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De-Centering the Nation State: Historical Methodology within a Pacific Geography (2010-2011) presents Tosiwo Nakayama and Macronesia Dr. David Hanlon Professor, Department of History, UHM Friday, December 3; 2:30-4:00 History Department Library, Sakamaki A201 Tosiwo Nakayama served as the first president of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), a selfgoverning entity in the Pacific referred to by some as the “remnants” of United States strategic interests in the western Pacific. Kyushu and Manhattan marked the lateral borders of the world of islands in which he lived, worked, and traveled. Born in 1931 to a Japanese father and a local woman from he Namonuito Atoll complex that lies some 170 kilometers northwest of the main Chuuk Lagoon group, Nakayama grew up during Japan's colonial administration of greater Micronesia, survived war, and rose to local and later regional political prominence in the United States Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Nakayama went on to serve as Senate president of the Congress of Micronesia throughout much of the 1970s and chaired the 1975 Micronesian Constitutional Convention that produced the foundational document on which the FSM currently rests. He was deeply involved in negotiations over what became the Compact of Free Association with the United States, and helped steer that document to final approval and implementation in 1986. These facts notwithstanding, Nakayama’s life certainly offers a site for the critical investigation into nationstate construction and all of the issues and problems it encompasses. His public life was very much about engagements with colonialism, decolonization, and modernization. A study of Tosiwo Nakayama also invites a reconsideration of migration, transnational crossings, regional connections, the actual size of island worlds, and the very idea of a “Micronesia.” In retrospect, Tosiwo Nakayama seems to have been more a citizen of Macronesia than Micronesia. Co-Sponsored by the Center for Pacific Islands Studies & the Department of History