Saipan August 2004




The island is not very big …only about 23 miles long and is fairly narrow. The airport is near the southern end of the island. Mark lives currently in Guarapan, which is north east of the airport. He lives in a very nice apartment building, which has only eight apartments. Mark has not been working on the island long and so I got to help him get his apartment leased and in order. He had an unbelievably large number of huge plastic boxes that he had shipped to Saipan that we unpacked and I helped him set up a telephone service and e-mail provider (essentials to us high tech professionals) and get a few rugs and niceties.
Mark has a view of the ocean from his kitchen window and he is within a short walk of the beach. He does not have a car and fortunately one of the nurses loaned him a motorbike. When it rains he wears his bathing suit on the motorbike on the route to the hospital. He carries his scrubs in a plastic baggie and changes to them when he gets to the hospital, which is only five or ten minutes away by car. While I am here, we have a car that I have rented.
Mark took me sightseeing all over the island. At the far north end of the island is Marpi Point…one place where the Japanese jumped off into the ocean. Another location in which they jumped off was Suicide Cliff. As you know already, the battles began in the south and ended in the north.

We visited the last command post of the Japanese, which is in northeast part of island close to sea with cliffs and forests to the west. The cliffs have caves and areas that look like they were hit by mortar fire. The jungle is dense…very dense. There are all kinds of Japanese and Korean monuments at the last command point location and at Marpi Point and Suicide Cliff. The American monuments are in American Monument Park. The biggest monument there is a circular walk with names of all the American soldiers, sailors, and marines killed or missing. In the middle of the monument circular walk are flagpoles with American flag and flags of 4 American branches of service. There is a museum building in the park but it is closed on the weekend so we have yet to go there. The park is fairly large. There is also a monument to the native peoples: the Carolinians and Chamarros, who were marched into caves and then killed by the Japanese soldiers who threw grenades in and killed them. The murdered natives included infants and children as well as men and women. The names and ages of the people are on the monument. There is a bell tower in the park donated by an American Ambassador to Saipan. Behind the park is a marina for sail and motorboats, which connects to the ocean.

While I have been here we have experienced Typhoon Chaba, which included high winds and rain. There was loss of electrical power and some lucky people like us were in buildings with generators. I even managed to e-mail out from a bar down the street, that still had their e-mail up and going and a generator. I was a little worried about the rent car being out in the storm since I did not take the insurance. I couldn't turn it back in as the rental car agency closed before the Typhoon hit.
I think the Eastern side of the island got the most damage although our western side had many damaged trees, some washouts of roadways, some water in houses, periodic water shut offs, and loss of cable TV and radio stations. Businesses shut down with only a few open. One Chinese fellow was taking pictures at a place called the grotto and he was washed away by a sudden unexpected wave…and he has not been found. Mark and I had stood where he was washed away, only two days previously. We also were taking pictures of the large number of divers in the grotto. This is a place where you walk down the side of a cliff on winding steps to large stones in the water and you are surrounded by cliffs with caves. The divers have to carry their tanks up and down this long winding stairway. Amazing to see the Japanese tourist divers doing this. Most of the tourists are Asian. Asian tourists are a big business here. Guarapan even has a big fancy mall with all the big name designer shops. The shoppers? Mostly Japanese. There is a Rotary Club here that meets at the hotel. I did attend a meeting and met some wonderful Rotarians.