Kanak people
Kanak (French spelling until 1984: Canaque) are the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants of New Caledonia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southwest Pacific. According to the 2014 census, they make up 39.1% of the total population with around 104,000 people.
Japanese settlement in New Caledonia
Official statistics showed some 6,880 Japanese miners that landed in New Caledonia between 1892 and 1919. The Japanese community had almost 3,000 individuals in 1922, and many left New Caledonia in the 1920s and 1930s as ethnic suspicion against ethnic Japanese intensified. Within the Japanese community, Okinawans consisted a sizeable minority, and a 1905 census recorded some 387 Okinawans in New Caledonia. In all official census until the 1940s, Japanese were classified as "Europeans" and enjoyed similar rights with other European settlers. Inter-ethnic unions between Japanese men and women were frequentplace, although some Japanese settlers married Japanese women. A 1940 report showed some 36 men that married Japanese women, while another 20 married French women. Another 107 married or cohabited with Kanak, Vietnamese or Javanese women. In the same year, there were some 200 second-generation Japanese settlers, of which three quarters were born to one non-Japanese parent, while the remainder were of pure Japanese descent.