Photo: Kendall Crawford/Ohio Newsroom. Retrieved from statenews.org
Michael Capelle has spent much of his life listening to the stories of older relatives reminisce about life in the Marshall Islands. Capelle has never visited, but his parents have passed down its traditions and history.
“We sail around the seas, and we don’t need navigational tools. That’s what sets us apart,” he said. “We’re the people of the sea.”
Landlocked Ohio looks a lot different. Still, a small community of islanders made the long trek from the Marshall Islands – a country of 42,000 people that sits a couple thousand miles northeast of Papua New Guinea – to Celina, a small city in western Ohio, where Capelle lives.
Despite the massive distance, Capelle is working to ensure the islands’ culture is passed onto the next generation growing up in Ohio.
Around 30,000 people have emigrated from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. There’s no official count on their numbers in Celina, but city officials estimate around 1,500 Marshallese people live in the community.
Capelle thinks it’s double that. The younger generation here is growing, he said, but their knowledge of Marshallese culture is fading.