Jabwor island holds the most concentrated evidence of Jaluit's colonial past. The German administration established its Marshall Islands headquarters here in the 1880s, and remnants of that era — along with subsequent Japanese structures — are scattered around the village and shoreline.
The site of the old German colonial office, a cemetery with German and Marshallese graves, and the foundations of warehouses used by the trading firm Jaluit-Gesellschaft can still be found. The Japanese expanded the infrastructure considerably between the wars, and some of the concrete structures from the 1930s administration period remain standing. Jaluit Airport on Jabwor island still operates, its runway one of the legacies of the Japanese-era infrastructure.