Peleliu: History
Peleliu was traditionally divided into five villages. Teliu is located on the southwest coast bordered on the north by Ngerkeiukl on the west coast, Ngesias in the central portion of the island, and Ngerdelolk on the east coast. Ngerchol occupies the northern part of the island on the west side of Bloody Nose Ridge. Most of the surface remains of the traditional villages have been obliterated. However, the locations of the villages and the locations of features within the villages, including odesongel, are known and preserved in the oral tradition. These traditional features are important symbols giving identity to families, clans and regions.
The lagoon and adjacent rock islands are important resource areas, and probably were intensively exploited prehistorically. Important resources include many different species of trees and other plants and many different species of fish and shellfish. On the islands, traditional gardens would have been located in areas where sufficient soil had accumulated in low lying pockets and marshes.
First sighting of Peleliu, Babeldaob, and Koror recorded by Westerners was by the Spanish expedition of Ruy López de Villalobos at the end of January 1543. They were then charted as Los Arrecifes ("The Reefs" in Spanish). In November and December 1710 these three islands were again visited and explored by the Spanish missionary expedition commanded by Sargento Mayor Francisco Padilla on board of the patache Santísima Trinidad. Two years later they were explored in detail by the expedition of Spanish naval officer Bernardo de Egoy.
Following its defeat in the Spanish–American War, Spain sold Palau (including Peleliu) to Germany in 1899. Control passed to Japan in 1914.
During World War II, the Battle of Peleliu was a major battle between units of the United States Marine Corps and United States Army against the Imperial Japanese Army in 1944. The battle for the island was particularly brutal because by this time the Japanese military had developed island defense tactics with strong fortifications in the island's caves and rock formations within the Umurbrogol Mountains (Bloody Nose Ridge), which enabled a defense in depth which maximized casualties on the attacking force. On both sides involved in the fighting, there were high losses with more than 2,000 Americans and 10,000 Japanese killed. There were no casualties among the local civilians because they had been evacuated from Peleliu to other islands of Palau in 1943.
The ruins of many of the military installations of the era, such as the airstrip, are still intact, and shipwrecks from the battle remain visible underwater just off the coast. There are war memorials on the island to both the American and the Japanese dead. Peleliu and Angaur were the only islands in the Palau archipelago to be occupied by the Americans during the war. The capital of Koror remained in Japanese hands to the end of the war.
Peleliu was formally placed under the control of the United States under United Nations auspices in 1947 as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. In 1947, two and a half years after Japanese surrender, there were over 30 Japanese still hiding in caves, believing the war was not over. The Americans sent a senior Japanese military official into the caves and convinced them to surrender. The last Japanese survivor, Keiji Nagai, died in 2019.
Palau became independent in 1978, and Peleliu was organized as a state within the new republic.