Book 217: Marshall Islands (English) – Melal (Robert BARCLAY)

Not long after Rujen Keju had clipped his Kwajalein Missile Range ID badge to the collar of his overalls, slung his boots over his shoulder, and left his home for the pier, his two sons, Jebro and Nuke, were up and headed in the same direction. Jebro carried a large gray duffel bag. Nuke had a small one-strap backpack. Each held a one-gallon jug of water. Around them, red morning light caught lingering smoke from the dump and the air seemed charmed with a magic pastel glow. Hinges squeaked. Water splashed. Bodies coughed and spat. Calico cats moved low and quick past helter-skelter cemeteries where snoozing mongrel dogs lay by concrete crosses that bore, in English, the names and dates of the dead.

Considering how hard it is to find any novel to read from the Marshalls (or just about anywhere in the Pacific), I was pleasantly surprised that this is such a great book.

It follows a Marshallese family, father and two sons, having a bad day. A really bad day. If you think you’ve had some bad ones…

As with our Hawai’ian novel, we’re exploring the devastating consequences of American colonialism, especially military and nuclear, on a small island country, which is still trying to deal with the consequences of the nuclear bomb and missile tests, nuclear (and consumer) waste, and permanently losing a large amount of their little land to the US military. (Maybe they should be re-named the Martial Islands?)

On this not very good Good Friday in 1981, the two boys, Jebro and Nuke (named after the bomb) decide to go to their ancestral island to visit their grandfather’s grave. A fairly banal exercise of a basic human right, you would think. But Tar-Woj has been taken by the Americans, and Marshallese are forbidden to visit, so the boys have to sneak in.

Of course, the Marshalls are famous as the site of the world’s first atom bomb test, on Bikini Atoll, and the little country has no doubt suffered more from the nuclear cycle than anywhere else on earth. Kwajalein is maybe the world’s largest coral atoll. What a perfect target to throw ICBMs at from California. One of its islets, Kwajalein proper, was cleared of locals for the airport and the missile base staff who live in affluent American suburbia. The Marshallese from all the other islets were concentrated into even more minuscule Ebeye (Meļaļ) islet, though many work menial jobs on Kwaj on day passes, and the greater opportunities there have attracted people from other parts of the Marshalls, so it is one of the most devastatingly overcrowded places on earth. Ebeye is ugly and impoverished, but for the Marshallese it is as close to ‘civilisation’ (American living) as they can get. In the ‘Slum of the Pacific’ they suffer from suicide, sickness, unemployment, boredom, bad imported food, lack of water, a shockingly contaminated lagoon, and a broken sewerage system – and apartheid. (Apparently not much has improved since the ’80s; one could add rising sea levels from global warming).

The Marshalls (along with the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau) signed a “Compact of Free Association” with the US when they became independent (or semi-independent). It will be interesting to see what continuing support and expectations the US will have after the Compact expires in 2023.

So to this great adventure story. We follow the brothers’ dangerous voyage to and from their ancestral island (coming back, American hoons sink their boat), and the shenanigans on Kwaj island, where the father works in the sewerage plant (the church embarrassment scene is masterful, and the incident of the poached dolphin provides a fascinating and thought-provoking insight into the opposing views of the islanders and the Americans, or the West generally).

There is a beautifully portrayed relationship between the brothers. The older Jebro is knowledgeable, intelligent, and mature compared with more impetuous Nuke.

Unusually, the ‘true’ story is interspersed with mythological sections – I don’t know how much of these are based on traditional stories.

Author Robert Barclay lived on Kwajalein for many years and obviously came to understand and sympathise with the Marshallese and their problems.

Another important, and very readable, book which deserves a much wider audience. It’s a great mix of adventure and sociology, a combination of the gritty realism of the American wasteland of nuclear contamination and addictive consumerism, and Marshallese mythology. Highly recommended.

Barclay, Robert, Meļaļ, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8248-2391-8