Native Hawaiians in the Northern Mariana and Ogasawara Islands: An Historical Perspective

Abstract

This study focuses on Native Hawaiians recorded in the Northern Mariana and Ogasawara Islands from an historical perspective. In 1811, a group of Native Hawaiians were forcibly brought against their wishes to the Northern Mariana Islands from Kauaʻi. They were then removed by the colonial Spanish administration and incorporated into the larger native CHamoru and Carolinian populations of Guam. In 1830, other Native Hawaiians with European and American settlers immigrated to the Ogasawara Islands from the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Their mixed heritage descendants eventually became Japanese citizens in 1876, remaining until WWII when they were evacuated to Japan. Under American rule from 1946 to 1968, they were returned to Ogasawara and remain Japanese citizens today. The tenure of Hawaiians on Agrihan island in the Northern Marianas was relatively short termed with little evidence of direct impact on Spanish Colonial material culture. In contrast, Hawaiian-style grass houses and outrigger canoes soon became recognized by American and later Japanese settlers to the Ogasawara islands as truly unique to that place and time. It is argued here that this cross-cultural and multi-ethnic phenomenon is not an isolated event in the history or prehistory of Micronesia or Remote Oceania. The Mariana archipelago was initially settled by Austronesian and Southeast Asian peoples well before Hawai‘i and probably before the Ogasawara Islands. However, many of these islands were subsequently repopulated by European, American, Carolinian, and Asian peoples during which time CHamorus and Hawaiians actively participated in what was the greatest diaspora over open water on the planet until the age of air travel.