The Jack Tobin Marshall Islands Anthropology Collection, 1950-1985

About the Collection

Copyright and Usage

Commercial use of any material in this collection is prohibited without prior permission from the Pacific Collection, University of Hawaii Hamilton Library. Copyright is retained by the creators of these materials, their descendants, or the repository if copyright has been signed over, as stipulated by United States copyright law. NOTE: Donor has obtained no consent from any person portrayed in any photograph for the public display of his or her image. It is the responsibility of the user to determine any copyright restrictions, obtain written permission, and pay any fees necessary for the reproduction or proposed use of the materials. See the University of Hawai'i Library's Usage Rights information page for further details.

Site Credits

Photographs: Dr. Jack A. Tobin (except where otherwise noted on individual slide records)
Original photo captioning: Dr. Jack A. Tobin (caption text that appears in brackets has been posthumously added to the online collection by library staff, and does not appear in the the physical collection itself)
Graphic design, meta-data editing and site maintenance: Stu Dawrs, Pacific Specialist Librarian, Hamilton Library
Scanning, Glossary construction, data entry and meta-data editing: Alan Vandermyden, Pacific Collection graduate student assistant, Hamilton Library
Scanning and data entry: Savannah White, Pacific Collection undergraduate student assistant, Hamilton Library

Collection Provenance & Arrangement

The images in this collection are part of a larger set of research materials that was donated in 2010 by Dr. Jack A. Tobin to the University of Hawaii-Manoa Library's Pacific Collection. In the physical collection, these slides are stored in acid free folders using the same file names and arrangement that Dr. Tobin originally used. In the online collection, these file names are provided in the "Collection" field, in order to document the image location within the physical collection. In many cases, Dr. Tobin had mis-filed photographs (so that, for instance, a file folder that was labeled "Marshall Islands" might also include images from Palau, Mexico, Japan or elsewhere.) In the interest of preserving Dr. Tobin's original arrangement, no photos have been re-filed in the physical collection. However, when possible, correct geographic identifications have been included in the online collection, in the "Place," "Category" or "Notes" fields.

In general, captions that appear directly above images in the online collection were written on the images by Dr. Tobin prior to their donation. Several photos, shot by the U.S. Navy, included captions meant for press releases. These captions have been used in the online collection, with their source identified in the "Notes" field. All spellings are preserved as written. In cases where Library staff had made amendments or additions to these captions, the text appears in brackets [].

The Online Reference Numbers and Physical Image Numbers were both added by Library staff after the photographs' donation to the Pacific Collection. The Online Reference Numbers and Physical Image Numbers do not correlate, owing to the fact that not all photos in the physical collection have been scanned. (See "Scanning Protocols" below.)

In addition to the photos taken by Dr. Tobin, the physical collection includes numerous photos taken by U.S. government agencies, as identified in the "Photographer" field of the online collection. In some cases, the photographer is not known.

Regarding Geographic Names and Marshallese Language Conventions

A variety of spelling conventions have been employed over the last fifty-plus years when referring to the islands of Micronesia. For the purposes of this site, name spellings were guided by the following principles:
1) For captioning created by Dr. Tobin, original name spellings (i.e., as they were used during the Trust Territory era) have been preserved as they appear in the physical collection.
2) For all areas where new descriptive text has been created specifically for this site -- specifically the "place," "category," "collection," and "notes" fields -- currently accepted spelling conventions have been used.
3) While we recognize that alternate spellings exist, for the purposes of this site the following text was used as the naming authority:
Motteler, Lee S. Pacific Island names: a map and name guide to the new Pacific. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2006 (For complete bibliographic information click here.)
4) Whenever possible, where alternate spellings exist we have included them in the site's online glossary. The naming authority consulted for these alternate spellings is a map published by the UH-Manoa Center for Pacific Islands Studies.
For other Marshallese words, we have used as our reference text the Marshallese-English Online Dictionary, which is a revised and updated version of Takaji Abo, Byron W. Bender, Alfred Capelle, and Tony DeBrum's Marshallese-English Dictionary, published by University of Hawaii Press in 1976.

Image Manipulation

No photographs in this collection have been digitally manipulated.

Digitization Procedures

All images in this database were scanned from 35mm slides, originally as 400dpi RGB tifs, scaled to 400 percent. They were later resized to the dimensions used in the database and saved as jpeg files.

Related Online Digital Collections

The Margo Duggan Collection: Micronesia and Hawaii, 1949-1954. Honolulu: Pacific Collection, Univ. of Hawaii-Manoa Library.
[Images shot by a civilian employee of the United States' Trust Territories Administration.]

Nuclear Diaspora: Bikini and Enewetak. Honolulu: Pacific Collection, Univ. of Hawaii-Manoa Library.
[Images shot by (or collected by) Dr. Robert Kiste and Dr. Leonard Mason between 1946 and 1988.]

Northern Marianas Humanities Council Archive [Historical U.S. documents and Oral histories]

Nuclear Nomads. Pohnpei, FSM: Micronesian Seminar.
[This online photo collection, produced by Francis X. Hezel, SJ, includes an excellent, concise history of the Bikini and Enewetak relocations.]

The Trust Territory Photo Archives. Honolulu: Pacific Collection, Univ. of Hawaii-Manoa Library.
[The single largest collection of digitized photographs documenting the Trust Territories Administration era.]

Selected Print Resources

Kiste, Robert C. 1974. The Bikinians: A Study in Forced Migration. Menlo Park, Calif.: Cummings Publishing Co. UH call no.: GN671 .M33 K57

___. 1968. Kili Island: A Study of the Relocation of the ex-Bikini Marshallese. Eugene, OR: Dept. of Anthropology, University of Oregon. UH Call no: DU710.9.K5 K6

___. 1967. Changing Patterns of Land Tenure and Social Organization Among the ex-Bikini Marshallese. Eugene, OR: Oregon University. [Thesis]. UH Call no: MICROFILM 3518

Mason, Leonard. 1988. From a Time of Starvation to a Time for Hope: The Relocation of the Bikini Marshallese. UH call no. DU710.9.B5 M35 1988

___. 1954. Relocation of the Bikini Marshallese; a study in group migration. [Thesis, Yale University]. UH call no. DU 710.9 .B5 M37 1954

___. 1950. Anthropology-geography study of Arno Atoll, Marshall Islands. Washington, D.C., Pacific Science Board, National Research Council. UH call no. Q180.M5 S34 no.7

Tobin, Jack A.. 1983. Genealogies of the iroij (chiefs) of Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands, the Enewetak people (dri Enewetak) and the Enjebi people (dri Enjebi) UH call no. DU710.9.E5 T59 1983a

___. 1976. The chiefly (Iroij) domains of the Marshall Islands [Map. Ms., handwritten, based on 2nd ed. (Mar. 1946) U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office map North Pacific Ocean, Marshall Islands, including Senyavin Islands and Ngatik Atoll. Author's handwritten notes superimposed on published map. Includes place names in Marshallese, historical and contemporary chiefdoms, and dates of succession.] UH call no. G9461.F8 1976

___. 1974. Background information paper: the Bikini situation [18 leaves. Includes letter of transmittal to District Administrator, Marshalls from Community Development Advisor, Marshalls.] UH call no. DU710.9.B5 T62

___. 1972. Ebeye-Kwajalein report [Majuro] : Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, Office of the District Administrator, Marshalls UH call no. DU710.9.E2 T57

___. 1967. The resettlement of the Enewetak people; a study of a displaced community in the Marshall Islands [Thesis - University of California] UH call no. DU710.9.E5 T6

___. 1956. Land tenure in the Marshall Islands Washington, D.C., National Research Council, Pacific Science Board. UH call no. HD1129.M32 T6