Christmas air-drop of supplies and gifts to Outer Islands. A kick-off ceremony will take place tomorrow on Guam, and will include Petty Officer 2nd Class John Taibermal of Eauripik atoll, part of Yap State in the Federated States of Micronesia. Taibemal grew up receiving holiday gifts dropped from the sky by U.S. Air Force transports based on Guam.” Article from Pacific Magazine.
Major Pacific shipper to raise rates. Matson Navigation yesterday announced it will raise its rates for the company's Hawaii service by $100 per westbound container and $50 per eastbound container starting Jan. 1. Matson estimated that the increase will raise rates by an average of 3.3 percent. The increase will be filed with the Surface Transportation Board, according to a Matson news release. Article from the Pacific Daily News.
Webpage chronicles a Marine Unit’s time on Ulithi. The VMD-354 detachment to Ulithi was responsible for maintaining the aerial surveillance of these Japanese held islands and to seek out any signs of change through Aerial Photographic Reconnaissance. Check out USMarineCorpsVMD-354.com.
Japanese Overseas Volunteer travels to Satawal and Federai, Ulithi. Great photos.
A hard and thoughtful look at economic self-sufficiency in the Pacific. We who believed that a national sense of purpose could overcome any natural adversity have been forced to modify our position after watching the FSM and the RMI struggle to find an industrial base for their economy over the years … Perhaps we all believed a little too ardently in the conventional wisdom of the day: that economic self-reliance was attainable if only island nations would try just a bit harder to maintain equilibrium between exports and imports. We may have been wrong-those island political ideologues of the 1960s, the U.S. government, the banks, and myself. But the mistake can always be corrected. “Is That the Best You Can Do? A Tale of Two Micronesian Economies,” by Francis X. Hezel, SJ. From the Micronesian Seminar.
Habele is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. We are dedicated to the advancement of educational opportunities in the remote islands and atolls of Micronesia, an impoverished former American colony in the Central Pacific. Visit www.habele.org.
