Word: micronesia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...solution. He would like to use British-controlled Christmas Island, the largest and most easterly atoll in the Pacific.* Its advantages: it has two good runways, 6,500 ft. and 5,000 ft. long, just 3,400 miles southwest of California; there is little population closer than Hawaii or Micronesia, 1,600 miles to the west; it contains about 200 sq. mi. of sand-covered coral, room enough for considerable equipment and accommodations for 2,000 men; its isolation affords hope of keeping some tests secret. The British conducted three nuclear test series there...
Rota. Truk, Yap, Saipan, Koror, Ponape, Majuro . . . The Marshalls, Carolines and Marianas; they could be the names of seven Pekingese dogs and the families who own them. Actually these islands and archipelagoes (comprising 2,134 other islands and atolls) in the Western Pacific sun make up Micronesia-a tractable, tropical dreamland that the U.S. is not quite sure what to do with. They are the spoils of war, won from the Japanese at the cost of thousands of U.S. lives...
...Micronesia became the only "strategic" trust territory in the world. No tourists are allowed inside its borders, and at any time the U.S. can seal off any area from observers if it chooses. In effect, Micronesia is a military reservation. The U.S. maintains powerful naval forces along its western front. A missile range has been set up in the empty spaces between islands farther east. Eniwetok and Bikini served as the site of nuclear tests. But as a self-professed champion of anticolonialism, the U.S. has always been rather embarrassed about its island wards...
...launched by the Japanese during their prewar tenure, 3) allowed school buildings to run down and neglected to provide enough secondary education, 4) proved reluctant to place Micronesians in top administrative posts. In short, the U.N. mission called on the U.S. to make "greater and speedier" efforts to prepare Micronesia for eventual self-government and independence...