Tonowas

The jungle has not so much reclaimed Tonowas as absorbed it. Concrete openings gape in the green, rust-red guns point through gaps in the canopy, and below them Chuuk Lagoon sparkles as if nothing ever happened here. This island, once called Dublon, held the headquarters of Japan's Fourth Fleet and a busy base town.

The Japanese Fourth Fleet was based on Tonowas, and with it came everything a fleet needs: a submarine base, a seaplane base with room for fifty aircraft, fuel farms, repair facilities and Dublon Town, a township with all the workings of a small town. When American carrier aircraft struck in February 1944, people and garrison went underground into tunnels cut to shelter equipment, munitions and lives, and those tunnels remain, along with defensive guns and the Japanese Army Headquarters, listed on the US National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Many of the wrecks offshore are war graves, and the land carries the same weight; more than a thousand Chuukese died in a war they did not create. Today Tonowas is a quiet island a short boat ride from Weno with no formal tourism economy: guided land visits run from Weno, and everything else moves by local knowledge and landowner consent. Walk it with a guide from the community, and the history is shared on the island's own terms.