Japan has a role to play in Pacific islands

Eighty years ago, Japan lost its war against the United States.

- YUKO MUKAI

The battlefield was the vast Pacific Ocean and the islands dotted across it. Those islands, now independent nations as well as territories, have become the front line of U.S.-China rivalry. Japan, Taiwan and former European colonial powers are all entangled in this complex and rapidly evolving international political arena.

On August 6, Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele of the Solomon Islands, who will chair the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) summit in September, announced that he would not invite non-regional partners, such as the United States, Japan, China, Taiwan and European countries, to the summit.

The PIF was founded in 1971 and comprises 18 members: Australia, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. The unusual decision to exclude other countries that have been invited in the past reflects the changing and complex international political situation.

The Solomon Islands, located in the South Pacific near Australia, include Guadalcanal Island, where the Imperial Japanese military started to build an airfield during World War II to thwart cooperation between the United States and Australia. The island is symbolic as the site of the battle that turned the tide of the war, as the Japanese forces, which had been gaining the upper hand, were defeated by the U.S. military. Its location makes it a focus of geopolitical attention even today.

China is now attempting to bring these islands under its firm control. After gaining independence from the United Kingdom in 1978, the Solomon Islands in 1983 established diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which provided a great amount of support. However, in 2019, the Solomon Islands severed ties with Taiwan for reasons of "national interests," and established diplomatic relations with China instead.