Coral and Concrete, Greg Dvorak's cross-cultural history of
Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, explores intersections of
environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited
coral atoll on earth. Approaching the multiple "atollscapes" of
Kwajalein's past and present as Marshallese ancestral land,
Japanese colonial outpost, Pacific War battlefield, American
weapons-testing base, and an enduring home for many, Dvorak delves
into personal narratives and collective mythologies from
contradictory vantage points. He navigates the tensions between
"little stories" of ordinary human actors and "big stories" of
global politics-drawing upon the "little" metaphor of the coral
organisms that colonize and build atolls, and the "big" metaphor of
the all-encompassing concrete that buries and co-opts the past.
Building upon the growing body of literature about militarism and
decolonization in Oceania, this book advocates 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. It also brings
Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, and American perspectives into
conversation with Micronesians' recollections of colonialism and
war. This transnational history-built upon a combination of
reflective personal narrative, ethnography, cultural studies, and
postcolonial studies-thus resituates Kwajalein Atoll as a pivotal
site where Islanders have not only thrived for thousands of years,
but also mediated between East and West, shaping crucial world
events. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, as
well as Dvorak's own experiences growing up between Kwajalein, the
United States, and Japan, Coral and Concrete integrates narrative
and imagery with semiotic analysis of photographs, maps, films, and
music, traversing colonial tropical fantasies, tales of victory and
defeat, missile testing, fisheries, war-bereavement rituals, and
landowner resistance movements, from the twentieth century through
the present day. Representing history as a perennial struggle
between coral and concrete, the book offers an Oceanian paradigm
for decolonization, resistance, solidarity, and optimism that
should appeal to all readers far beyond the Marshall Islands.
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