War and remembrance on Peleliu: Islander, Japanese, and American memories of a battle in the Pacific War

This dissertation examines competing representations of war memories on the island of Peleliu, in the Palau archipelago of Micronesia, site of a major battle between Japan and the US in World War II. It contrasts the way the island's residents understand the war with the American and Japanese conceptions of the battle's meaning. The three parties' differing notions of land and islands provide a lens for viewing their wartime experiences and postwar memories. For the Islanders, history is tied to stories of lands and landmarks, which were devastated in the fighting. They remember the war as having destroyed their entire way of life. The dissertation first reconstructs that prewar life based on extensive interviews with surviving elders. It then contrasts the memories and patterns of commemoration of the three parties, drawing on interviews, published histories, monuments, and memorial ceremonies. Today residents struggle to reconstruct their society, retain and recover their prewar past, and attract tourism, an essential component of their economy. Japanese memorial tourists (Ireidan) consider the island sanctified by the loss of 11,000 men. Ireidan collect remains and erect monuments whose messages range from leftist expressions of regret to rightist invocations of the prewar emperor system. Japanese nationalist groups have rebuilt Shinto shrines from the period of Japanese colonial administration (1914-45). Ceremonies and monuments thus reflect the contentious debates within Japan itself regarding interpretations of the war and Japan's responsibility for it. American service units have erected memorials dedicated to the heroism of their members, while US historical accounts debate whether the battle was necessary and the leadership incompetent. Japanese and American visitors ignore what the battle has meant to the Islanders and to each other. Their governments have proposed development schemes for Peleliu that treat the war in radically different ways. Sixty years after the conflict, Peleliu's residents remain heavily dependent on aid and tourism from the two former combatants.