 Once, in the morning of time, the earth cast a thousand mountains up from its greatest, deepest sea. And countless aquatic animals died, and left their bones behind to form a thousand more. Volcanic and coral. Beautiful beyond compare. The Pacific islands of Micronesia were born. The Marianas, the Marshalls, and the Carolines. Over 2,000 islands sleeping upon the endless pastures of the Pacific. The people who live on these islands have been called the most gifted navigators in the world. They sailed great distances in small canoes to find these islands. And now, they're sailing even greater distances to find themselves. This is the story of the beautiful people of Micronesia and their voyage into the 21st century. In the 16th century, about the time Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel and shortly before the birth of Shakespeare and Cervantes, a Spanish navigator named the ancestors of this man, Los Pintados, the painted ones. No one knows for sure when they came to this constellation of islands or from where. Perhaps the Malay Peninsula or Polynesia. But they came, these master navigators, across vast reaches of the Pacific in canoes like these. According to a German mariner who visited these islands in the 1800s, the ancestors of this old man were unrivaled masters of the sea, using charts made from curved sticks and curry shells. The islanders navigated by reading the patterns of the waves and by feeling the motion of the sea. In their graceful sailing canoes, often crewed by 40 men, they could make a landfall on a tiny distant island with an airing accuracy. Even today, canoe voyages of 1500 miles or more have been recorded. When they came is also a mystery. But there are ruins upon the islands that prove great cities flourished here at a time when people in England still huddled around open fires. Some experts claim one must reach back to a time before Christ to date the arrival of the navigators. For centuries they ruled their 3 million square miles of the South Pacific and their 2,000 tropical isles. They lived in harmony with the sea and the earth and with themselves. But then in 1521, Ferdinand Magellan came to these shores and the Marianas and the Marshalls and the Carolines would never be the same again. From the time of the great explorers discovery of the tiny islands, 25 generations of foreign powers ruled the Micronesians. But today, as a United Nations trust, they have emerged with their identity and their pride intact. The navigators endured the storms of history. To the people of the islands, the years that followed World War II were like a great calm. Under the trusteeship council of the United Nations, Micronesia was made a trust territory of the United States. But world events forced the attention of the United States to other troubled areas and the beautiful people of Micronesia were temporarily forgotten. While the rest of the world rushed towards the 21st century, the islanders seemed to hang in a state of suspended animation. Unable to go back to their ancient simplicity, unequipped to go forward. Alone in their tucked away part of the world, the people of Micronesia listened to the years tick by and life in the islands settled into a kind of timeless, random rhythm. The islands of Micronesia were becalmed. The craftsmen, with their same aesthetic skill, began again building new meeting houses in their traditional way. But little was done towards modern reconstruction of the war-scarred islands, arrow to be planted and harvested, and gifts from the sea to be gathered. There was much looking backward to time's past. Artists carved the legends of ancient days onto hardwood panels, battles, festivals. Legends of the past were made vividly alive in the minds of the people of the present, particularly the younger generation of today. But the future of Micronesia will not rest on its past. It will be in the hands and the minds of the children. In the past few decades, Micronesia's greatest treasure, the young people, have been leaving the islands for an education and seldom return as there has been so little opportunity on the islands to apply their newly acquired skills and active imaginations. They're changing on the islands. The navigators are on the move again. With a little help from their friends, again take a notice of the forgotten islands. And among those who have come to the islands to help the new navigators chart their course into the 21st century, is a small group of seabees from the United States Navy. For the first time in 500 years, a foreign Navy has come not to destroy, but to build. Not to take, but to give. In 1969, the Micronesians through their elected leaders requested seabee civic action teams to be deployed to their islands to supervise community development projects and conduct special training programs. Each team consists of 13 men, 11 enlisted construction petty officers, a hospital corpsman qualified for independent duty, and a Navy civil engineer corps officer in charge, who is a graduate engineer. The skills of the 11 men encompass the full range of the construction trades. Builders, equipment operators, mechanics, and electrician, a steel worker, a utilities man, and an engineering aide. Before their arrival in Micronesia, these hand-picked volunteers from the Naval Construction Force were trained in each other's skills so that the team of 13 experts actually possessed the skills of 47 journeymen. So together with their equipment, the team is a kind of 13-man industrial revolution. The men of the seabee teams must not only know their job, but they must be able to pass their knowledge on to others. And so here, in a school with seabees and their students built themselves, the seabees pass on the know-how to get these jobs done. Progress on the islands will be a partnership between men and their machines. Since the machines must be kept running, Yankee ingenuity becomes an island commodity. As philosopher Eric Hoffa would say, the gift of maintenance is given. Since the first seabee team arrived in the trust territory, the islanders have learned quickly. For once non-existent or in terrible disrepair are heavy with the wheels of progress. And bridges and schools have been raised. And the islanders have done it themselves. With a little help from their friends, any confrontation of cultures, those who teach learn as much as those who are taught. A seabee teaches children to tell time. In return, he learns from them the beautiful southeast concept of the elastic hour. Time is as long or short as you wish it to be. The hour is a product of the mind, not the clock. The history of the civic action project in Micronesia has been a cultural two-way street. An islander learns to repair a radiator. A seabee learns how to feel nature moving through all aspects of life. An islander learns to finish concrete. Seabees learn to gracefully share the gifts of the sea and the earth. Islanders learn the mysteries of basketball. The seabees learn the mysteries of living in harmony with a natural environment. It's difficult to know who has learned more, the seabees or the islanders. Through their close continued association, both will be enriched by the experience. New projects and needs of the islanders are outlined at meetings between the local representatives and the team's officer in charge. A priority of programs is established and progress of projects is openly discussed. Contrary to what the poets say, paradise isn't always what it's cracked up to be. There may be breadfruit and papayas but mangos are nearly every tree and plenty of fish in the sea and tropical flowers weaving a tapestry of color and light. But there is also a thing in paradise called disease. And the islanders, with the help of the seabees, are waging a new war against their old enemy. Using techniques recently learned from the seabees, the Micronesians are building dispensaries in isolated places that were neglected in the past. Now the team Corman and a local public health nurse hold frequent clinic days. There is always a long line of patients waiting for examination and help. In addition to treating the sick, one Corman organized formal health classes held in the local hospital. During the morning each day of the week, he has been teaching public health students from the surrounding islands, courses in physiology, anatomy and first aid. It will be these young Micronesians who will assist the doctors and provide medical aid once the Corman return to the States. Another thing about paradise is that the weather is often awful. There is a legend here that if one travels in a direction parallel to the rainbow, bad luck will follow. And if one whistles, the sound will bring storms. No one whistles too much on the islands, but the rains and the storms are still too often frequent visitors. One would think in a place where rainfall is so plentiful, there would be no shortage of water. But this is another of the paradoxes of paradise. But after the deluge, the sun burns down with tropical intensity and the tray winds sweep over the islands and the soil is robbed of its moisture. The result is a water shortage, another of the islanders' ancient enemies. On this front too, the sea bees and the islanders went to war. They built water catchments to receive the water in the rainy season and store it for when it was needed. The catchment connects to a distribution system with taps near the homes where visitors can conveniently take the water in jars or barrels for themselves. To assure that the water supply is pure, it is constantly checked by the sea bee corpsmen. And each month, a team arrives with a portable pump to thoroughly clean the catchment. Another ancient problem solved by the cooperative effort of the islanders and the sea bees, the marshals, the runners and the carolines. A galaxy of islands spread over an area larger than the United States, but with a combined land mass smaller in size than Rhode Island. Upon them, live people so diverse, they speak 11 languages and have customs so varied, it would be an impertinence to try to describe the average Micronesian. People so scattered and different one from another hope to make a place for themselves among the family of nations which will comprise the landscape of the 21st century. The answer lies in the people, the descendants of Los Pintatos, the painted ones, that great island treasure all the conquerors of all the centuries overlooked. A people of strong will and imagination who have steered an impossible course through history. Today, the new navigators steer a new course, the most demanding voyage of their history, and they will make it with a little help from their friends.