Later evidence indicates that widespread human settlements appeared in Chuuk during the 14th century CE, as the Chuukese culture was formed.

[3] The first sighting recorded by Europeans was made by the Spanish navigator Alvaro de Saavedra[4][5] on board the Florida during August or September 1528.

The Chuuk Lagoon was then inhabited by Chuukese people (an Austronesian group) that participated in intermittent wars, as well as a small population of foreign merchants and missionaries, mostly linked to the Catholic Church.

The Caroline Islands were sold to the German Empire in 1899,[9] after Spain withdrew from the Pacific after the Spanish–American War in which it lost its main colony in Asia, the Philippines.

[10] During World War I, the Imperial Japanese navy was tasked with pursuing and destroying the German East Asian Squadron and protecting the shipping lanes of Allied trade in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Chuuk then became a possession of the Empire of Japan under the mandate of the League of Nations after the defeat of Germany in World War I. Chuuk was one of six districts of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) which were administered by the United States under charter from the United Nations from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1980s.

The termination of U.S. administration of the Chuuk, Yap, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Mariana Islands districts of the TTPI occurred on 3 November 1986.

The Federated States of Micronesia, including Chuuk, Yap, Kosrae, and Pohnpei, was established in 1979 and signed a Compact of Free Association with the U.S. (effective 3 November 1986).

The independence referendum was further pushed back to March 2022, with a date to be announced, while the constitutional legality of the proposed secession is determined.

On 2 July 2002, heavy rains from Tropical Storm Chataan caused more than thirty landslides that killed forty-seven people and injured dozens of others, in the state's deadliest weather disaster.

[citation needed] Although Chuuk is an overwhelmingly Christian society, traditional beliefs in spirit possession by the dead still exist.

The report recognized that it is primarily Chuuk's underwater assets that would bring tourism, including its marine diversity and the Second World War shipwrecks around the coast.

[23] A legacy of his work to make Chuuk a dive destination was the establishment of the Kimiuo Aisek Memorial Museum.

The diving conditions are very good (visibility 15–40 meters, variations in depth, minor currents, 700 varieties of fish, generous coral).