Yap Island

09-29-56.0820N / 138-04-56.9860E ~ +10GMT

 

Yap’s History in Brief
Yap’s continuous contact with the outside world began about a century ago when a German ship sailed into Tomil’s Waneday Harbor to open a trading station on Nungoch Island. The visit meant little to the Yapese who watched in amazement as the ship unloaded in 1869. Ships had come to Yap before. A Portuguese explorer Diego DeRocha is credited with the discovery of Yap in 1526, and a number of other explorers and adventurers visited the island in the years that followed.

It was not the first time outsiders had settled in what is now Yap State. In 1731 a Catholic Mission was started by Spaniards on Ulithi Island. A supply ship returned to the island about a year later and to their astonishment discovered that the natives had massacred the 13-man colony.
No nation ruled Yap when the Germans opened the Nungoch trading station. Though, Spain, Germany, and Britain all laid claim to the island, but none had ever bothered to challenge the others.
The Yapese then had not the slightest idea of the outside world’s politics. They had their own society, their own government, their own way of life. At that time Yapese were skilled navigators who raced their canoes south to Palau to quarry their treasured Stonemoney. They were also skilled builders. Yapese huge thatched meeting and men’s houses and stone paved paths around the island were as well engineered as many buildings and roads found in Europe and America.

Yap was an island of villages that fought wars against each other. After each war, the stronger village ruled the weaker village. As a result an elaborate caste system developed. Other high villages in Gagil Municipality such as Gachpar and Wanyan had a very strong influence over the outer islands of Yap that became known as the Yapese Empire.
The German trading station brought little change to Yap. The trading station also had little success due to their failure to persuade the Yapese to produce large quantities of dried copra. This remained for a shipwrecked American sailor, David Dean O’Keefe, to develop the copra trade and perhaps cause the most changes in Yap’s way of life. O'Keefe's direct contact with the Yapese became a legend. O’Keefe then was known by his Yapese followers as “His Majesty”. The legend of O’Keefe can be traced back to 1871 when he was washed ashore on Marba’ Nimgil Island (the largest island in Yap Proper). According to history, O'Keefe was a sole survivor of 50 seamen on the Belvedere, which sailed from Savannah, Georgia, 16 months before the tragedy. The Yapese nursed him back to health and the Germans then took him to Hong Kong. A year later he returned to Yap as captain of a Chinese junk, to begin his profitable trading career that lasted 30 years.

O’Keefe’s Irish temper and constant feuds with Spain and Germany, whose interests in the islands he challenged, helped build his legend. This included occasional skirmishes with pirates, who raided the islands. O’Keefe is the best remembered by the Yapese people for the stone money trade which he developed. O’Keefe succeeded where the Germans failed. He learned that they would gladly work for stone money rather than the trade goods offered by the Germans. In exchange for copra, O’Keefe supplied modern cutting tools and sailed with the Yapese to Palau to help them quarry their stone money. The size of his boat enabled the Yapese to bring back to Yap larger discs in relative safety, safety they never enjoyed in their fragile canoes. This legend of “His Majesty” came to an end at the turn of the century when he disappeared in the open sea, perhaps in a tropical storm.

Up to this point, other nations interest in Yap (as well as other islands in Micronesia) was increasing. The Micronesian islands in the late 1800’s was one of the few less developed areas in this hemisphere where no foreign flags waved from their shores. Colony-hungry Germany and Spain both pressed their claims to the island after their empires vanished in the Latin American revolutions. In August 1885, both nations landed parties in Yap to claim the island from it’s owners - the Yapese. A year later Pope Leo XIII upheld Spain’s claim, but granted Germany, Britain and other interested nations trading rights on the island. The Spanish Administration composed of a governor, a garrison (where the present Yap Hospital is located) and Catholic Priest (located where the present St. Mary’s School is, on top of Nimar Hill. At the same time, Germany expanded her trading operations, and by the 1890’s, German ships included regular trips to the neighboring islands.

The Spanish-Americans war added a new chapter to the island’s history. Spain sold Yap and other Micronesian islands (excluding Guam) to Germany for $4.5 million.
The development on Yap began to accelerate during the German occupation. The island assumed new importance with construction of a radio tower and undersea cable system linking Germany’s Pacific Territories with Asian mainland and Europe. New paths were built linking Yap’s own villages closer together, a land ownership system was established, municipal boundaries were surveyed, the Tagreng Canal was dug across the island, and new buildings, including Yap’s first hospital at Fanbuywol were built. But these developments, even after the Fanbuywol Hospital was completed, did not end the toll that Western disease was taking among the Yapese people. Repeated epidemics had already cut the island’s population from more than 10,000 when the German trading station was established, to 7,808 in 1899. By the end of the German administration there were 5,790 Yapese, and his figure had fallen to 2,582 when the Japanese left 31 years later.
The 200-foot steel radio mast, which linked German Pacific Territories, was shelled by a British warship, Minotaur, on the morning of August 12, 1914, and marked the beginning of World War I to the Island. It also marked an end to Germany’s dream of a Pacific empire. The Japanese navy occupied Yap by the end of the same year - 1914.

Japan officially assumed administration of the island in 1922 under a League of Nations mandate. Civilian administrators took over from the Navy, and Japanese businessmen began to build stores, farms and a small fishing industry. Japanese settlers began moving to Yap, though in fewer numbers than to many other parts of Micronesia.
Officially the Japanese colonial policy on the island was identical to the conditions set forth under the mandate of the League of Nations. But In reality, was quite different. The colonial policy of the Japanese Imperial Government with respect to the mandated Micronesian islands can only be summarized here under four headings: to develop the islands in preparation for future Japanese nationals; to swiftly Japanize the natives through indoctrination, training, propaganda and to promote cultural change; to fortify the islands in preparation for a war of conquest in the Pacific.
In order to achieve these four objectives of the Japanese colonial policy, the following techniques were used: administer the islands in accordance with conditions accepted in occupied territories; allow only Japanese to occupy important posts; develop resources needed by Japan and for Japanese troops based on these islands far away from the “land of the rising sun”; force the natives to share and bear their responsibilities.

Rumors of war gradually began to spread among the Yapese in the late 1930’s as the Japanese armed forces started to fortify the island. Guns were tunneled into hillsides overlooking Waneday (Tomil) Harbor. Work started on two airfields located on both the northern and southern portion of Yap. Further preparation included mining of nickel and iron deposits in Gachpar and Wanyan in Gagil; and on neighboring Fais Island, hundreds of Japanese and Okinawan workers stripped away rich phosphate-laden soils, leaving much of the island a wasteland.
Yapese were forced into labor gangs to work on airfields and other military projects. Labor gangs included first year elementary students and old men considered by most Yapese too old to keep up with the heavy work and pressure. Discipline was so severe that some Yapese who were forced to work in some of these projects still tell stories today of beatings handed out to those who failed to obey an order or were not able to complete the heavy load of work assigned to them. Yapese valuable Stonemoney was smashed to pieces as punishment for those who were disobedient to the Japanese. These smashed pieces of stone money were sometimes used as road fill. The soldiers for firewood tore down old meeting and men houses.

The American forces did not invade Yap proper. Still, the American forces managed to occupy Yap’s neighboring islands of Ulithi, Fais and Ngulu. Daily raids by American planes continued for three consecutive years. Some Yapese can still remembered fleeing for safety to places that varied from mangrove mud and taro patches to hidden foxholes in nearby hills. Air raids were concentrated mostly on the District Center, airfield and military facilities. Ulithi on the other hand, became a major staging ground for the American navy’s Pacific 7th Fleet preparing for the invasion of the Philippines.
The Americans occupied Yap without opposition after September 2, 1945, at which time the Japanese finally surrendered in the Pacific. The Navy administered the island until 1951 when the Department of Interior took over. Medical care took top place on the island after the war and for the first time in many years, Yap’s population edged upward. In recent years education has been upgraded and in 1966 the newly established Yap High School graduated its first class. During the Japanese days, Yapese could go no further than intermediate school. Today a growing number are going to college and technical schools.

Yet Yap has been slow to change, old ways survive as Yapese try to choose the best of two worlds. Miles of ancient paths join Yap’s villages, yet the island boasts one of the best road system in the Trust Territories, much of it built by Yapese themselves, using borrowed government equipment on weekends.