ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how the first narrative of Marshallese territoriality came to be dominant and who has contested it for what reasons. The Marshall Islands is an archipelago of widely scattered, low-lying coral atolls, now administered as the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Japan seized the islands in 1914, a possession made official by the League of Nations after World War I. The Japanese heavily fortified the islands as World War II approached. The Japanese lost the territory atoll by atoll to the Americans in 1944. Postwar, the Marshall Islands became a UN Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands administered by the US: a de facto American possession. The people of Eniwetok, Bikini, Rongelap and Utrik have been at various times and for various durations removed from their islands to make way for nuclear testing. Panterritorial solidarity has influenced how Marshall Islanders think about their new mega-challenge, global climate change.
