MICRONESIA



 Girl at a Kava Ceremony on the island of Truk. The beautiful, remote Pacific islands of Micronesia are strung across the Pacific between Hawaii in the east, The Philippines in the west and Papua New Guinea in the south. 

I was there for a series of films called The New Pacific, a political, historical and cultural look at the Pacific nations from the US West Coast to China as the centre of world economic focus changed from Europe to Asia. 







Stone money, Yap. Nobody steals it because everybody on this tiny island knows who it belongs to. I wrote a short story based on my travels in Micronesia. The missionary station was actually based on a mission in Papua New Guinea, but the way of going about things, and the fish, is Micronesian:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/featured-fifty-fiction-the-long-pig_b_3293789






World War II shipwrecks, Truk Lagoon.


World War II tank, Saipan


Yap men with their Betel Nut bags. Betel Nut chewing was, and presumably still is, widespread.





World War II tank on the beach at Saipan


Suicide cliff, Saipan where many Japanese civilians and soldiers jumped to their deaths rather than be captured by the advancing US forces. 




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