In Marshall Islands, people connection matters more than anything else

Microwaves By Jack Niedenthal

Majuro—People often ask why I am still living in the Marshall Islands after 45 years. The question is usually framed politely, sometimes even kindly, but it almost always carries the same assumption: that staying here is an act of inertia, or possibly due to a simple lack of options.

From the outside looking in, this logic appears justified. The islands have a dwindling population, and the economy is fragile.

Imported food is expensive, climate change in the islands is not a theoretical phenomenon that may or may not happen in the future and opportunities elsewhere seem abundant. Leaving has the feel of common sense. Staying appears irrational.

But common sense depends on where you’re standing.

To understand why islanders stay, you first have to understand that the Marshall Islands is not simply a place of residence. These islands form a web of obligations and relationships that cannot be packed into a suitcase or replaced by better infrastructure somewhere else.

Land here is not a commodity in the Western sense; it is inheritance, identity and responsibility. A person does not merely live on land. They belong to it, and it belongs to them, through a lineage that stretches backward far beyond written records. Leaving rarely severs that bond; it only strains it.

Everyday life in the Marshall Islands is built around proximity—to family, to the ocean, to a church and to the community. People grow up surrounded by cousins who are functionally siblings, elders who are caretakers and historians, and neighbors who are never truly strangers. This closeness can feel stifling to outsiders and even to locals at times. Privacy is limited.

Reputation matters. Your mistakes are remembered. But the same closeness is also what ensures that no one disappears completely, no matter how hard life becomes. There is almost always someone watching over your children, checking on your parents, or noticing if you fail to show up where you are expected.

Staying, then, is not a passive decision. It is an active commitment to remain accountable.

Many who stay could leave. This is a fact often missed in external discussions. Teachers with credentials recognized abroad, nurses and technicians eligible to work overseas, administrators, and skilled tradespeople—these individuals know the pathways out and have seen many of their family and friends take them.

Some have already lived abroad and returned. They are not unaware of better pay, smoother systems, or the ease of functioning in a society that does not require constant negotiation of relationships. Yet they come back, or they remain, because something fundamental is lost when life is reduced to just day-to-day survival.

In the Marshall Islands, time bends around relationships rather than schedules. A day’s plan can be derailed by a funeral, a sick family member, a church obligation, or the near-moral impossibility of saying no to someone in need.

From a productivity standpoint, this is chaos. From a human standpoint, it is coherence. Life here insists that people remain “visible” to one another.

That visibility is precisely what makes staying difficult—and meaningful.

Economic pressure is real and unrelenting. Most food is imported. High fuel prices ripple through every aspect of daily life. Salaries rarely stretch far enough, especially for those supporting extended families.

The sharing culture that once ensured collective survival now operates within a cash economy that punishes generosity. People give even when they cannot afford to, because refusing to give is not just a financial decision; it is a moral one. Those who stay learn to live inside this tension, navigating a quiet exhaustion without abandoning the values that define them.

Climate change looms large, but rarely in the dramatic terms favored by headlines of outside journalists. It shows up in flooded roads and land during king tides.

For many, the threat is not sudden disappearance but a gradual erosion—of land, of certainty, of the assumption that tomorrow will resemble yesterday. And yet, people here continue planting, repairing and adapting. Not because they deny the science, but because leaving preemptively feels like surrendering a future on the islands that still holds meaning.

There is also the weight of history. Some groups of people within the Marshall Islands have already been forced to move, to sacrifice, to absorb horrific decisions made elsewhere. Entire communities were displaced in the name of global security during the U.S. nuclear testing period from 1946 to 1958.

Promises were made, broken, renegotiated and broken again. This legacy shapes how people view current calls for relocation. Staying becomes, in part, an assertion of agency. A refusal to let external narratives dictate when their place, considered by islanders as a “gift from God,” is no longer worth inhabiting.

For younger Marshallese, especially those educated abroad, staying can feel like swimming against a strong current. They return to systems that are underfunded, bureaucracies that move slowly and unevenly, and social expectations that leave little room for individualism. They face criticism from peers who have left and skepticism from elders who wonder why they came back at all.

But they also bring with them new skills, new questions and a willingness to imagine futures that do not depend entirely on outside intervention. Staying, for them, is an act of belief—not that the islands will be saved by some grand solution, but that incremental care and good ideas still matter.

There is dignity in this choice, even when it is accompanied by doubt.

What outsiders often miss is that leaving does not eliminate hardship; it merely exchanges one set of challenges for another.

Marshallese who migrate often encounter isolation, discrimination and the slow erosion of language and custom. Children grow up fluent in systems that offer opportunity but are disconnected from the cultural frameworks that once explained who they were.

Elders age far from land that anchors their identity. Staying spares people some of these losses, even as it demands endurance in other forms.

The future of the Marshall Islands is uncertain. That is not an exaggeration, nor is it unique. Many places around the world face existential questions about sustainability, belonging and adaptation.

What makes the Marshall Islands distinctive is not the scale of the threat, but the intimacy with which it is experienced. Decisions here are personal. They unfold within families. They are felt in who shows up to care for the sick, who teaches the children and who takes care of the land.

People stay because leaving would mean more than relocation. It would mean loosening ties that give life coherence. It would mean redefining success in purely individual terms. It would mean accepting that place is interchangeable, that roots can be replaced with the convenience of shopping at Walmart.

For many Marshallese, that trade is unacceptable.

In my mind, staying here is not really grounded in “optimism.” It is something quieter and more durable. It is loyalty to people and obligations that do not expire simply because conditions become difficult. It is the belief that a life embedded in relationships, even under strain, is preferable to one lived in isolation with access to better “stuff.” It is a refusal to let the future be dictated solely by uncertainty.

The question, perhaps, is not why people stay. The question is why we assume leaving is the only rational response to uncertainty. In the Marshall Islands, staying is not denial; it is present.

It is choosing to remain visible to one another in a world that increasingly seems to reward disappearance.

Jack Niedenthal is the former secretary of Health Services for the Marshall Islands, where he has lived and worked for 45 years. He is the author of “For the Good of Mankind, An Oral History of the People of Bikini,” and president of Microwave Films, which has produced six award-winning feature films in the Marshallese language. Send feedback to jackniedenthal@gmail.com

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