Photographer Floyd K. Takeuchi at the opening of his exhibition in Honolulu, “The Micronesians,” in early September with Marshallese attorney Arsima Muller, left, and Marshall Islands Consul General Isabela Silk — both of whom are featured in the photographs in the back.
A canoe’s outrigger lifts out of the water in a stiff breeze in Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands in this photo taken by photojournalist Floyd K. Takeuchi in the late 2010s.
MAJURO — Honolulu-based writer-photographer Floyd Takeuchi, who has chronicled the Micronesia region through photos, articles and books for decades, was honored by the Congress of the Federated States of Micronesia last week.
In a resolution, the Congress “expresses its sincere appreciation to Floyd K. Takeuchi for his long career in photography and journalism that focused on the Pacific and contributed to a greater positive understanding of the Federated States of Micronesia.”
The three-page resolution noted that Takeuchi was born and raised in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, “giving him a life-long affinity for the Pacific and an unsurpassed understanding of the region where he has spent over 50 years as a photographer and journalist.”
In a related development, Hawaiian Airlines’ in-flight magazine Hana Hou! published an eight-page feature on Takeuchi in its December edition, including many of Takeuchi’s photos of the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, with a narrative by Stu Dawrs, who is the Curator at University of Hawaii’s Pacific Collection.
Both the resolution and the Hana Hou! feature comment on Takeuchi’s wide-ranging experiences in the Pacific. This included Takeuchi covering the second evacuation of Bikini Atoll in 1978 and the political status negotiations for the first Compact of Free Association as well as working as a reporter for the Guam Pacific Daily News, managing editor of the Daily Post in Fiji, a foreign correspondent for Bloomberg news in Tokyo, and publisher of Pacific Magazine.
The FSM Congress noted that Takeuchi has published five books on the region and produced multiple photographic exhibits focused on the Micronesia area. He has also, since 2015, led trainings in Japan for journalists from the Pacific and Caribbean through the Association for Promotion of International Cooperation.
The FSM Congress and the Hana Hou! article detailed his most recent photograph exhibition in Honolulu that showcased “nine women of Micronesia descent that have been highly successful, thus continuing to push back against negative stereotypes and discrimination.”
Takeuchi’s latest exhibition, titled “The Micronesians,” was on display in Honolulu from September to November. “This photographic project is a modest attempt to force locals in Hawaii to face their own prejudices,” said Takeuchi. “It uses the so-called Micronesian skirt as a symbol of the latent discrimination that festers in our contemporary society. Hopefully these portraits of women of accomplishment and distinction are a visual wedge to begin breaking up the assumptions that we use to shield our ignorance.”
The FSM Congress said that Takeuchi’s work “has greatly benefited the people of the Federated States of Micronesia.”
