Journal 4/16/1982
P1 Ground broken for katsuobushi factory
Documents for the construction of the Nankatsu Corporation, a Japanese-Marshallese katsuobushi company, were signed today at Tomiki’s place between Nankatsu Corp., RepMar and J&P Company, the local construction company. Irooj Joba Kabua and Toej Jamore are involved in the ownership of the company. President Amata Kabua, Foreign Secretary Tony deBrum, Minister Kessai Note and Ruben Zackhras, Senator Charles Domnick, Phillip and Steve Muller of Foreign Affairs, Speaker Atlan Anien, and other officials were on hand to witness the signing ceremony. Rev. Jude Samson gave the invocation.
P4 Who is to blame?
They are called “bwebwe.” These are Majuro’s mental patients. The forgotten people. Or the people we wished did not exist. These patients that everyone wants to pretend don’t exist or that their problems are not serious or somehow go away, presently live in filth and are treated like common criminals at Majuro jail. Who is to blame for the inhuman treatment the sick people have been getting? The society as a whole usually gets the rap. But there are people in a society who have the means and power to bring about change or right the wrongs. Policy level people in each department can make recommendations or feasibility studies on whatever they think their department needs or should get. In the mental patients case, no one has yet done anything…It is an old problem. And policy level people apparently have wished to ignore it. These people are not that many, less than 10 altogether, so it is hard to understand why we cannot treat them better. —Akio Heine
P6 No headway on head
The police said they have resumed work on the baby’s head case, which was suspended for a while due to heavy paperwork on the national development plan. They said there are no new leads on the mother’s baby.
Journal 4/19/1991
P4 Better than the phone?
Received a letter from the managing editor of the Guam Tribune yesterday. He wants to know what is wrong with the phone system. He said he has tried to reach us with the fax, but couldn’t get through. I was going to call him on the phone and tell him that the phone is working well, but our lines were dead. They were working again in about 20 minutes. Probably a ghost. However, James Morelli of Massachusetts has a another way of conducting off-island communication. He recently received a letter and photo from an unidentified American missionary here in the Marshalls. The missionary wrote in response to a note that Morelli put in a bottle and dropped into the sea off the coast of western Mexico in 1989. This bit of information was sent to us by Mike Pettitt, a former USAKA liaison officer in Majuro. He used the mail service, incidentally, not a bottle. —Grant Gordon
Journal 4/22/2011
P1 No secretary, no principal, no teachers
Numerous critical positions in the Ministry of Education have gone unfilled for months, hurting the delivery of education and possibly placing US accreditation of Marshall Islands High School in question. Since October, the Secretary of Education post has been filled in an acting capacity by Assistant Secretary Allison Nashion. Since the first of this year, there has been no principal at Marshall Islands High School, the position being held in an acting capacity by Vice Principal Asena Ketedromo. Despite current fiscal year budget money being available since October 1, new teach- ers needed to meet US Western Association of Schools and Colleges’ accreditation recommendations have yet to be hired for MIHS — the only public school in the Marshall Islands that is US accredited.