Carolinian navigators watched the rising stars and the changing shape of the moon at night. By day the swells and currents guided their way. They studied the changing face of the sky to avoid setting out to sea when a typhoon was coming. They recorded the long route to the Mariana Islands in ancient chants passed on by their chiefs, called samwool, and their navigators, called paluw.

My people lived this way for hundreds of seasons, largely untouched by the outside world. Then things began to change. In the 1500s, Spaniards arrived in the islands of our trading partners the Chamorus. The invaders brought many things with them--metals, the Roman Catholic religion, and a strong belief that God wanted them to conquer our islands.

In spite of the danger in the north, a few people from the Carolines migrated to the Marianas for work and trade. Then, in the mid-1800s, a devastating typhoon and a major earthquake struck the Carolines. Several Carolinian chiefs loaded their canoes and aligned their bows with the north star. Following the ancient chants, they sought a new home in the Marianas.

The Carolinians who settled on Saipan began calling themselves Refalawasch, which means "people of our homeland."  My Refalawasch ancestors tried to resist the Spanish influence. They refused to wear the awkward Spanish clothes and to work for these outsiders. But in the end, the Spanish religion and customs were forced on us as they had been on the Chamorus. Over time, the Refalawasch lost something precious--their ability to sail across the open ocean.

Following their 1898 defeat in the Spanish-American war, Spain fell into economic collapse. Germany paid five million dollars for possession of the Northern Marianas and the Carolines.  Sixteen years later, World War I broke out. Japan seized most of Micronesia from the Germans.

My parents were born under Japanese occupation. Like other Refalawasch and Chamoru children, they went to Japanese schools and learned Japanese language and ideas. The U.S. entered World War II in 1941. It considered Saipan the outer edge of the Japanese homeland, making it a strategic military target. When the United States invaded Saipan on June 15, 1944, we were caught in the crossfire. Refalawasch and Chamorus escaped to caves and inland farms, mostly with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Many were wounded or killed during the month-long battle. When it was over, more than 40,000 people were dead. The American victors used the neighboring island of Tinian to build the world's largest air base. The next year, planes carrying atomic bombs destined for Hiroshima and Nagasaki were secretly launched from Tinian. With that, we inherited a legacy we never wanted.

In 1947, the United Nations created the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. The United States was in charge of our recovery from the war. The post-war economy led us to farm and fish less, and we depended increasingly on imported food. In time, we believed we needed Spam and government jobs to survive.

In 1964, the Congress of Micronesia was established. Representatives from all over Micronesia came to Saipan to debate our political future. In 1975, the Covenant Agreement between the Northern Marianas and the United States was signed, making our islands a United States Commonwealth. A year later, we adopted something else that was foreign to us--our very own Constitution. This was when an economic boom began, with an invasion of foreign investment money, workers, and tourists. In 1986, President Reagan made us naturalized U.S. citizens, a status promised us 11 years before in the Covenant Agreement. Today, at the crossroads of Asia and the United States, our islands struggle to maintain our traditional culture.