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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