Why snail mail moves at a snail's pace in freely associated states

Microwaves By Jack Niedenthal

Majuro—If you want to understand what “connectivity” really means in the freely associated states, don’t start with a glossy brochure about current internet services. Go stand in line at the post office in Majuro, Kolonia or Koror, and listen.

You will hear the whole story of our relationship with the United States told in small, frustrated sentences: “My medicine is three weeks late.” “My grandson’s passport still hasn’t arrived.” “The online store says they shipped, but the tracking stopped in San Francisco.”

For the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau, the U.S. Postal Service is not a quaint relic of the past. It is the central nervous system that connects tiny islands to families, banks, universities and markets thousands of miles away.

Under the Compacts of Free Association, USPS treats mail to the FAS as domestic for purposes of service and pricing. The new compact packages include funding to keep that postal link alive.

For Washington, this is one tiny line in a very large budget. Out here, it is how a Micronesian student in Arkansas sends a birth certificate home to renew a passport; how an outer-island clinic receives critical lab supplies; how a small handicraft seller in Majuro gets paid when customers still prefer paper checks. That is why the recent wave of delays and disruptions has hit so hard.

The Marianas Business Journal reported increasing slowdowns in mail delivery to the FAS, prompting USPS to issue formal responses to complaints from the Marshall Islands, FSM and Palau.

FSM President Wesley Simina has even raised postal reliability as a compact compliance issue in high-level meetings with U.S. officials. When presidents are talking about the mail, you know the problem is no longer a routine hiccup.

Part of the problem is global and structural. USPS is in the middle of a massive restructuring of its processing and delivery network to cut costs and consolidate facilities. Several changes rolling out across 2024 and 2025 are designed to save money even if they slow down parts of first-class mail and package delivery.

On the mainland, delays of a day or two can be mitigated by private couriers, retail options and massive transportation networks. But in the FAS, there is no parallel system standing by. When USPS slows down delivery through mainland hubs, those delays multiply by the time the mail reaches Hawaii, Guam and finally the few flights and ships that reach our islands. A one-day delay in California can become a two- or three-week delay in Majuro or Yap. These islands sit, quite literally, at the end of the postal conveyor belt.

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The Marshall Islands offers a vivid example. The Marshall Islands Postal Service Authority has had to explain to the public that USPS suspended certain parcel mail entering the U.S. from the Marshall Islands due to a “security recall,” while letters and registered mail continue to be handled normally.

On paper, that sounds manageable. In reality, online shopping for local online businesses stalls, care packages sit in limbo and local businesses that rely on parcels—small orders, spare parts, printed merchandise—are left guessing. At the same time, postal authorities warn customers to expect delays even for packages sent to outer islands like Wotje and Jaluit.

For Majuro and Ebeye residents, that is an inconvenience. For families living on our outer islands, it is a lifeline stretched to the breaking point.

This is not just a Marshall Islands story. The FSM has a long history of friction with USPS going back to earlier decisions to apply international rates and restrictions to FAS mail—policies that were widely recognized as harmful to local economies and basic business correspondence.

More recently, the FSM’s leadership has tied postal reliability directly to the new compact financing, arguing that if Micronesians are expected to trust this partnership, then Washington must deliver on essential services like mail.

Palau, with its tourism-driven economy and growing strategic visibility, also relies on predictable mail delivery for its small businesses, financial services and families spread from Koror to the U.S. mainland.

The commercial impacts are easy to see. Many U.S. companies refuse to ship to FAS addresses despite their domestic status because their systems still classify the islands as “international,” or they have simply lost faith that USPS can deliver.

Small firms in the Marshall Islands, the FSM and Palau end up paying more, waiting longer and explaining delays that are not their fault. For entrepreneurs selling handicrafts, prints or small goods, USPS is often the only affordable way to reach U.S. customers. When that link becomes unreliable, so does their business.

Banks and governments still depend on paper documents—original signatures, certified records—that cannot be scanned for legal reasons. A single lost envelope can derail a scholarship, a land transaction or a court filing. We often describe Micronesia as a “bridge” between Asia and America. Yet our own mail routinely appears stranded somewhere beneath that bridge.

Behind all this, there is also a human dimension. FAS citizens living in the United States depend on mail to receive vital documents from home. Families here send medicines, cultural foods (and corned beef and ship biscuits) and small gifts to relatives spread across Hawaii, Guam and the mainland.

We see this all the time in our post office here in Majuro, especially at Christmas time. Veterans returning home wait for thick envelopes from distant VA offices. When these letters arrive late—or vanish—the implied message is painful: your life, your paperwork, your medical care are less important because of where you live. That is exactly the opposite of the spirit of the compacts.

Solving these problems requires more than frustration or another scolding letter to USPS. The FAS governments have elevated postal issues to the diplomatic level, and the U.S. Congress has explicitly funded continued USPS service within the new Compact package. The challenge now is to convert money and promises into performance.

Real solutions would include service standards tailored to the FAS and publicly reported; dedicated USPS liaison officers with actual regional expertise; better tracking systems that allow customers in Majuro or Pohnpei to understand exactly where their packages are held up; and meaningful support for local postal authorities, who are often trying to run 21st-century logistics through facilities built for a much smaller, slower era, often with antiquated equipment.

Most of all, the United States needs to stop treating postal service to the FAS as a marginal obligation—something that can be adjusted each time a cost-saving measure is introduced. The health of the postal system in the freely associated states is, in many ways, a quiet but revealing test of our partnership. It will never garner the attention of radar installations in Palau or ballistic-missile tracking at Kwajalein, but it shapes everyday life far more directly.

If mail can reliably move between a one-room post office on a far-flung atoll and a suburb in Oregon, then the promise of free association is functioning in a real, tangible way. If it cannot—if parcels are suspended, letters wander through mainland hubs for months and no one takes responsibility—then all the talk of friendship, values and shared ties starts to feel unconvincing.   For those of us who stand in those post office lines, this issue is not abstract. It is the difference between communities that are merely dots on a map and communities that are genuinely connected.

Jack Niedenthal is the former secretary of Health Services for the Marshall Islands, where he has lived and worked for 43 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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