwilling test subjects in the first large scale study of nuclear radiation fallout when the ashes rained down on powerless villagers, contaminating the land they loved and forever changing a way of life.
In Blown to Hell, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Walter Pincus tells for the first time the tragic story of the Marshallese people caught in the crosshairs of American nuclear testing. From John Anjain, a local magistrate of Rongelap Atoll who loses more than most; to the radiation-exposed crew of the Japanese fishing boat the Lucky Dragon; to Dr. Robert Conard, a Navy physician who realized the dangers facing the islanders and attempted to help them; to the Washington power brokers trying to keep the unthinkable fallout from public view . . . Blown to Hell tells the human story of America’s nuclear testing program.
Displaced from the only homes they had known, the native tribes that inhabited the serene Pacific atolls for millennia before they became ground zero for America’s first thermonuclear detonations returned to homes despoiled by radiation―if they were lucky enough to return at all. Others were ripped from their ancestral lands and shuttled to new islands with little regard for how the new environment supported their way of life and little acknowledgement of all they left behind. But not even the disruptive relocations allowed the islanders to escape the fallout.
About the author: Walter Haskell Pincus (born December 24, 1932) is a national security journalist. He reported for The Washington Post until the end of 2015. He has won several prizes including a Polk Award in 1977, a television Emmy in 1981, and shared a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting with five other Washington Post reporters, and the 2010 Arthur Ross Media Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy. Since 2003, he has taught at Stanford University’s Stanford in Washington program.
Clothing Mats of the Marshall Islands: The History, the Culture and the Weavers
By Irene J. Taafaki and Maria Kabua Fowler
Finely woven, intricately and symbolically patterned mats known as jaki-ed are a cultural treasure of the Marshallese people. They are the expression of k?r? im an k?l, an attribute bestowed on Marshallese women at birth that grants them the opportunity to develop their unique talent and creativity. This form of creative expression is being revived through contemporary jaki-ed.
Once used for clothing (neided) as well as other ceremonial and domestic purposes, the weaving of jaki-ed became an endangered art: Mass-produced cloth replaced the neided. The last clothing mats were woven in the Marshall Islands during World War II when commercial ships, unable to enter the Pacific theater of war, could no longer deliver cotton fabric. Post-war economic and social factors perpetuated the loss of traditional knowledge and cultural systems that characterized Marshallese society since the islands were first settled over two thousand years ago. This included knowledge of the traditional methods of weaving jaki-ed and the cultural meanings of the complex and decorative designs.
In Clothing Mats of the Marshall Islands — The History, the Culture and the Weavers, the authors capture more than 10 years of research into jaki-ed as part of a program to collaborate with weavers and revive this form of cultural expression. Basing designs on their own creative vision, weavers now use traditional patterns as inspiration for modern expressions. While jaki-ed are no longer worn as clothing, the mats are now being collected as outstanding examples of cultural creativity.
By Greg Dvorak
Dvorak’s cross-cultural history of Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, explores intersections of environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited coral atoll on earth. Approaching the multiple “atollscapes” of Kwajalein’s past and present as Marshallese ancestral land, Japanese colonial outpost, Pacific War battlefield, American weapons-testing base, and an enduring home for many, Dvorak delves into personal narratives and collective mythologies from contradictory vantage points.
He navigates the tensions between “little stories” of ordinary human actors and “big stories” of global politics—drawing upon the “little” metaphor of the coral organisms that colonize and build atolls, and the “big” metaphor of the all-encompassing concrete that buries and co-opts the past.
About the author: Greg Dvorak is a professor of history and culture in the Pacific and Asia based at Waseda University in Tokyo. Born in Philadelphia in 1973 and having spent his childhood in Kwajalein Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands, later growing up in both the United States and Japan, he has resided in Tokyo for most of his adult life.
Man Shark: The Legends of Lainjin
By Gerald Knight*
The Legends of Ḷainjin is a trilogy of historic literary fiction based on the primordial oral literature of Pacific Islanders. There is one story that uncharacteristically has no ending. This is the story of Tarmālu and her son Ḷainjin. According to legend, she leaves her baby in the care of others as she leads her fleet of proas from the shelter of the Wōtto Atoll lagoon into the open ocean to save their craft from the certain destruction of an oncoming typhoon.
The trilogy is the story of Ḷainjin’s search for his mother to his love affair on Lae to the rise of Ijokelekel and the fall of the Saudeleur rulers of Nan Madol — a National Historic Landmark built of hexagonal basaltic crystals upon an eastern reef off Phonpei, Federated States of Micronesia. Man Shark is the first book in the series to be published. The story line picks up upon Ḷainjin’s return from his search. It is a simple triangular love story that takes place on prehistoric Lae Atoll. Book two is the prequel and book three completes the series.
*About the author: Gerald was only 19 when he entered the Peace Corps in 1967 after two years as a literature student at Albion College. After graduation he returned to the Marshall Islands with a love for literature and an interest in transcribing the stories he had heard in previous years. He taught for a year and worked as a commercial fisherman for two, honing his knowledge of the language and culture.
Then he went for an uninterrupted four year stay on remote Rongelap Atoll to study with the renown traditional navigators and storytellers there. In 1979 he attended a one-year apprentice program at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu to prepare as Director of the Alele Museum and National Archive. He held that position for ten years culminating in a two-year collaboration with the Field Museum of Natural History on their permanent “Traveling the Pacific” exhibit that features a donated traditional outrigger canoe.
In 1999 Gerald graduated from the University of Illinois with master’s degrees in business administration and accounting. He currently heads a thriving CPA tax practice in Palos Hill, IL. He has completed the Chicago – Mackinac Island race five times and been a member of the Columbia Yacht Club since 2005. You can see more of Gerald’s work at his site: https://geraldrknight.com/
Kwajalein Atoll, the Marshall Islands and American Policy in the Pacific
By Ruth Douglas Currie*
For centuries, the Marshall Islands have been drawn into international politics, primarily because of their central location in Oceania. After World War II they came into the American sphere as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. At the outset of the Cold War, the Marshalls were a site for nuclear tests and later for the US Army’s ballistic missile testing as part of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.
This book focuses on the islanders’ tenacious negotiations for independence and control of their land, accomplished as the Republic of the Marshall Islands in a Compact of Free Association with the U.S. The creation of American policy in the Pacific was a struggle between the US departments of the Interior and State, and the military’s goals for strategic national defense, as illustrated by the case of the Army’s base at Kwajalein Atoll.
*Ruth Douglas Currie is a professor emerita in the History Department, Appalachian State University. She served four years as command historian, U.S. Army Strategic Defense Command, and recently retired as a professor of history and political science at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina.
REVIEWS:
“Currie provides an excellent, archive-driven, micro-historical approach of a multilayered analytical critique of US foreign policy in the Pacific…. An excellent read, well written, closely studied, and expertly documented…essential.” — Choice
“A welcome addition to the sparse library of books about this region…meticulous…valuable…worth reading.” — The Marshall Islands Journal
“Dr. Currie captures the definitive history of the Marshallese nation’s special relationship with the U.S. which helped secure America’s interests in the Pacific, and the struggle to preserve their culture over a century of colonialism and Great Power domination.” — John Fairlamb, Office of Compact Negotiations, U.S. Department of State, 1999–2004.
Lost Art of Finding Our Way A Harvard science professor wants to further document traditional Marshallese navigation methods to help boost the islands’ indigenous culture. Marshall Islands wave piloting is one of the navigation techniques featured in Professor John Huth’s book ‘The Lost Art of Finding Our Way’.
Professor Huth told Radio New Zealand in March, 2017, that his research found its use of ocean swells to navigate was extremely accurate. He says he hopes further research will help revive Marshallese culture.
“I almost have in my mind that we want to publish a wave piloting manual or something like that, that we could give back to the Marshallese to allow them to reclaim their heritage. Because I think it’s a very rich heritage,” Professor Huth said.
Reviews on Amazon include this from Tim Ricks: “A sailor friend recommended this. I found it consistently surprising and enjoyable. My wife got tired of me telling her all the tidbits.”
Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island is set on Ujae Atoll. Just one month after his 21st birthday, Peter Rudiak-Gould moved to the remote atoll and spent the next year there, living among its 450 inhabitants and teaching English to its schoolchildren. Surviving Paradise is a thoughtful and laugh-out-loud hilarious documentation of Rudiak-Gould’s efforts to cope with daily life on Ujae as his idealistic expectations of a tropical paradise confront harsh reality. Most poignant are his observations of the noticeable effect of global warming on these tiny, low-lying islands and the threat rising water levels pose to their already precarious existence.
Here’s a handful of the glowing reviews found on Amazon:
“Utterly unexpected, vivid, [and] blessedly funny.”—Ernest Callenbach, author of bestseller Ecotopia and Publisher’s Lunch
“In Surviving Paradise, Peter Rudiak-Gould has pulled off the improbable: turning a year spent on a remote Pacific island the size of a shopping mall into a memorable, moving narrative.”—Tony Cohan, author of On Mexican
Operation Crossroads — Lest We Forget!: An Eyewitness Account, Bikini Atomic Bomb Tests 1946 by William L. McGee and Sandra V. McGee with a foreword by F. Lincoln Grahlfs Ph.D.
In July 1946, William L. McGee, USN, witnessed Operation Crossroads from the deck of the heavy cruiser USS Fall River (CA-131), Flagship for the Target Fleet of Admiral W. H. P. Blandy’s Joint Task Force One. McGee’s book was released in June, 2016, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the postwar nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
“I wrote this book to help preserve a part of history few know about today,” says McGee. “If your time is limited, I recommend you read the Foreword written by Dr. F.Lincoln Grahlfs, a Crossroads participant and Vice Commander of the National Association of Atomic Veterans (NAAV). Also Chapter 11, ‘Later Lessons Learned,’with the research and findings of two of the nation’s leading authorities on the dangers of radiation inherent in nuclear weapons – Dr. Oscar Rosen, a Crossroads participant and an advocate for atomic veterans, and Jonathan M.Weisgall, the legal representative of the people of the Bikini Atoll since1975.”
According to the notes on amazon.com, the book is a quick read at 132 pages with 59 photographs and illustrations.
Idyllic No More: Pacific Island Climate, Corruption and Development Dilemmas by Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal, is an excellent resource on the Pacific region today. In the book (published June, 2015), Giff asks “Can Pacific nations, endowed with islands of travel poster beauty, vibrant cultures, and centuries old ways of life based on sustainable practices, hurdle significant development and political challenges they face today — in addition to withstanding climate change and rising sea levels? In a series of essays about the looming climate threat, sustainable development and the region’s multi-billion dollar tuna industry, the U.S. nuclear test legacy in the Marshall Islands, and the impact of out-migration, ‘Idyllic No More’ addresses the often difficult problems and choices facing the Pacific islands today.
The Amazon site has a number of reviews, including this one from Jon D. Letman: “Giff Johnson provides deep insighthttps://www.amazon.com/Dont-Ever-Whisper-Giff-Johnson/dp/1489509062 based on his many years of living, traveling and writing in the Marshall Islands and the Pacific. This book is made up of a series of short articles that examine the many challenges that RMI (Republic of Marshall Islands) and other Pacific island nations face. If you know nothing about Micronesia and small island Pacific states, you’ll come away much richer for having read this. If you already know about this part of the world, you’ll understand it much better.”
By Giff Johnson
This book tells the powerful story of a woman who championed the cause of nuclear weapons test survivors when others were silent, and who later implemented unparalleled community health programs that gave hope to a generation of troubled youth. Don’t Ever Whisper is the stirring account of Marshall Islander Darlene Keju’s struggle to gain an American education and to use that education first to expose to the world a United States government cover up of its nuclear weapons testing program in her islands. The book was written by Darlene’s husband Giff Johnson, the editor of the weekly Marshall Islands Journal.
Included in the reviews on Amazon is this one from E.J. Probst: “I was privileged to know Darlene. She was a joyous being, who cared deeply about people. Her wonderful ideas to help young people to help themselves grow and appreciate themselves and their community are truly a practical model for all world communities to implement. Darlene was an amazing being for our times. I urge you to read “Don’t Ever Whisper” and become inspired in your own life and in your own community!”
New biography on Marshall Islands’ social champion | Pacific Beat
Traditional Medicine of the Marshall Islands
By Irene Taafaki and Maria Fowler
This book is an attempt to ensure that traditional knowledge is not lost and that ecosystems are protected for future generations. It is the result of a collaboration of nine expert Marshallese healers, members of clans who possess their own special medicines, and numerous others who are familiar with folk or general remedies. It describes more than 270 traditional medicinal treatments, all of which use the plants of the Marshall Islands.
By Floyd K Takeuchi and Mr Olivier Koning
This tome is seven essays and accompanying photographs about the Marshall Islands, one of the undiscovered destinations for travelers looking for unique experiences in the Pacific. The stories look at contemporary life in the Marshall Islands: handicraft arts and culture; the revival of a traditional canoe culture; the growing use of local foods on restaurant menus; some of the best deep-sea sport fishing anywhere; the strength of local churches; private and affordable “get away islands;” and portraits of islanders.
Marshall Islands Legends and Stories is a lively collection of tales. Author Daniel A. Kelin II preserves the qualities of oral storytelling in fifty stories recorded from eighteen storytellers on eight islands and atolls. The book includes something for everyone: origin stories, tales of mejenkwaad and other demons, tricksters, disobedient children, wronged husbands, foolish suitors, and reunited families – all relaying the importance of traditional Marshallese values and customs. Profiles of the storytellers, a glossary, and a pronunciation guide enrich the collection.
For the Good of Mankind by Jack Niedenthal is a compelling account of the troubled history of the people of Bikini Atoll. Niedenthal’s skillful use of oral history enables the Bikinians to tell much of their own story, and his personal reflections about that history and his own involvement with the community enrich the account. This book is a welcome and useful contribution to Pacific Islands studies.
Pacific Ways: Government and Politics in the Pacific Islands examines the politics of each Pacific Island state and territory. It includes a chapter, updated in January 2016, on RMI by David Kupferman, who taught for many years at the College of the Marshall Islands. According to the review on Amazon, “this well-researched volume discusses historical background and colonial experience, constitutional framework, political institutions, political parties, elections and electoral systems, and problems and prospects. Pacific Island countries and territories included are the original seven member states—New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Nauru, and the Cook Islands—along with all the new member states and organizations. A wide-ranging political survey, this comprehensive and completely up to date reference will appeal to Pacific peoples and anyone with an interest in politics.”
