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Este estudio utiliza material inédito proveniente de los Archivos del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores japonés para sumergirse en la vida y, sobre todo, la muerte de un comerciante japonés, un individuo desconocido, casi anónimo, que emigró a las islas de la Micronesia bajo el dominio de España a finales del siglo XIX. Su muerte a manos de un nativo isleño nos ofrece una perspectiva hasta ahora desconocida sobre las interacciones entre los emigrantes japoneses y agentes coloniales en una de las fronteras más remotas y menos protegidas de España durante el amanecer del imperio japonés y el eclipse del imperio español.

Iniciamos nuestro trabajo considerando las circunstancias geológicas que nos permiten diferenciar entre el Asia insular del Océano Pacífico y Oceanía, como paso previo para delimitar nuestro objeto de estudio: “Identificación de escritos misioneros generados en los archipiélagos españoles de la Micronesia (archipiélagos de las Carolinas, Marianas, o de los Ladrones, las Palaos, las de los Pintados y las Gilbert), desde una perspectiva comparada: ss. XVI-XIX”. Consideramos las circunstancias que condicionaron aquella actividad. La primera de todas ellas la dependencia de estos territorios, de Nueva España. Analizamos la incidencia de las mismas en la generación de “escritos misioneros” con un componente traductológico o paratraductológico. Entre dichos escritos encontramos desde “informes” de los misioneros a sus superiores, hasta “crónicas” o “historias”, sin olvidar “artes” o “gramáticas”, “vocabularios” o “diccionarios” Comparamos el volumen de tales escritos generados en Micronesia con el volumen alcanzado en Islas Filipinas.

US government research on the health effects of exposure to radiation from nuclear weapons in-volved gross violations of the human rights of peo-ple in the Marshall Islands. In all likelihood, fallout from US nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific was deposited on other Micronesian islands. The US government should release the classified data it pos-sesses on the history of nuclear testing, fallout pat-terns, and the effects on the people of the Marshall Islands and the rest of Micronesia. Health workers should work to ensure that nuclear-armed states ful-fill their treaty obligations to pursue negotiations toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. As a matter of social justice, in order to ensure the human right to health, the federal government should ex-tend Medicaid eligibility to all Micronesian people from the Compact of Free Association nations.

A cholera outbreak occurred in the Marshall Islands in December 2000 to January 2001 with over 400 cases and six deaths. Within Kwajalein Atoll, cholera occurred on Ebeye Island, while it did not occur on Kwajalein Island, three miles away. We apply Krieger’s ecosocial approach in order to explicate the reasons for this dichotomy. We first examine how Marshallese people came to embody cholera as a disease state. Secondly, we examine the (a) arrangements of power, property, production, and consumption in the Ebeye-Kwajalein complex, as well as (b) human biology as it has been shaped by the ecological context in order to elucidate the pathways to the embodiment of cholera. Thirdly, we examine the cumulative interplay between exposure to cholera, as well as susceptibility and resistance to the disease at the level of individuals and the island-wide level. Fourthly, we examine who is responsible for the cholera outbreak and who describes the phenomena. We conclude that the outbreak of cholera in the Marshall Islands can be considered the biologic embodiment of disparate political and economic conditions and ecological imbalance. We suggest courses of action for those interested in addressing the inequalities and working towards health.