Thin atoll, deep history — WWII wrecks and Pacific navigation art
Majuro is the capital of the Marshall Islands — a narrow coral atoll barely above sea level in Micronesia, where the entire city stretches along a strip of land rarely more than a few hundred metres wide between the lagoon and the open Pacific. The Marshallese are master traditional navigators who read waves with their bodies, and the clear-water lagoon conceals some of the Pacific's finest WWII wreck diving.
The Marshall Islands have been settled for over 2,000 years by Micronesian navigators who used stick charts — abstract maps of wave patterns made from palm sticks and shells — to navigate between atolls. Germany colonised the islands in 1884, Japan took them in 1914, and the US seized them during WWII after the battle of Kwajalein (1944). The US conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, including the Bikini Atoll hydrogen bomb test, displacing communities whose descendants are still seeking justice.