MARSHALL ISLANDS

MARSHALL ISLANDS / AORŌKIN M̧AJEĻ

Definitive stamps.
Map of Ebon Atoll.
Third stamp in a set of 10, issued on 12.06.1984.
Face value: 5 cents of US dollar.
Printing: Offset lithography.
Size: 20 x 23 mm.

Catalogs
- Michel No. 7A.
- Scott No. 37.
- StampWorld No. 7.
- Stanley Gibbons No. 7.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 47.

Ebon (Marshallese: Epoon) is a coral atoll of 22 islands in the Pacific Ocean, forming a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its land area is 5.75 km² (2.22 sq mi), and it encloses a deep lagoon with an area of ​​104 km² (40 sq mi). A winding passage, the Ebon Channel, leads to the lagoon from the southwest edge of the atoll. In documents and accounts from the 1800s, it was also known as Boston, Covell's Group, Fourteen Islands, and Linnez. Ebon Atoll was visited by commercial whaling vessels in the 19th century. The first such vessel on record was the Newark in 1837. Missionaries sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Boston began missionary activities in the Marshall Islands in 1857, establishing a mission at Ebon. The atoll was claimed by the Empire of Germany along with the rest of the Marshall Islands in 1884, and the Germans established a trading outpost. After World War I, the island came under the South Seas Mandate of the Empire of Japan, which had a garrison there late in World War II. At the end of WW II, Ebon Atoll became a part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands under the control of the United States, until the independence of the Marshall Islands in 1986. In 2011, the population of the atoll was 706 people.