Palau: After Tasting War, South Pacific Paradise Committed to Peace

A Violent Past for Peaceful Islands

As the scene of one of the fiercest and most destructive battles of World War II, it would be fair to assume that the people of Palau would harbor a degree of resentment toward Japan and the Japanese. Islanders witnessed air and naval attacks in 1944 that destroyed infrastructure, sank ships and, on occasions, killed civilians. The entire island of Peleliu, to the far south of the archipelago, was devastated as Japanese troops fought the US invasion forces.

The damaged remains of the Japanese military’s communications headquarters on Palau, with an anti-aircraft gun. (© Julian Ryall)

But while other Asia-Pacific nations rarely overlook an opportunity to recall the indignities that took place during the years of Japanese colonial rule a century or more ago, President Surangel S. Whipps Jr. emphatically shakes his head. Despite the destruction of the war, he says, the relationship between Japan and Palau today is not affected by the scars of the past.

President Surangel S. Whipps Jr at his office in Koror. (© Julian Ryall)

“You have to remember that we were not invaded by Japan, but were a Japanese territory,” Whipps tells Nippon.com. “Koror used to be called ‘little Tokyo,’ and 30,000 Japanese lived here, including 17,000 Okinawans.

“About 20 percent of our ancestry is Japanese and we have many things in common,” he said. “There are more than 1,000 words in our dictionary that come from Japanese.”

Asked his personal favorite, Whipps does not hesitate to suggest tokubetsu—or “special.”

Japan has been a generous donor of aid to Palau, with a roadside marker in Koror commemorating the completion of a road project in the capital. (© Julian Ryall)

Originally settled by voyagers from the Philippines or Indonesia between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago, the islands were first recorded by Spanish explorers in 1522, although it was not until November 1710 that a Spanish expedition set foot on the territory, which is around 900 kilometers due east of the Philippine island of Mindanao.

The archipelago remained under Spanish control until being sold to Germany in 1885 and then, as a result of Berlin’s defeat in World War I, Palau and a number of other German possessions in the Pacific were allocated by the League of Nations to Japan.

Scents of Japan in the Western Pacific

Sepia-tinted images in the Palau National Museum depict life in the most important town in Japan’s South Seas Mandate. The main street was wide and lined with trees that provided shade. Wooden buildings of unmistakably Japanese design lined both sides, with bicycle shops alongside restaurants, clothing stores, and a more impressive department store.

On the southern end of the main road stood the headquarters building of the Japanese administration. It is still there to this day, although it is undergoing repairs, and serves as the nation’s court.

Japanese businesses thrived, exporting dried coconut, phosphate from mines, and fish.

Inevitably, cross-cultural relationships flourished, with Haruo Remeliik, the first president of the newly independent Palau in 1981, a Japanese-Paluan. Similarly, Kuniwo Nakamura served eight years as president from 1992, and Japanese family names are still much in evidence above shops and businesses throughout the islands.

Chloe Yano’s grandparents on both sides were Japanese, and although she says she “relates more closely” to her Paluan side, says there are numerous parallels between the people of both cultures.

“From what I saw growing up, Japan has had a large influence on Palauan society,” says the 28-year-old Yano, who works for the Palau Visitors’ Authority in Koror. “There are lots of shared attitudes and values, such as respect for other people, regardless of their race or ethnicity, being hospitable to others and respect for the environment.

“Palauan people are also humble, hard-working and have tight family connections, which are attitudes that we share with Japanese,” she says. “And every day we hear words that are borrowed from Japanese. We still say bīru for beer.”

Palau became a favorite for Japanese travelers, says Yano, many of whom were fascinated with the connections between the two countries and others who wanted to explore some of the best dive sites in the world.

“Before the pandemic, Japanese were consistently in the top three for foreign visitors, although that has not bounced back as we had hoped,” she said, suggesting the weak yen against the dollar and the lack of direct flights are major hurdles that need to be overcome.

Sunken warships and aircraft are a legacy of the fierce fighting that took place across Palau in 1944. (© Julian Ryall)

Before the pandemic, Swing Aguon estimates that 60% of his clients were Japanese visitors, but that has tailed off in recent years. But he is hopeful they will return to his boat charter business in Koror, where he operates daily diving tours, deep-sea fishing expeditions, and visits to the UNESCO-listed Rock Islands and as far south as the island Peleliu.

“There are some Palauans who may have had difficult times when the Japanese were in control, but few, if any, of that generation are alive today,” he says. “The attitude among people now is that it happened in the past, it should be remembered but we cannot linger on the past. We need to move on.

“The Japanese who come now are tourists and they spend money that helps the economy, so we welcome them.”

Ties That Remain Strong

It is also clear that Japan has made strenuous efforts to assist in the development of Palau in the decades since the end of the war. A stone monument alongside the main street in Koror commemorates the completion of a new water system for the capital, constructed with Japanese financial assistance. The new dock at the world-famous jellyfish lake attraction has a banner proclaiming that it was funded with Japanese aid. Bright yellow Nissan high school buses have an image of a handshake and the two nations’ flags. A sleek coastal patrol vessel moored in Koror harbor bears the message that it was presented to Palau by the Nippon Foundation.

Funds from the Nippon Foundation have also gone to support police launches that operate around Palau. (© Julian Ryall)

Japanese-made school buses are a regular sight throughout Palau. Many of the school buses in Koror were donated to Palau by Japan as a symbol of friendship. (© Julian Ryall)

Timothy Rull, a 68-year-old retired state wildlife ranger who has spent his entire life on the southern island of Peleliu, says his father remembered the Japanese that he worked for fondly.

“He told me that all the Japanese he met were kind and did not harm the local people,” he recalls. “All they wanted was to set up businesses and make a living.”

The laid-back lifestyle of the island was destroyed when the war came to Peleliu in September 1944, 80 years ago, he notes, although the Japanese had taken the precaution of sending all the civilian residents by ship to the north, out of harm’s way.

The people of Palau have a deep gratitude to Japan for the assistance that it has provided, such as to fund improvements in the water supply system in Koror. (© Julian Ryall)

“If the war had not happened, I guess this island might still be a part of Japan,” Rull said. “But after the fighting, there was devastation. When the islanders came back in 1946, they had to start from scratch, but everywhere they dug, they found a layer of black ash about 2 feet [60 centimeters] beneath the surface. It made it hard to grow the traditional crops here as they all tasted bitter.

“But the war is over, the Japanese government has been very generous with grants and aid to help us rebuild, and Japanese tourists bring in money to our businesses,” he added. “That is what we need, to look to the future.”

Helping in the Search for Closure

In April 2015, then-Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko marked the seventieth anniversary of the end of the war by offering flowers and prayers at a memorial on Peleliu. More than 12,000 Japanese troops died as they attempted to resist the US invasion. A handful were captured, while 34 men hid in the dense jungle until April 1947, unaware that Japan had surrendered 20 months earlier.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko offer flowers at a cenotaph on Peleliu on April 9, 2015, to pay respect to victims of the battle between Japanese and American forces there. (Pool photo; © Jiji)

Just days after the September 15 anniversary of the start of Operation Stalemate II, the September 1944 invasion of Peleliu, Sunao Ichihara is back as a volunteer to scour the jungles and mangrove swamps for the remains of Japanese servicemen killed in the fighting.

Sunao Ichihara, a retired colonel in Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force, was on Peleliu in September to help in the search for the remains of Japanese servicemen killed in the 1944 battle for the island. (© Julian Ryall)

A retired colonel who served 38 years in the Air Self-Defense Force, 76-year-old Ichihara said he had been inspired to help locate and repatriate the remains of fallen men after reading a book written by a Japanese soldier who had been badly injured fighting on nearby Angaur Island but was helped by a US soldier.

Excavation work gets under way in a clearing in the jungle that is believed to be a mass grave of more than 1,000 Japanese servicemen. (© Julian Ryall)

”About 10,000 Japanese soldiers died on Peleliu, and every one of them had families who have since wondered what happened to their son, their brother, their husband,” he says. “I want to help them bring their loved ones home.”

Ichihara was volunteering with a team from the Japan Association for the Recovery and Repatriation of War Casualties, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare and tasked with locating as many of the 1.12 million soldiers, sailors and airmen still listed as missing in World War II. Hundreds of them are here on Peleliu.

In a clearing to the east of the feature known as Bloody Nose Ridge, the JARRWC team has excavated a series of trenches. Less than a meter below the surface, the first remains are uncovered. A skull, a spine and pelvis are quickly followed by the arms and legs.

The position of each is carefully recorded and photographed before the work to carefully lift individual bones out of the gritty soil can begin. The remains will be returned to Japan and, hopefully, identified using advanced DNA testing techniques that can be compared against samples provided by surviving family members.

US records show that 1,086 bodies were deposited in a mass grave on the island by the Americans even while the fighting continued on Peleliu. Despite several years of searching, its likely location was only identified in 2023, and this is the first body to be excavated. Before long, however, two more bodies emerge from the ground. It is believed that dozens more lie immediately beneath the team’s feet.

Shells left from the battle 80 years ago. (© Julian Ryall)

“My mother’s brother was killed in the Philippines and his remains were never brought home,” says Ichihara. “Before she died, my mother always said she wanted to go to the Philippines to see the place where he died, but she never did.

“And I recognize that if I had been born a few years earlier, then I would almost certainly have been a pilot fighting this war.”

Offerings to the dead are left at the site of the suspected mass grave. (© Julian Ryall)

(Originally written in English. Banner photo: The ruin of a Japanese amphibious tank from World War II rusts on Palau’s main island. © Julian Ryall.)