Category Archives: Micronesia

by | 30 September 2026 · 6:21 am

Melanesian Obsidian in Micronesia

From Waka Kuaka | The Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 131, no. 4 (2022):

OBSIDIAN POINT DISCOVERED ON KAPINGAMARANGI ATOLL, MICRONESIA:
IMPLICATIONS FOR POST-SETTLEMENT REGIONAL INTERACTIONS

TAKUYA NAGAOKA. Pasifika Renaissance
PETER J. SHEPPARD, Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland
CALLAN ROSS-SHEPPARD, McGill University
NINA KONONENKO, University of Sydney, Australian Museum

ABSTRACT: An obsidian point was discovered by chance by local people on Kapingamarangi Atoll, a Polynesian Outlier in Micronesia. In addition to use-wear and residue analysis to identify its use, pXRF analysis conducted on it demonstrated that it was brought from the Admiralty Islands in Papua New Guinea over about 900 km. The information on other Admiralty obsidian artefacts found in western Oceania and other associated phenomena suggest that those artefacts were brought from the source through an interaction network between Micronesia and Melanesia during the first half of the second millennium AD. They had significant social value as prestige goods in the peripheral areas of the Admiralty obsidian circulation, serving as chiefly heirlooms and grave goods. In addition to skilful Caroline Islands seafarers, Polynesian Outlier populations had an important role in the interregional interactions during this dynamic period in the western Pacific, which was possibly activated by Polynesian intrusion into the region related to a larger Polynesian expansion into eastern Polynesia circa AD 1000. Further, we argue that the Saudeleur dynasty of Pohnpei, which achieved the development of a famous megalithic politico-religious centre, Nan Madol, was influential in the interaction sphere during its height in AD 1000–1500. Thus, by using archaeological, linguistic, historical, ethnological, oral traditional and DNA data, the interdisciplinary analysis of this rare obsidian artefact has deepened our understanding of post-settlement interaction in the region.

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Filed under language, Melanesia, Micronesia, migration, Polynesia, religion

by | 6 September 2026 · 5:53 am

First European Views of the Marianas

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle p. 242:

The first Spaniards reaching the remote Marianas islands noted how tall and fit they were, and recent examination of remains suggests they had a life expectancy of 44 years, much higher than in Europe at the time. The islands had been settled some 3,000 earlier, from either Luzon or Sulawesi, and had typical Austronesian characteristics such as a matrilineal system, weaving skills and megaliths known as latte stones, and a language, Chamorro, roughly comprehensible to Ferdinand Magellan’s Malay interpreter. Magellan (in Portuguese ‘Fernão Magalhães’, in Spanish ‘Fernando Magallanes’) was so impressed with their sailing skills that he called them the ‘Islas de Velas Latinas’ (‘Isles of the Lateen Sails’) after their small but remarkably agile sailing craft. The late sixteenth century Spanish document known as the Boxer Codex noted that their lateen sails were made of waxen palm leaves of many colours and designs. The boats could sail very fast whatever the wind strength and direction. The people were described as ‘thickset with large and stout limbs […] larger than we are’. They had a ‘pleasant appearance’ apart from filed teeth and widespread yaws – a disfiguring but not fatal skin disease common in the tropics. However, less appreciative Spaniards called them the ‘Islas Ladrones’ (‘Robber Islands’) on account of their sense of communal possession, a name which lingered long after they were renamed Marianas in 1668 after Mariana, widow of Spain’s King Philip IV. They are now divided as Guam, the largest, which is an unincorporated US territory, and the Northern Marianas, a US-dependent Commonwealth.

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Filed under labor, language, Micronesia, migration, Philippines, Portugal, Southeast Asia, Spain, U.S.

by | 16 January 2026 · 10:53 am

Palauan Musical Obituary

Last October, Jim Geselbracht posted on his Palauan Music blog an obituary titled “Sorry, I Really Must Go” with his memories and also a long list of musical selections to listen to from the life of a very productive Palauan singer, composer, and educator, who began composing when Japanese enka  and evocative Japanese phrases permeated many Palauan songs.  Some of the recordings are very faint, pieced together from old tapes, but well worth a careful listen.

This week we lost another insightful voice in Palauan music: Mengesebuuch Yoichi K. Rengiil passed away at the age of 84 in Guam. Yoichi, both a singer and composer, was born in 1941 and grew up in Ngeremlengui.  In the early 1950s, he moved to Koror to attend the Palau Intermediate School and then left for Guam in 1956 to attend high school and start college.  He returned to Palau in 1963 and taught social studies at the Palau High School.  In the 1960s, he teamed up with Aichi Ngirchokebai, Hidebo Sugiyama and Julie Tatengelel to perform at Aichi’s theater in Koror and at village bais on Babeldaob.  He left Palau again in 1967 to complete his college education at the University of Guam and then obtained a Masters in Education Administration at UH Manoa in 1973.  Yoichi was an active member of the Modekngei, serving as the Principal at the Belau Modekngei School in the 1970s. His professional resume is deep, and I will leave it to others to remember that part of his life, but in this post I would like to acknowledge his contribution to Palauan music.

Yoichi and I met regularly via Zoom over the past five years to discuss Palauan music, language and stories and he was an important mentor to me in understanding the meaning behind the rich musical legacy of Palauan music. From our discussions, I learned of seven songs that he composed between 1963 and 1987:

  • Did er a Sechou, 1963 or 64
  • Oh! Somebody Me Keleng Saingo, 1968
  • Sayonara, But I Love You, 1968 or 69
  • Chellelengem ma Klungiolem, 1969 or 70
  • Decheruk er a Capitol Hill, late 1960s (co-wrote with John Skebong)
  • Merat el Kerrekar, 1970
  • Ng Di Kmedu e ng mo Ngemeded, 1986 or 87

The first song Yoichi ever composed has become a classic: Did er a Sechou. Named for the bridge in the jetty at Ngeremlengui, the song was not autobiographical, as many people think, but rather Yoichi telling the story of a man from Ngeremlengui who was heartbroken over the end of his relationship with his wife and children. The first recording of this song is from the Ngerel Belau Radio tapes, recorded sometime between 1963 and 1967, with Yoichi singing and backed by the VOP (Voice of Palau) band consisting of Hidebo Sugiyama on mandolin and Aichi Ngirchokebai on guitar.

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Filed under education, Japan, language, Micronesia, music, religion, U.S.

by | 15 January 2026 · 10:12 pm

Cold, Cold Heart in Palau

I just discovered that I had missed the last two posts to Jim Geselbracht’s wonderfully nostalgic (for me) Palauan Music blog. I heard lots of Palauan renditions of Japanese enka and American country and western music during my earliest fieldwork in Micronesia in the 1970s. In his latest post, Jim looks at the antecedents of the Palauan song Aggie Chiang from the 1980s, whose melody goes back at least to 1951 recordings by Hank Williams, Dinah Washington, and Tony Bennett. Hank Williams may have adapted it in turn from You’ll Still Be in My Heart (1945) by “T” Texas Tyler and his Oklahoma Melody Boys. Jim posts links to all those renditions.

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by | 21 January 2025 · 5:12 am

Micronesia and the North Pacific Gyre

From Conquering The Pacific: An Unknown Mariner and the Final Great Voyage of the Age of Discovery, by Andrés Reséndez (HarperCollins, 2021), Kindle pp. 120-121:

The second arrow shot across the Pacific, the Villalobos expedition of 1542–43, essentially retraced the previous track and confirmed that the best way to sail from the Americas to Asia was indeed via a straight path across the ocean just north of the equator. Wind maps of the North Pacific show a broad westward-moving band of winds (and currents) between five and twenty-five degrees of northern latitude, connecting Mexico and the Philippines. Wide, continuous or nearly so, and quite regular all year round, this portion of the North Pacific Gyre amounts to a veritable highway across the ocean, far easier to locate and navigate than the northern portion for the return trip, as we shall see.

Just as earlier Atlantic navigators had used the Sargasso Sea to orient themselves, the Saavedra and Villalobos expeditions began identifying some of the Micronesian—that is, tiny—islands on the way to the Philippines. To get a sense of the difficulty, we need to consider that all the Micronesian islands add up to 271 square miles, or a quarter of Rhode Island, the smallest state in the United States, but are scattered over a patch of the Pacific that is roughly the size of all the contiguous states in the Union. Still, the Saavedra expedition was able to sight a group of low-lying atolls they grandly called “las Islas de los Reyes,” or “the Islands of the Kings” (probably the present-day Faraulep Atoll at 8.6 degrees of northern latitude). More promisingly, the Villalobos expedition spotted a small island with many coconut palms and thickly inhabited (likely the present-day island of Fais at 9.7 degrees of northern latitude). The captain called it Matalotes because, as they passed, some of the islanders paddled toward the vessels and called out in cheerful Spanish, “Buenos días, matalotes,” or “Good morning, sailors.” Somehow they had interacted with Spaniards before.

The Legazpi expedition pursued the same direct trajectory across the Pacific as the previous two voyages and benefited from the knowledge acquired up to then. The four vessels in Legazpi’s squadron remained safely inside the band of favorable winds and currents of the North Pacific Gyre, covering the six thousand miles between Mexico and the first Micronesian islands in record time. At every stage of the journey, the pilots—the very best in all the Spanish Empire—knew their precise location relative to the North Pacific Gyre because they estimated their latitude (north-south distance) every day.

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Filed under language, Mexico, Micronesia, migration, Pacific, Philippines, Spain

by | 24 December 2024 · 4:39 pm

Typhoon Cobra vs. U.S. Navy, 1944

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle p. 246:

As soon as Cowpens cleared the storm, all departments began taking stock and cataloging the damage. Seven planes had gone over the side: four Hellcats and three Avengers. In addition to the loss of the ship’s radar, the storm battered several of the ship’s antiaircraft guns out of action, while the twisting and bucking of the ship opened two twenty-four-inch cracks in the hangar deck bulkheads. All four of the ship’s side-mounted smokestacks were smashed in on their undersides from waves, and water taken in through the stacks had to be drained out of the engine rooms. There was only superficial fire damage to the wooden flight deck, just a ten-foot-diameter charred area. The radio generator room was flooded; it was just off the flight deck between the stacks and wasn’t fitted with a watertight door, as the designers never foresaw the possibility that the sea would enter the ship that far up. But all told, the damage was far less than it could have been. Captain DeBaun noted with some pride in the ship’s damage report to Third Fleet that “the USS Cowpens was materially ready and able to fight at the end of the storm.”

While the Cowpens escaped major damage, other ships in the Third Fleet were not as lucky. In a two-hour period at the height of the storm, the typhoon sank three destroyers, damaged twenty-seven other ships, and swept 146 airplanes from carrier decks. Two other destroyers had very close calls with disaster, rolling as much as seventy degrees in the raging seas, and aircraft that broke loose aboard Cowpens’ sister ship, Monterey, sparked a hangar bay fire that gutted that deck, killed three, and wounded forty. The total death toll was 790, more than twice the number of American casualties in the Battle of Midway in 1942, while the loss of planes was five times greater than US combat losses at the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot in June.

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by | 23 December 2024 · 2:48 pm

Naval Base Ulithi Atoll, 1944

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle pp. 213-214

Cowpens tied up at Ulithi Atoll on October 29. The atoll was on the far western end of the Caroline Islands, southwest of the Marianas. Vaguely resembling the outline of the Italian peninsula, the string of islets created a 209-square-mile natural harbor spacious enough to host in excess of seven hundred ships, more than enough for the Third Fleet. The atoll was a new acquisition for the US Navy, captured without a fight on September 23. Like Majuro before it, Ulithi had been largely bypassed by the war. Under US control, it became the major American fleet anchorage in the Western Pacific, replacing Majuro and Eniwetok, which were now too far to the east.

By the time Cowpens arrived, there were over one hundred ships in the harbor, including nearly forty from Service Squadron 10, which just that month had arrived from Eniwetok, some 1,400 miles away. The squadron rapidly transformed the idyllic Pacific lagoon into a major logistical base, bringing with it specialized ships for repair, salvage, supply, fueling, and medical assistance. For the Moo’s officers and men, Ulithi’s primary draw was Mog Mog, the small islet that the Navy set aside for recreation. After weeks of unending shipboard life, anything that got them ashore was a welcome break. Although it baked under a fierce tropical sun that varied, in the words of one sailor, from “the infernal to the merely intolerable,” Mog Mog offered the opportunity to relax on the pearl-white sands, swim in the crystal clear tropical lagoon, or play baseball, basketball, or volleyball.

The Moo’s officers and men did not have it to themselves. Most of the ships in the harbor were releasing a third of their complement at a time to go ashore, meaning that as many as fifteen thousand sailors and one thousand officers were on the island on any given day. Arriving on the beach for a four-hour liberty, the sailors were given two cans of warm beer, sometimes Iron City beer from Pittsburgh or Rupert’s from New York City. Naturally, the bluejackets soon developed a barter system so those who wanted could drink their fill, with the sailors trading cash and smokes for others’ ration of beer. Unfortunately, the beer was spiked with formaldehyde to keep it from spoiling in the tropical heat. While this deterred few sailors, overindulgence resulted in what Clem described as a “walloping” hangover.

On the officers’ side of Mog Mog the engineers constructed a series of thatched huts that served as a makeshift O club and recreation area, known as Crowley’s Tavern. The officers sipped beer or whiskey at a yards-long bar constructed of crushed beer cans or enjoyed grilled steaks or a game of horseshoes. After the wear and tear of weeks of flying and the strain of on-again, off-again clashes with Captain Taylor and his staff, Air Group 22 went to Crowley’s to blow off some steam. Several of its fliers returned to the ship drunk and belligerent, and only the quick intervention of the air group’s senior pilots averted a confrontation with the ship’s officers. “Some of the boys went ashore in p.m. almost resulting in trouble aboard at night,” Clem wrote sympathetically the following day. “Not that they can be blamed too much as we are still taking a beating about the last attack. Both Houston and the Canberra [battle cruisers they had helped rescue] are here and so we are supposed to be heroes.”

Captain Taylor’s preferred choice for dealing with Air Group 22 finally caught up with the ship at Ulithi. Bob Price, who commanded VF-25 and then Air Group 25 before surviving eleven days adrift in the Pacific in a life raft, returned aboard the Cowpens on October 30 after more than a month in transit. He made the long journey from Jacksonville to Ulithi by train, ship, and finally by air.

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by | 19 December 2024 · 8:50 am

Japanese Night Attack Tactics, 1943

From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle pp. 88-90:

The [U.S. Navy] task force beat a hasty retreat [from Kwajalein] with the enemy hot on their trail. Everyone expected trouble that evening, and the Japanese did not disappoint. They were expert at night attacks, with a robust playbook of tactics. A little before sunset, one or more snoopers—usually Betty torpedo bombers—would trail the American formation just out of range, radioing the ships’ position to their squadronmates ashore. When darkness fell, the snoopers dropped a string of float lights marking the direction the ships were traveling. When the striking planes arrived, the snoopers flew over the fleet at high altitude, dropping parachute flares to illuminate the ships for torpedo attacks. Getting spotlighted or backlit by brilliant flares produced a profound sense of vulnerability even among the most grizzled sailors. Capt. William Tomlinson, who commanded the Moo’s sister ship Belleau Wood, likened it to one of his recurring bad dreams where he was naked in a bathtub under the bright lights of Times Square—except in this case it was real.

Sure enough, a Japanese snooper shadowed the force in the late afternoon, and as Clark had warned, after dark it guided in the Bettys that the day’s strike had missed. Starting at 7 p.m. and continuing for the next six hours, Cowpens and the fleet were under almost continual attack, with small groups of one to four bombers at a time trying to break through the outer edges of the formation to torpedo the carriers at the center. When the Bettys were not attacking, they were circling or ganging up for a fresh strike, so that bogeys were constantly on US radar screens. The moon was dangerously bright, and sailors aboard the Moo could easily see the formation of ships around them, illuminated further by the fiery, hissing parachute flares that descended from high above.

Tracking the bogeys on radar, Pownall ordered frequent and sometimes radical changes of course to throw off the Japanese and present them the least favorable angle for a torpedo attack. While the maneuvering frustrated most attacks, there were many close calls. One of the Moo’s flight deck firefighters, George McIntyre, described how the water was “lousy with torpedoes.” One passed just astern of Cowpens, while Yorktown had two near misses of her own. Lexington was not as lucky, and took a torpedo to the stern, wrecking her steering gear and killing nine.

Just before 11 p.m., the enemy started to come in with more determination, and Admiral Pownall signaled his ships, ANYONE WITH A GOOD SETUP LET ’EM HAVE IT! Aboard the Moo, those topside watched the fireworks as the task group’s outer cordon of ships lit up the sky with muzzle flashes, orange tracers, and the bright flares of hit and burning Japanese planes. Cowpens and the other CVLs—unlike the larger ships in the fleet—had no radar-guided guns, and so to avoid giving away her position at night she usually did not fire unless the target was brightly illuminated and at close range. The crew, watching the action from the center of the fleet’s battle formation, quipped that what the Moo needed was a big neon arrow on the flight deck with the words: “The big carriers are over there.”

The Japanese planes withdrew just before 1:30 a.m. as the moon set, and soon after the task force’s radar scopes were clear of enemy aircraft.

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by | 6 July 2023 · 5:47 am

Roles of Nadzab and Ulithi in 1944

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 134-136:

If one were to point to one vital factor that tilted the balance against the Axis across the globe, it was, in addition to the Soviet willingness to shed blood, the juggernaut of American industrial might. To be of any use it had to be taken from the assembly lines in the United States to where it was needed, and by 1944, it was reaching the farthest corners of the Pacific. It was a miracle of transportation, but it did not come easy or cheap: for every combat division that was deployed in the war against Japan, twice the number of service troops was needed to ship it to the region and keep it supplied. This was a feat that probably no other power could accomplish but the United States, skilled in the operation of a modern continent-sized economy, with maritime commercial ties spanning across the globe to match. The war in the Pacific was a logistical contest as much as a military conflict, and America was uniquely prepared for it.

The peculiar nature of the war changed the face of the Pacific, and it brought the 20th century, with all its technological prowess and organized violence, to areas that sometimes were just emerging from the Stone Age. At Nadzab in New Guinea, originally a mission station with a tiny airfield for small planes, one of the world’s largest airports and transportation hubs had emerged from practically nothing. It was the western terminus of the Air Transport Command’s trans-Pacific flights, and by 1944, it was a beehive of frantic activity, as Navy airman Charles Furey later recalled: “During the daylight hours, the sky is filled with hovering airplanes, and airplanes taking off and landing. Hardly a day goes by when there isn’t a fiery crash on one of the runways. We hear a deep rumble, and then an obelisk of black smoke appears in the sky, a brief monument to some unlucky flight crew.”

Later in the year, Ulithi atoll in the Carolines became for a period the world’s largest fleet base. It was seized against no opposition on September 23, and within weeks, it was home to not only harbor facilities, but also an airstrip and a hospital, and shortly afterwards “Radio Ulithi” began broadcasting. The base even boasted modest facilities for rest and recreation for weary soldiers and sailors, on the small island of Mogmog, ruled by the Micronesian King Ueg, who agreed to move his people to the neighboring island of Fassarai for the duration of the war. At one point when the lagoon was particularly crowded, Mogmog was “so full of bluejackets in shoregoing whites that from a distance it looked like one of those Maine islands where seagulls breed,” according to the official US Navy historian. Still, there was little entertainment: “You would sit around and drink beer and that was about it, and maybe try to go for a swim. But the coral was so sharp that it would cut your legs up and you couldn’t even get in the water,” a serviceman recalled.

Michael Bak, quartermaster on board the destroyer USS Franks, remembered the immense size of Ulithi, which seemed large enough to hold the entire US Navy: “One of the interesting things about Ulithi was that there were so many ships in the fleet coming in that everybody aboard ship had a buddy on another ship. They would come up to the bridge, where the signal gang had a record of the ships in the lagoon. The signalmen always knew, because we had to watch our division commander’s mast for signal messages which were given off on the yardarms. And one of the fellows from our crew would come to the bridge and ask if we could call different ships to see if so-and-so was aboard, and maybe get him to talk,” he said.

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Filed under industry, Japan, Micronesia, military, Papua New Guinea, U.S., war

by | 3 July 2023 · 5:52 am

Japanese Homefront Mood, Jul. 1944

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 115-118:

The sun was shining from a bright Pacific sky, but Admiral Ugaki Matome’s mood was much more accurately reflected in the dreary seasonal showers that he knew were now hitting the Japanese home islands. As commander of one of the fleets that had been beaten so profoundly off Saipan, he was fully aware of the implications. “It will be extremely difficult to recover from this disaster and rise again,” he wrote in his diary. “When I think the prospect of a victory is fading out gradually, it’s only natural that my heart becomes as gloomy as the sky of the rainy season.”

Back in Tokyo, the humiliation was felt equally intensely. Retired Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa was in despair. “Although I do not know [the] exact details, Japan has lost the war,” he told a colleague. “We have been defeated beyond doubt. Whoever leads the war, there is nothing to be done.” Hirohito was in a daze and spent his time gazing at fireflies in the Fugiake Garden of the Imperial Palace. “Under the circumstances, there is nothing better for him than to divert himself and to recuperate,” his second cousin Irie Sukemasa wrote in his diary.

Vice Admiral Miwa Shigeyoshi spoke for many when he commented: “Our war was lost with the loss of Saipan. I feel it was a decisive battle. The loss of Saipan meant [the Allies] could cut off our shipping and attack our homeland.” Rear Admiral Takata Toshitane, the deputy chief of Military Affairs at the Navy Ministry added, “We knew that from then on the war was going to be pretty tough. We realized that with the destruction of our industrial capacity, our production would naturally drop to practically zero.” Nagano Osami, the emperor’s supreme naval advisor, put it succinctly: “Hell is on us.”

The few foreigners left in Japan felt the different atmosphere. The Vice Admiral Paul Werner Wenneker, German Naval attaché to Tokyo, noted a clear change in the mood of the Japanese governing elite after the debacle at Saipan, an actual piece of Japan, and not recently conquered territory. “Saipan was really understood to be a matter of life and death,” he said. “About that time they began telling people the truth about the war. They began preparing them for whatever must happen. Before that, they had been doing nothing but fooling the people.” A few days after the loss of Saipan, Tōjō did indeed tell the public that “Imperial Japan has come to face an unprecedentedly great national crisis.”

…

Prime Minister Tōjō came under pressure over the loss of Saipan. His wife received phone calls from people who did not give their names and simply asked, “Hasn’t Tōjō committed hara-kiri yet?” In an indication that after years of war Japan was nowhere near becoming a hard dictatorship like Germany, Tōjō faced criticism that he was amassing too much power in his own hands. Some even compared him with Adolf Hitler, arguing that it was the German dictator’s insistence on making all the big decisions himself that had led to the disaster at Stalingrad in early 1943. Tōjō was unperturbed: “Chancellor Hitler was a corporal. I am a general.”

In what could have been an almost perfect parallel to the attempted assassination of Hitler in July 1944, two Japanese officers in the same month planned to throw a bomb at Tōjō’s car as it passed through the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, but their plan was thwarted, and they were sentenced to death—and later granted a stay of execution. Instead, political pressure built on Tōjō to resign from his post. An alliance of court officials and senior naval officers had been seeking to oust him for months but had been prevented from achieving their aim by Emperor Hirohito’s strong support of Tōjō.

They had been waiting for the right moment to strike, and now with the fall of Saipan, the opportunity was there. They acted by the middle of July, preparing a resolution to Hirohito stating that “the minds and hearts of the people must be infused with new life if the empire is to survive… a powerful new cabinet must be formed that will surge forward unswervingly.” With the loss of the emperor’s backing, Tōjō was doomed. On July 18, a deeply disappointed Tōjō was forced to tender his resignation. He was replaced by General Koiso Kuniyaki, who was not Hirohito’s first choice as head of the Cabinet, being seen as too easy to sway and with a dangerous penchant for mystical nationalism, probably the last thing Japan needed at this particular time.

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