Letters

In your article "Poor Teacher Test Scores Show Education Crisis" (May 2005), Republic of the Marshall Islands Education Secretary Biram Stege places responsibility for the abysmal level of education of their teachers in the hands of the Marshallese education system. However, I believe she forgot to hold one other institution responsible for that as well-the U.S. government.

A few decades ago, the United States poured billions of dollars into testing its nuclear weapons in the atolls of the Marshall Islands. This caused permanent damage to the ecosystem and permanently displaced many Marshallese forever. One needs only to visit the RMI Embassy in Washington to see with their own eyes the pictures of human and ecological destruction caused by these tests.

The U.S. Peace Corps (a noble and respected agency of the U.S. government-and one that is admired by many Marshallese for its great history in that country) has had to decline re-establishing a program in the Marshall Islands because it does not have $1 million for a start up program in the area of education.

America, wake up and stop denying the Marshallese children the opportunity to educate themselves!

Ben Pezzlo, Washington, DC.

Japan And Micronesia

We enjoyed reading the feature on Japan in the September issue of the Pacific Magazine. We are especially happy to see that this issue introduced Prof Akio Watanabe, chairman of the Sasakawa Pacific Island Nations Fund (SPINF) and Ms. Ruby Ah Yuk, a SPINF scholarship fellow.

Apart from the feature on Japan, we were also happy to see the special publication, "Micronesia Then And Now," in collaboration with the Micronesian Seminar, which was inserted in the September issue. Our fund has been a major donor for digitizing the resources of Micsem since the project's beginning in 1999. For your information, SPINF translated into Japanese the Micronesian Seminar's various photo albums and put them on our Web site: www.yashinomi.to.

We appreciate the fact that the Pacific Magazine, which is the most influential media on Pacific Islands, recognized the work that our foundation is doing in the region.

Rieko Hayakawa, Project Coordinator
The Sasakawa Pacific Island Nations Fund
Tokyo, Japan

Time For A Pacific Air Alliance

As one of your most distant readers I am most interested in what's going on in the Pacific. I made two trips as radio amateur in the Pacific in 2002 and 2004 and I still follow the "battle" between Air Kiribati and Air Fiji. I was in Tarawa just a few months after the disappearance of the ATR-72.

The rest of the world seems to be cleverer-using code shared flights, for example, Lufthansa with the "Star Alliance." The operators in the Pacific should be think about a "Pacific Alliance"-this could save a lot of money.

Rolf Niefind, Hamburg, Germany

We welcome your letters. They can be sent by email to pmeditor@pacificbasin.net or by regular mail to Pacific Magazine, 1000 Bishop Street, Suite 405, Honolulu, Hawaii 96813, U.S.A.