A History of the Excluded: Rethinking the Sugar Industry in the Northern Mariana Islands under Japanese Rule.

The establishment of the South Seas Development Company in 1921 quickly transformed the Northern Mariana Islands, ruled by a Japanese League of Nations mandate after World War I, into the Japanese empire's next 'sugar islands' (following on from the colonization of Taiwan). In previous research, connections between the Company and various Japanese colonial authorities, including the South Seas Government and the government-sponsored Oriental Development Company, have been the focus of analyses of the development of the sugar industry under Japanese rule. However, little attention has been paid to the indigenous Chamorro people who were forced out from their homes, or to the Okinawan people who constituted the primary labour force of the sugar plantations and who resisted the Company. Instead of seeing the Company-led development of the sugar industry as an example of Japan's expanding colonial powers, this article argues that the tensions and conflicts between the Company and the Chamorro and Okinawan peoples were part of the process by which the industry developed. By providing the perspective of 'the excluded', this paper aims for a more impartial and comprehensive description of the history of the sugar industry in Japan's Northern Mariana Islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]