History of Kwajalein

f Kwajalein's public school in 1935, schoolteachers were also sent to the island from Japan. Most Marshall Islanders who recall those times describe a peaceful time of cooperation and development between Japanese and Marshallese, although Marshallese (and other Islanders or Okinawans) were still not considered on the same social tier as Japanese.

Japanese militarism

In the late 1930s, Japan began to centralize military power in Micronesia in line with its expansionism into the South and throughout Oceania. This was a radical break with the League of Nations Mandate under which the islands had been peacefully administered. Korean forced laborers were sent throughout the Pacific beginning in the early 1940s, under strict orders from local Japanese-controlled city offices throughout Korea. Over 10,000 were sent to the Micronesia (Nanyo Gunto) area alone—mostly from the southernmost provinces of Korea, and thousands were sent to the Marshall Islands. In some atolls, such as Wotje, those forced labourers were joined by Japanese prisoners from Hokkaido (mostly political prisoners who had spoken against the Japanese government). In Kwajalein, Koreans were placed in battalions and other specialized groups, sometimes together with Marshallese, to build fortifications throughout the atoll. Whenever there were American air raids, the mainly Korean construction teams had to work night and day to fill up the holes that American bombs had made. Archaeological evidence and testimonies from Japanese and Marshallese sources indicate that this project would likely not have begun until the 1940s and was not even complete at the time of the American invasion in 1944. A second wave of Japanese naval and ground forces was dispatched to