Micronesia

Micronesia mixes two kinds of island. High islands — Guam, Saipan, Palau's Babeldaob, Pohnpei, Kosrae, Chuuk's lagoon islands, Yap — are volcanic or uplifted limestone, with hills, rivers, rainforest and room for farming. Atolls are rings of low coral islets around a lagoon, rarely more than a few metres above the sea, with sandy soil where coconut, pandanus and breadfruit grow and fresh water comes from rain and a thin underground lens.

The Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu (to the south, in Polynesia) are almost entirely atolls; Nauru is a single raised coral island mined for phosphate. On an atoll the lagoon is the road, the larder and the playground, and the ocean side is where the swell breaks. King tides and storm surges already wash over parts of Majuro and South Tarawa, and sea-level rise is a daily political subject.

The reefs and lagoons are the region's great attraction. Palau's Rock Islands and drop-offs, Yap's manta ray cleaning stations, Chuuk Lagoon's Japanese wartime fleet and Bikini Atoll's sunken warships make Micronesia one of the world's top diving areas. Most of it lies north of the equator, so the dry season runs from about January to May and typhoons are most likely from July to November, especially in the west.

Distances are huge and populations tiny. The FSM spreads 607 islands across 2,700 km; Kiribati's islands span more than 4,000 km east to west and straddle the International Date Line, which the country moved in 1995 so all its islands share the same day.

The Marianas and Palau were settled from Island Southeast Asia around 3,500 years ago, among the earliest long open-sea voyages anywhere. The central and eastern islands were settled later, from the south. Over millennia Micronesians developed some of the world's most refined navigation: star compasses, swell reading, and in the Marshall Islands stick charts — lattices of sticks and shells that model how swells bend around islands.

In the Carolines, traditional navigation survived continuously on outer islands such as Satawal and Puluwat. The Satawalese navigator Mau Piailug guided the Hawaiian canoe Hōkūle'a to Tahiti in 1976 without instruments, proving that Pacific voyaging had been deliberate, and later taught Hawaiians, Māori and others the craft. His students now sail canoes across the Pacific again.

Yap is famous for rai, huge stone discs quarried in Palau and brought back by canoe, some over 3 m across. Ownership changes without the stone moving, and the stones are still used in customary exchanges; you can see them lining village 'stone money banks'. On Pohnpei, the Saudeleur dynasty built Nan Madol, nearly a hundred artificial islets of stacked basalt columns off the east coast, between about 1180 and 1628. Guam and the Marianas have latte stones, the pillars and capstones that held up ancient Chamorro houses.

Matrilineal clans organise much of Micronesian society, with land and titles passed through the mother's line, and chiefly titles remain important in Pohnpei, Yap and Palau. Traditional men's and women's houses, dance and navigation schools are kept up in the outer islands and revived in the towns.

Magellan reached Guam in 1521, and Spain colonised the Marianas from 1668, when Jesuit missions and war and disease reduced the Chamorro population drastically. Spain held Guam as a stop on the Manila galleon route for two centuries. After the Spanish-American War of 1898 the US took Guam, and Spain sold the rest of Micronesia to Germany, which ran it for copra and phosphate.

Japan seized German Micronesia in 1914 and governed it under a League of Nations mandate, settling tens of thousands of Japanese and Okinawans, building towns on Saipan, Koror and Pohnpei, and fortifying the islands. In December 1941 Japan also took Guam and the Gilberts (now Kiribati). The US campaign across the central Pacific in 1943–44 fought through Tarawa, Kwajalein, Enewetak, Saipan, Tinian, Guam and Peleliu, with heavy losses on all sides and among islanders.

The remains are everywhere: tanks on Saipan's beaches, Banzai Cliff and Suicide Cliff, the Tinian runways from which the atomic bombs were flown in August 1945, coastal guns at Betio on Tarawa, and more than 60 ships and hundreds of aircraft on the floor of Chuuk Lagoon after Operation Hailstone in February 1944. Many wrecks hold human remains and unexploded ordnance: dive with licensed guides and take nothing.

After the war the US administered Micronesia as a UN trust territory and used the Marshall Islands for nuclear testing: 67 tests at Bikini and Enewetak between 1946 and 1958, including the 1954 Castle Bravo explosion whose fallout reached inhabited atolls. People displaced then still live elsewhere; Bikini is a UNESCO site and, for experienced divers, a wreck site.

The trust territory split up in the 1970s and 1980s. The Northern Mariana Islands chose to become a US commonwealth in 1978; Guam remains an unincorporated US territory whose people are US citizens but cannot vote for president. Palau, the FSM and the Marshall Islands became sovereign states tied to the US by Compacts of Free Association, renewed in 2023–24 for another twenty years.

Under the Compacts, the US provides funding and defence, and citizens of the three nations can live and work in the US without visas; large communities live in Hawai'i, Guam, Arkansas and Oregon. The US dollar is the currency, US mail and zip codes are used, and US federal programmes run schools and airports. For visitors this means US-style English, US plugs and prices in dollars — but each nation sets its own entry rules.

Kiribati and Nauru took a different path. Kiribati, the former British Gilbert Islands, became independent in 1979 and uses the Australian dollar; Nauru, independent in 1968, grew briefly rich from phosphate and then lost most of the wealth. Both have switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, and China, the US and Australia now compete for influence across the region with ports, airports and undersea cables.

Guam is the hub of all of this. It hosts large US air and naval bases, is a major holiday destination for Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese visitors, and has the region's best hospitals and shopping. For many islanders, Guam or Honolulu is where you go for surgery, university or a job.

Daily life in Micronesia mixes US imports with village custom. Churches — Catholic in Guam, the Marianas and Yap, Protestant in the Marshalls and Kosrae — are central; Sundays are quiet, particularly in Kosrae. Betel nut is chewed in Yap, Palau and Guam; sakau (kava) is the nightly drink on Pohnpei. Fiestas for village patron saints on Guam and Saipan feed hundreds.

The United Island Hopper is the region's lifeline: a Boeing 737 that flies from Honolulu to Majuro, Kwajalein, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk and Guam a few times a week, with stops of under an hour at each. Stopovers can be built into one ticket, which is the best way to see several states. Nauru Airlines links Nauru, Tarawa, Majuro and Pohnpei with Brisbane; Palau is reached from Guam, Manila, Taipei and Seoul.

Everything depends on those flights. A delay can cost a week on some islands, supply ships bring food and fuel, and prices are high because nearly everything is imported. Hotels are few and simple outside Guam, Saipan and Koror; book ahead, carry cash (ATMs exist in the main towns but not on outer islands), and keep your plans flexible.

The warmth of welcome makes up for it. Visitors are few, people are curious and friendly, and in places like Pohnpei, Kosrae and the outer Marshall atolls you may be the only outsiders on the island. Dress modestly away from the beach — knees covered for women in Yap and the outer islands — and ask before walking onto village land or reef.