OGASAWARA JIMA form a group of 27 small islands having a total area of but 29sq.m. and lying in the Western Pacific 27°N. 143°E. The whole coast of Eastern Asia is fringed by island arcs, the innermost of which consist of large islands such as Japan, Formosa and the Philippines, but the outermost of small islands alone. The Ogasawara Jima form part of one outer festoon which stretches from the central volcanic zone of Japan through the Volcano, Marianne, Mackenzie, Yap and Pelew Is. to the Moluccas and which, originating in the latter stages of the "Alpine' fold movements, is still unstable. The northern end of the arc passes into central Honshu, that part of Japan where earthquakes are most frequent, and in the Ogasawara group tiny islands appear and disappear. The arc has an important strategic position with regard to the Pacific approaches of the Far East and, with a single exception, the whole is administered by Japan either in her own right or as a mandatory power. The exception, Guam, the most southerly of the Marianne group, belongs to the United States for it lies on the route to her possessions in the Philippines.
Although known to several explorers, each of whom gave the group a different name, these islands, originally called Bonin, were not permanently settled, so far as is known, until 183o. The term "Bonin" is a corruption of the Japanese "Munin To" meaning "empty of men," but the Japanese themselves term them "Ogasawara Jima" after Ogasawara, their first discoverer in 1593. Japan asserted her claim to them in 1861 and has since established regular steamship communications with Yokohama. The vegetation is of a most tropical luxuriance—palms, wild pineapples and ferns growing profusely, and the valleys being filled with wild beans and patches of taro. The valuable timber wealth includes cedar, rose-wood, iron-wood, box-wood, sandal and white oak. The population, which is of very mixed origins— as in so many Pacific islands to-day—numbers about 5,000.