Micronesia: A Sprawling Trust

Micronesia's 2,141 islands are so widely dispersed over 3,000,000 sq. mi. of cobalt-blue Pacific that Magellan sailed through their very midst without sighting a single one. In their glittering lagoons and rain-forested redoubts, the Japanese positioned their power to control all the Pacific in World War IIĀ—and the U.S. fight to thwart them made a litany and legacy forever of such unlikely flecks on the map as Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Saipan, Tinian and Peleliu. The Enola Gay roared off from Tinian to drop the A-bomb on Hiroshima; years later the shock waves of...

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