Micronesia: A Sprawling Trust

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Micronesia's 2,141 islands are so widely dispersed over 3,000,000 sq. mi. of cobalt-blue Pacific that Magellan sailed through their very midst without sighting a single one. In their glittering lagoons and rain-forested redoubts, the Japanese positioned their power to control all the Pacific in World War II—and the U.S. fight to thwart them made a litany and legacy forever of such unlikely flecks on the map as Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Saipan, Tinian and Peleliu. The Enola Gay roared off from Tinian to drop the A-bomb on Hiroshima; years later the shock waves of the world's first H-bomb tests rolled out from Micronesia, denuding the little atolls of Bikini and Eniwetok. Today, Nike X antiballistic missiles zoom up from Kwajalein in test interceptions, and Atlas and Titan missiles from California end their long trial runs with gigantic splashes in the Kwajalein lagoon.

Harsh But Effective. Almost unnoticed in the vitriolic debate over the Viet Nam war and the U.S. presence on the Asian mainland is the U.S. responsibility for these sprawling islands. Their 95,000 inhabitants range from the brainy and enterprising Palauans of the Carolines chain to the grass-skirted inhabitants of Yap. After the U.S. took over the islands in a military caretakership of the spoils of war, the United Nations in 1947 bequeathed them to the U.S. as a trust territory. Ever since then, the U.S. has been a benign, if a bit abstracted, presence in the vital geopolitical center of the Western Pacific. It is not a duty that the U.S. has performed with any notable enthusiasm, particularly in contrast with Micronesia's previous rulers, the Japanese.

Japan took over Micronesia from Germany after World War I and immediately set about seriously developing and colonizing the islands. Japanese methods were often harsh, but they were vigorous and effective. Koror (see map) became a miniature Miami Beach for winter-weary Japanese, a sophisticated city of 30,000 replete with fine restaurants, geisha houses and Shinto shrines. Trading vessels from Japan were soon exporting great quantities of fish, pineapple, sugar and pearls from the islands. The Japanese paved roads, built hospitals and ports and laid down a rudimentary infrastructure for economic growth.

Less Than the Navajos. Today, with few exceptions, Micronesia looks—and is—a poorer place than in the heyday of the Japanese, reports TIME Correspondent Frank McCulloch after a five week tour of the islands. Occupying U.S. forces leveled much of what the Japanese built that was still intact after the war. Even what survived was seldom maintained, such as the once excellent water system on the island of Dublon, in Truk lagoon, now rusting in disuse, or the jungle-swallowed road on Babelthuap that once enabled outlying copra farmers and fishermen to bring their goods to market.