MARSHALL ISLANDS

MARSHALL ISLANDS / AORŌKIN M̧AJEĻ

Definitive stamps.
Map of Jaluit Atoll.
Fouth stamp in a set of 10, issued on 12.06.1984.
Face value: 10 cents of United States dollar.
Printing: Offset lithography.
Size: 20 x 23 mm.

Catalogs
- Michel No. 8A.
- Scott No. 38.
- StampWorld No. 8.
- Stanley Gibbons No. 8.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 48.

Jaluit Atoll (Marshallese: Jālwōj or Jālooj) is a large coral atoll of 91 islands in the Pacific Ocean and forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its total land area is 11.34 km² (4.38 sq mi), and it encloses a lagoon with an area of 690 km² (270 sq mi). Most of the land area is on the largest islet of Jaluit (10.4 km²). Jaluit Atoll is a designated conservation area and Ramsar Wetland. In 2011 the population of the islands of Jaluit Atoll was 1,788. It was the former administrative seat of the Marshall Islands. In 1884, the German Empire claimed Jaluit Atoll, along with the rest of the Marshall Islands, and the Germans established a trading outpost. Jaluit became a German protectorate on September 13, 1886 and had several imperial commissars (Kaiserliche Kommissare). After World War I, the island became a part of the South Seas Mandate, a mandated territory of the Empire of Japan, and was the seat of the Japanese administration over the Marshall Islands. Immigrants from Japan numbered several hundred by the 1930s. During World War II the island was bombed on at least five occasions in November and December 1943 by B-24 Liberator bombers of the USAAF 7th Air Force. Following World War II, Jaluit came under the control of the United States as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands until the independence of the Marshall Islands in 1986.