Kwajalein () Atoll is an important cultural site to the
Marshallese people of the Ralik chain. In Marshallese
cosmology, Kwajalein island is the site of an abundant flowering
zebra wood tree, thought to have spiritual powers. Marshallese from other islands came to gather the "fruits" of this tree. This, explain many elders, is a Marshallese metaphor that describes the past century of colonialism and serves to explain why Kwajalein is still so precious to foreign interests. This story was the origin of the name '
, which apparently derives from ', "the people who harvest the flowers".
First sighting by Europeans The first recorded sighting of Kwajalein by Europeans was during the Spanish expedition of
Ruy López de Villalobos in January 1543. The atoll was charted as
Los Jardines (The Gardens) because of its fresh appearance and trees.
Los Jardines remained well located in most 16th and 17th century charts in the 8–10°N, as reported by the Villalobos expedition chroniclers. However, at some point in the late 18th century, due to some transcription error from the old Spanish maps, they start to appear in the nautical charts shifted northwards to 21°N, thus creating
phantom islands of
Los Jardines that, even if sought and never found, remained on charts of the Pacific until 1973. The atoll came under the control of Spain but was largely ignored by European powers during the 17th and 18th centuries except for some short-lived missionary expeditions, minor trading posts and demarcation treaties between the Iberian kingdoms (Portugal and Spain). In 1828–1829,
Imperial Russian Navy captain
Ludwig von Hagemeister made his final circumnavigation on the ship Krotky. During this journey, he surveyed the Menshikov Atoll (Kwajalein) in the Marshall Islands, plotting it on the map and specifying the location of some other islands. At the time, the atoll was known as
Kuadelen and
Kabajaia to Spain. In early November 1875, a
typhoon resulted in an
storm surge, drowning everyone on Kwajalein Island. The
German Empire annexed the Marshall Islands, including Kwajalein Atoll, as a
protectorate on October 15, 1885.
Japan in the ''Nan'yō'': 1875–1945 Japan had developed an interest in what it called the in the 19th century, prior to its imperial expansion into
Korea and
China. By 1875, ships from the newly established
Imperial Japanese Navy began to hold training missions in the area.
Shigetaka Shiga, a writer who accompanied a Navy cruise to the region in 1886, published his in 1887, marking the first time a Japanese civilian published a firsthand account of Micronesia. Three years later, Shiga advocated for annexation of the area by claiming that doing so would "excite an expeditionary spirit in the demoralized Japanese race." Despite the appeal imperialism had for the Japanese public at the time, neither the
Meiji government nor the Navy seized any pretexts to fulfill this popular aspiration. It was through the commercial operations of fisherman and traders that the Japanese first began to make a wider presence in the region, which continued to grow despite challenges from competing German commercial interests. At the outbreak of
World War I in Europe, Japan joined the
Triple Entente and seized the Marshall Islands against only token resistance. In 1922 the islands were placed under Japanese administration as a
League of Nations Mandate, whereupon it was referred to as in Japan, part of the
Nan'yō gunto. The islands of the Kwajalein Atoll, especially the main island, served as a rural
copra-trading outpost administered by Japanese civilians until the beginning of
World War II in the Pacific in December 1941. Before the
Pacific War,
Japanese settlement in Kwajalein Atoll consisted mostly of traders and their families who worked at local branches of shops headquartered at nearby
Jaluit Atoll. There were also local administrative staff at Kwajalein. With the establishment of Kwajalein's public school in 1935, schoolteachers were sent to the island from Japan. Most Marshall Islanders who recall those times describe a peaceful time of cooperation and development between Japanese and Marshallese, although the latter were not considered on the same social tier as Japanese. By the 1930s, immigration from the
Japanese mainland had increased exponentially. In some regions of the Nan'yō, colonial settlers outnumbered Micronesian natives by as much as ten to one, amounting to the most significant violation of Japan's League of Nations mandate. In the furthest eastern areas, however, immigrants remained in the minority. Contemporary testimony and postwar investigations have attested that Japan honored their agreement under the mandate to administer the islands peacefully. Nevertheless, Kwajalein along with the rest of the territories in the Nan'yō began to be fortified militarily after Japan's departure from the League of Nations in 1933. With the assistance of the Imperial Japanese Navy, local infrastructure was improved between 1934 and 1939. The first combat units, from the Imperial Japanese Navy's
4th Fleet, arrived in February 1941. Prior to the attack on
Pearl Harbor, militarization of the Nan'yō, including Kwajalein, had been considered meagre enough that it alarmed Admiral
Shigeyoshi Inoue, who in January 1941 strongly urged the
Ministry of the Navy to immediately expedite the process. A few months later, a naval officer stationed in Kwajalein sent a memorandum to the Naval Ministry denouncing the failure to ready the region for war. Both warnings were ignored by the Naval Ministry. Korean
forced laborers were ordered to work throughout the Pacific beginning in the early 1940s. Over 10,000 were sent to the Nan'yō area alone, mostly from the southernmost provinces of
Chōsen. In some atolls, such as
Wotje, those forced laborers were joined by Japanese prisoners from
Hokkaido, most of them political dissidents. In order to build the aerial runway on Kwajalein Island, the Japanese public school was demolished and, along with the civil administration, moved to
Namu Atoll. Islanders were forcibly moved to live on some of the smaller islets in the atoll. The trauma of this experience, together with the influx of these young and underprepared soldiers, surprised the local population. Islanders who survived this period make clear distinctions in their recollections of civilian and military Japanese for this reason. This is the first known instance of forced relocation in Kwajalein Atoll, although similar events took place throughout the Marshall Islands. Archaeological evidence as well as testimony from Japanese and Marshallese sources indicate that this militarization would likely not have begun until the 1940s; it was left incomplete at the time of the American invasion in 1944. On February 1, 1942, the aircraft carrier launched a series of raids on the Roi Namur airfield and merchant shipping in Carlos Pass, where they sank several ships. In Kwajalein, forced laborers from across the empire and Marshallese volunteers known as built military facilities throughout the atoll. These construction teams would repair the resulting damage from American bombing raids. A second wave of Japanese naval and ground forces was dispatched to Kwajalein in early 1943 from the Manchurian front. These soldiers were between the ages of 18 and 21, poorly trained, and had no experience in the tropics. The supply ships that were meant to provide them with food rations were sunk by American forces before reaching the atoll; many Japanese succumbed to illnesses like
dengue fever and dysentery, as did many of the laborers. As the military situation worsened and the pressures of military ideology increased, soldiers at Kwajalein became harsher and more violent toward Marshall Islanders, whom they often suspected of spying for the Americans. Kwajalein was also the site of a
prisoner of war camp, whose detainees were not registered with the Red Cross. The island acquired the nickname "Execution Island" because of the treatment and killing of prisoners at the hands of Japanese military staff. The Japanese military also tested biological warfare agents on prisoners there. After the war, a U.S. Naval War Crimes court located on the atoll tried several Japanese naval officers for war crimes committed elsewhere; at least one officer was condemned to death.
American occupation On January 31, 1944, the
7th Infantry Division, spearheaded by the
111th Infantry Regiment performed an amphibious assault on Kwajalein. On February 1, 1944, Kwajalein was the target of the most concentrated bombardment of the
Pacific War. An estimated 36,000 shells from naval ships and ground artillery on a nearby islet struck Kwajalein.
B-24 Liberator bombers aerially bombarded the island, adding to the destruction. Of the 8,782 Japanese personnel deployed to the atoll, including forced laborers, 7,870 were killed. U.S. military documents do not differentiate between the Japanese and Korean dead. However, the Korean government's Truth Commission for Forced Labor Under Japanese Imperialism reports an official figure from the Japanese government of 310 Koreans killed in the American invasion of Kwajalein. Whether this figure represents Kwajalein islet or the whole atoll is unclear. Since no distinction was made between dead Japanese soldiers and Korean forced laborers in mass graves on Kwajalein, both are enshrined as war hero guardian spirits for the Japanese nation in
Yasukuni Shrine. This enshrinement is solely due to the mingling of Korean and Japanese corpses in this one case and has not occurred with the remains of other Korean forced laborers elsewhere. Additionally, while many of the native Marshallese successfully fled the island in their canoes just before the battle, an estimated 200 were killed on the atoll during the fighting. Kwajalein was one of the few locations in the Pacific War where indigenous islanders were recorded to have been killed while fighting for the Japanese. Many Marshallese dead were found among those killed in bunkers. The flat island offered no other protection against the heavy bombardment. Taking refuge in bunkers resulted in many Marshallese deaths when their shelters were destroyed by hand grenades. Some Marshallese were reportedly induced to fight by Japanese propaganda which, as would occur later in the
Battle of Okinawa, stated that the Americans would indiscriminately rape and massacre the civilian population if they successfully took the atoll. On February 6, 1944, Kwajalein was claimed by the United States and was designated, with the rest of the Marshall Islands, as a
United Nations Trust Territory under the United States.
Evolution into a U.S. military installation In the years following, Kwajalein Atoll was converted into a staging area for campaigns in the advance on the Japanese homeland in the
Pacific War. After the war ended, the United States used it as a main command center and preparation base in 1946 for
Operation Crossroads, the first of several series of nuclear tests (comprising a total of 67 blasts) at the
Marshall island atolls of Bikini and
Enewetak. Significant portions of the native population were forced to relocate as a result of American weapons testing and military activity in the islands between 1945 and 1965. Government leaders and landowners were hopeful that this extension will allow for more money to be paid to the land owners. The U.S. Army Garrison Kwajalein Atoll (USAG-KA) installation has been downsizing, in part because of budget constraints and technological improvements (such as a new trans-oceanic fiber-optic cable) that will allow the testing range to be operated extensively from sites in the United States, thus minimizing operation costs and the need for on-site workers or residents. Recently, the American population of the Kwajalein installation has dropped dramatically. The aluminum-sided trailers that housed the bulk of the contractor population are systematically being removed from the main island. Nevertheless, the enormous investment in these new technologies and recent statements by Army leadership indicate that the United States is committed to remaining in the Marshall Islands at Kwajalein Atoll for the foreseeable future. In 2009, American ambassador
Clyde Bishop commented that future funding to the Republic of the Marshall Islands was dependent on the use of Kwajalein. Kwajalein Atoll has been leased by the United States for missile testing and other operations from well before independence for the Marshall Islands. Although this military history has influenced the lives of the Marshall Islanders who have lived in the atoll through the war to the present, the military history of Kwajalein has prevented tourism.
SpaceX updated facilities on
Omelek Island to launch its commercial
Falcon 1 rockets. The first successful Falcon 1 orbital space launch from Omelek was conducted in 2008. Since 2000, Kwajalein has become one of five preferred locations from which
Pegasus rockets can be launched into equatorial orbit. ==Demographics==