Volcano Islands uninhabited. The first recorded sighting by Europeans was in October 1543 by Spanish navigator Bernardo de la Torre on board of carrack "San Juan de Letrán" when trying to return from Sarangani to New Spain. Iwo Jima was charted as Sufre, the old Spanish term for sulphur. The islands were uninhabited until 1889, when the two northern islands were settled by Japanese settlers from the Izu Islands. They were annexed by Japan in 1891. The population was about 1,100 in 1939, distributed among five settlements: Higashi, Minami, Nishi, Kita and Motoyama (meaning "East", "South", "West", "North" and "Mountain of Origin",
Japanese settlement in the Marshall Islands on a Burns Philp steamer noted that the most Marshallese women wore the kimono instead of the traditional loincloth ("lavalava" in Marshallese) in October 1918. Interethnic relations between the Japanese settlers and civil servants with the Marshallese were friendly, but racial segregation was enforced between Japanese and Micronesians in the workforce and educational sectors. As compared to Micronesians from other islands, Marshallese generally retained more aspects of their traditional lifestyles, relative to the small Japanese populace in the islands. Contrary to Japanese settlements in the other mandated islands, settlers consisted mainly of single men, and intermarriages with Marshallese women were