Republic of Palau , is consists of more than 300 islands located on Micronesia. This country is a utopia for divers for two reasons, beautiful ocean and warm weather.
It takes two hours on a plane to get there from Guam. The capital city is Koror, on the Koror Island. Just imagine the beautiful beach, tropical fruit.....
How can we relate this tropical land with Japan?

This is the national flag of Palau, which was selected from public ideas.

This flag symbolizes a full moon over the blue ocean. What do you think this flag looks like?.......Yes, national flag of Japan, which is symbolic of the sun.
The moon symbolizes not only love, peace, calmness and fertile, but also Japan's sun shines on the moon of Palau.
Why is the moon off center to the left? It's because Palau people believe that having the circle on the center of the flag would be impolite for copying Japan.
I' m going to explain the historical reason that they are so kind to us.

We can not learn Palau's history without rule and control. There are four countries which had under roled Palau, Spain, Germany, Japan and the United States.
Palau islands was discovered by Spain in 1543. And in 1899 Germany got control of Palau. After the WW1, the control of Palau and other islands on Micronesia has been passed into Japanese hands.
However we do not see many signs of Spain or Germany but instead Japan. Why?

Japanese government built Central Office of South Pacific Agency on the Koror Island, in Palau. After that they made the infrastructure such as light of electoric, roads ,bridges, economic and so on. Before that, Palau's economic was controlled by quite few people.
Japanese developed education to teach math, science Japanese and other subjects.
Many mechanics from Japan brought technology. They taught Palau people to plant sugarcane, make beer, farm pearl, etc... Now they are main industry nPalau.
And the one who built a hospital was also Japanese. Palau people really appreciated to give them medicine.
Story Board is a famous Traditional handicraft of Palau. It's a wooden relief drawn the picture of history or customs on it. It is said that the origin of Story Board is the Japanese Gauguin, Hijikata Hisayoshi who went to Palau as an arts teacher.
If you want to see how Palau was at this time, you should read the books written by Atsushi Nakajima who is a famous Japanese novelist. He went to Palau as a Compilation secretary.

All of the above are the differences between Europeans and Japanese. "We learned to be earnest by Japanese" That's what Palau people say. Japanese farmed and developed eagerly and vigorously. It was natural that unsophisticated Palau people and earnest Japanese reached the reconciliation.

There are lots of people who have Japanese names in Palau.
They named their children or themselves Japanese names out of respect. Some people even asked the Japanese to name them. Steve Umetaro is a diet member of Palau. Umetaro is a Japanese first name. But he has chosen it as a last name. I guess there was a Japanese whose name was Umetaro. It's because I couldn't find any key of it. He didn't work for honors. He just loved Palau.
Japanese words we can find in Palau are not only names. gomisuteba(the place where garbage is collected), Denwa(phone), Senkyo(election, vote), Tsukarete(get tired), etc. Chichiband (Brassiere) is the word which isn't used now in Japan. But it is still used in Palau.

Kitaharao is a town located on Northeast end of Japan. It's used to be an acceptance town for people who returned from South Pacific after W.W.2. They tried to make the deserted land to be fertile just like Palau, which used to be their home.
That's why they named the town Kitaharao (North Palau). Now, Fertile land spreaded all over the town.

Their bond never cut off though the nation was divided.