The case study examines the construction of the Imperial Pacific casino in Saipan, a US commonwealth in the Western Pacific, by Chinese firms employing Chinese workers. The focus is on the serious labor abuses that transpired and the legal and other consequences faced by the companies as a result. The case sheds light on the structure and operations of these Chinese construction projects, including the layers of subcontracting and how efforts to maximize speed and minimize costs resulted in numerous violations of local laws. The case also examines what actions the abused Chinese workers on such projects may take to enforce their rights and address their mistreatment. The case study therefore provides a useful tool to consider the issues involved in hiring and supervising contractors, such as cost, contract provisions, subcontracting, monitoring, and liability. The case also provides a platform to explore what legal, advocacy, and other tools workers and their advocates can use when legal violations and labor abuses occur. Additionally, this case study provides a uniquely detailed account of the events that transpired in Saipan because the author served as a lawyer representing the abused workers in a lawsuit alleging that they were subjected to forced labor.

Chapter 8 analyzes the rapid collapse of Japan’s Absolute National Defensive Sphere as the Pacific War progressed, shifting the struggle from the Salomon Islands to the Bismarck Sea and the Mariana Islands, culminating in the Battle of the Philippine Sea around Saipan. Yukikaze engaged in oiler escort duties and anti-submarine warfare during the battle.

Even before the war there were signs that many remote island settlements were struggling, but the outbreak of the Pacific War heaped death and devastation upon those few remote island communities that remained. By the end of 1942 it had become clear that the conflict would be fought on an island-by-island basis across the Pacific, as US forces scrabbled to gain a purchase on any scrap of land from which they might launch aerial bombing raids on the Japanese mainland. Many islands were transformed into military garrisons and one, Iwo Jima, became the site one of the most brutal battles of the war. After 1945, Japan was stripped of the vast majority of its island possessions, with Okinawa, the Bonins and Micronesia placed under indefinite US occupation. Those islands that remained under Japanese rule were transformed from stepping stones of colonial expansion to sites of anxiety about territorial loss, demographic decline and the vanishing of tradition. It was within this context that new ways of thinking about deserted islands began to emerge – not only as sites for economic development but also for the conservation of valuable but threatened nature.