A freshwater pond served as bathing facilities. Local materials were used to construct outrigger canoes called proa. The island's isolation helped preserve the lifestyle of the Satawalese people and Mau's role as a navigator. Even with the arrival of the Germans (1890) and the Japanese (1914) in Micronesia, Satawalese culture remained intact. American missionaries who arrived after World War II built the first church and school on Satawal. In the late 1960s, Mau attempted to verify his navigational knowledge of the wider Pacific by working as a seaman on an inter-island ship run by the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. From 1969 to 1973, Mau became friends with Mike McCoy, a Peace Corps volunteer stationed on Satawal. As well as marrying Mau's niece, McCoy sailed with Mau and they worked together on a project tagging turtles. McCoy became interested in Satawalese navigation, published several articles on the topic and kept in touch with the anthropologist Ben Finney, who was researching Polynesian navigation. When McCoy's assignment on Satawal ended, he asked Pialug if he wanted to come to Hawaii with him. Honolulu, Hawaii Mau first visited Hawaii in 1973, and McCoy introduced him to Ben Finney. Later, Finney suggested to the Polynesian Voyaging Society that they should try to recruit Mau for their Hōkūlea project, since no Hawaiian traditional navigators remained. The project goal was to test the hypothesis that Polynesians made intentional non-instrument voyages across the Pacific. Tevake, a renowned Polynesian navigator, had died in 1970 and only six others were known. Navigators were reluctant to release their sacred knowledge to "outsiders". At the time, Mau was just 41 years old and the youngest navigator out of the group. Mau feared that traditional navigation would die in his own culture, just as it had in Hawaii. He had tried to teach the young men of Satawal the skills passed on to him, but he was not optimistic. The members of the younger generation were too busy with school and too attracted to Western culture to undertake the rigorous course of study and apprenticeship. Further, Mau's people did not seem to care that traditional navigation was dying and could be lost forever. Later life (1975–2010) Hōkūlea With Finney's help, Mau was awarded a special fellowship at the East–West Center. Mau returned to Honolulu in April 1975 to begin work with the Hawaii-based Polynesian Voyaging Society, eventually navigating the double-hulled canoe