The British merchant vessel
Rolla sighted Jaluit in 1803. From 1888 to 1906 the islands were administered by the
Jaluit Company on behalf of Germany’s colonial government. German imperial commissars (
Kaiserliche Kommissare) included: • 1886–1888 Dr. jur. Wilhelm Knappe (1855–1910) • 1888–1888 Dr. Franz Leopold Sonnenschein (1857–1897) • 1889–1891 Friedrich Louis Max Biermann • 1891–1894 Dr. Karl Wilhelm Schmidt (b. 4 March 1859 in Braunschweig) • 11 May 1894 – March 1898 Georg Irmer (b. 1853 – d. 1931) • 24 March 1898 – 18 January 1906 Eugen Brandeis (b. 1846 – d. 1919) (acting to 22 February 1900) • 18 January 1906 – May 1906 Ludwig Kaiser (acting) (b. 1862 – d. 1906) • 1 April 1906 – 3 October 1914 the governors of
German New Guinea; afterwards the jurisdiction was downgraded to district, under a
Bezirksamtmann After
World War I, the island became a part of the
South Seas Mandate, a
mandated territory of the
Empire of Japan, and was the seat of the Japanese administration over the Marshall Islands. Immigrants from Japan numbered several hundred by the 1930s. During
World War II the island's Japanese garrison consisted of 1,584 men of the
Imperial Japanese Navy and 727 men of the
Imperial Japanese Army. The population of
Bikini Atoll had agreed in 1945 to temporarily relocate to allow the U.S. to test then-new nuclear weapons at Bikini, which they were told were of great importance to humankind. The displaced islanders struggled for survival at several other Marshall Islands, including
Rongerik Atoll,
Ujelang Atoll,
Kwajalein Atoll, and
Kili Island. A decade later the U.S. suggested that some of the Bikini Islanders move to Jaluit. Three families moved there to produce
copra for sale and other families rotated living there later on. Their homes on both Kili and Jaluit were struck by typhoons during 1957 and 1958, sinking their supply ship and damaging crops. Jaluit remained under the control of the United States until the independence of the Marshall Islands in 1986. ==Geography==