Marshall Islands' traditional handicrafts take on Japanese moniker

The tradition is theirs, but the name is Japanese.Handicrafting has been with the people of the Marshall Islands, an archipelagic country in the central Pacific, from even before the Japanese occupied it in the early part of the 20th century.Loretta deBrum of the Marshall Islands Visitors Authority told Kyodo News that before the Marshallese people adapted the Japanese word "amimono" to refer to handicrafts, they used the local word "monakjen."Alfred, 83, was born in 1934 during the Japanese occupation of the Marshall Islands, a nation in the heart of the Pacific Ocean above the equator mad…READ FULL ARTICLE