Chief Judicial Commissioner for the Western Pacific Chief Judicial Commissioner was renamed – no longer the Chief Justice of Fiji) and two puisne judges, one based in Port Vila, New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), and the other in Tarawa, Gilbert and Ellice Islands (now Kiribati and Tuvalu). Most of the island groups had gained either independence or internal self-government by 1971. On 2 January 1976 after nearly all had been given separate statehood, the office of High Commissioner and the entity of the Pacific Territories were abolished. The High Commission of the Western Pacific was abolished, the last archives being finally packed up in Honiara in August 1978.
Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands comprised over an area of of sea. The latter area was comparable in size to the continental United States. The water area is about 2% of the Pacific Ocean. The population of the islands was 200,000 in the latter part of the 19th century. The population decreased to 100,000 by 1969 due to emigration, war, and disease. At that time, the population inhabited less than 100 out of 2,141 of the Marshall, Mariana, and Caroline Islands. In 1947 the Mariana Islands' Teacher Training School (MITTS), a normal school serving all areas of the Trust Territory, opened in Guam. It moved