Coral and Concrete: Remembering Kwajalein Atoll between Japan, America, and the Marshall Islands (Asia Pacific Flows)

Coral and Concrete: A Cross-Cultural History of Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands - Explore the intersections of environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited coral atoll on earth through personal narratives and collective mythologies from contradictory vantage points.

This book navigates tensions between "little stories" of ordinary human actors and "big stories" of global politics, drawing upon metaphors of coral organisms colonizing and building atolls, and concrete burial and co-option of the past.

Advocating a layered, nuanced approach that emphasizes the multiplicity and contradictions of Pacific Islands histories as an antidote to American hegemony and globalization within and beyond the region, this transnational history resituates Kwajalein Atoll as a pivotal site where Islanders have thrived for thousands of years while mediating between East and West.

Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, this book offers a unique perspective on the complex history of the Pacific Islands.