Another side of Henry Nanpei

Abstract

sources remain a difficult, often frustrating undertaking. Careful searches through libraries, archives and private document collections frequendy result in precious little material with which to flesh out an individual's portrait. When a substan tial body of information is located, there still persist problems of bias and in terpretation with both the source itself and the use of the source by the writer. The resulting biographical description too often can present the islander under study in particularly Western terms that emphasize material ambitions, politi cal objectives, religious attitudes, peculiar character traits, or assumed psycho logical abnormalities. Ethnocentric distortion leads to the exaggeration or invention of both personal virtues and failings. The formidable difficulties in volved in reaching across the boundaries of time, space and culture frustrate more accurate presentations of important islander actors. A case in point has been Henry Nanpei of Pohnpei (Ponape). A goodly amount has been written about this most prominent Pohnpeian of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Albertine Loomis, in her history of the Hawaii Conference of the United Church of Christ, termed Nanpei a devout and loyal brother who kept the Protestant Church alive on Pohnpei during the turbulent decade of the 1890s. Loomis seconded the assessment of one member