Bonin Islanders in the context of "Polynesians"

The Bonin Islands, also known as the Ogasawara Islands (Japanese: 小笠原諸島), is a Japanese archipelago of over 30 subtropical and tropical islands located around 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) SSE of Tokyo and 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi) northwest of Guam. The group as a whole has a total area of 84 square kilometers (32 sq mi) but only two of the islands are permanently inhabited, Chichijima and Hahajima. Together, their population was 2,560 as of 2021. Administratively, Tokyo's Ogasawara Subprefecture also includes the settlements on the Volcano Islands and the Self-Defense Force post on Iwo Jima. The seat of government is Chichijima.

Because of the Bonins' isolation, many of their animals and plants have undergone unique evolutionary processes. They have been referred to as the "Galápagos of the Orient" and were named a Natural World Heritage Site in 2011. When first reached during the early modern period, the islands were entirely uninhabited, although subsequent research has found evidence of some prehistoric habitation by Micronesians. Upon their repeated rediscoveries, the islands were largely ignored by the Spanish, Dutch, and isolationist Japanese until finally being claimed by a passing British captain in 1827. American, European, and Hawaiian colonists arrived from the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1830. Subsequently, Meiji Japan successfully colonized and reclaimed the islands in 1875, but Bonin Islanders' community continued up to World War II, when most islanders were forcibly relocated to Honshu. Following Japan's defeat, the U.S. Navy occupied the island, bulldozing existing Japanese homes and restricting resettlement until full control of the Bonins was returned to Japan in 1968. Ethnically, the island is now majority Japanese but remains unusually diverse, which is reflected in the local Creole language known as Bonin English. Improved transportation has made agriculture more profitable and encouraged tourism, but the development required for an airport remains a contentious local issue.

Chichijima (父島) is the largest and most populous of the Bonin Islands. Chichijima is about 240 km (150 mi) north of Iwo Jima. 23.5 km (9.1 sq mi) in size, the island is home to about 2,120 people (2021). Connected to the mainland only by a day-long ferry that runs a few times a month, the island is nonetheless organized administratively as the seat of Ogasawara Village in the coterminous Ogasawara Subprefecture of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Together with the Volcano and Izu Islands, it makes up Japan's Nanpō Islands.

Some Micronesian tools and carvings have been found elsewhere in the Bonins, but Chichijima was long uninhabited when it was rediscovered. Ignored by the Spanish, Dutch, and Japanese Empires for centuries, it was finally claimed by a passing British captain in 1828 and settled by an international group from the Hawaiian Kingdom two years later, the original nucleus of the Bonin Islanders. Britain subsequently yielded to Japanese claims and colonization of the island, which established two villages at Ōmura (大村) and Ōgimura-Fukurosawa (扇村袋沢村). These were formally incorporated in 1940, just before the civilian population was forcibly evacuated to Honshu in 1944 during the end of World War II.

The Ainu are an indigenous ethnic group who reside in northern Japan and southeastern Russia, including Hokkaido and the Tōhoku region of Honshu, as well as the land surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, such as Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and the Khabarovsk Krai. They have occupied these areas, known to them as "Ainu Mosir" (Ainu: アイヌモシㇼ, lit. 'the land of the Ainu'), since before the arrival of the modern Yamato and Russians. These regions are often referred to as Ezochi (蝦夷地) and its inhabitants as Emishi (蝦夷) in historical Japanese texts. Along with the Yamato and Ryukyuan ethnic groups, the Ainu people are one of the primary historic ethnic groups of Japan and are along with the Ryukyuans and Bonin Islanders one of the few ethnic minorities native to the Japanese archipelago.

Official surveys of the known Ainu population in Hokkaido received 11,450 responses in 2023, and the Ainu population in Russia was estimated at 300 in 2021. Unofficial estimates in 2002 placed the total population in Japan at 200,000 or higher, as the near-total assimilation of the Ainu into Japanese society has resulted in many individuals of Ainu descent having no knowledge of their ancestry.

Euronesian is an umbrella term and portmanteau for people of mixed European and either Melanesian, Micronesian, or Polynesian descent. The term is most commonly used in Samoa. British or French colonizers, missionaries and traders, as well as some descendants of Polynesians and Spaniards in Easter Island (where Chilean law and generic Chilean social views name them mestizos), and descendants of Micronesians and Spaniards in the Caroline Islands (the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau), the Mariana Islands (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands), and the Marshall Islands. ʻAfakasi is the common term of reference for euronesians in Samoa; in Fiji, the term Kailoma is usually used.

Distinct Euronesian groups include the Hawaiian Hapa haole, Norfolk Islanders, Bonin Islanders, Palmerston Islanders, Pitcairn Islanders, and Tahitian demis.