ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Navigating the waves of interwar Pacific Rivalry: the Bishop Micronesia Expedition

• In Event: Science Diplomacy: Cooperation, Competition and Crisis 3

English Abstract

From late 1935 into mid-1936, Bernice P. Bishop Museum in the U.S. territory of Hawai’i and the semi-governmental Palau Tropical Biology Station (PTBS) in Japanese League of Nations Micronesia mandate conducted a joint survey of five Micronesian island groups. One American and six Japanese scientists partook in this Bishop Micronesia Expedition, as concurrently the Japanese government was exiting the Wilsonian world order with its January 1936 abrogation of the London Naval Treaty and listing of Great Britain as a potential enemy in their revised June 1936 National Defense Policy. The directors of the two institutions, each with their own goals, planned the Expedition creatively to realize it in politically tense times, with Bishop selecting a Japanese-American scientist as their representative and the PTBS identifying an NGO intermediary to supply Japanese scientists. On the Japanese part, led by a Tōhoku Imperial University Professor and PTBS director Hatai Shinkishi, negotiating with the government was particularly delicate as was strategizing to assist Hatai’s home institution in the domestic competition for prestige and specimens. With critical help of aboriginal and female aids, the six-month expedition resulted in 15,000 botanical, malacological, and entomological specimens and ethnographic data that contributed to studies of Pacific fauna, flora, and peoples with emphasis on their distributions and evolutions. Beyond science, the Expedition made significant social and political impacts. This paper examines the successes and limits of this joint Expedition at a time when the world was recovering out of the Great Depression and as Pacific imperialist rivalry was escalating.

Author

• Lisa Yoshikawa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges