Saipan: The Most Non-American Place in America (Yet)

Saipan 

The view of Saipan's coral reef from our cute plane.

We have just returned from a four-day trip to the island of Saipan, exactly 129 miles from Guam. Nick and Amanda researched the area and thought it would be an interesting place for the four of us to visit, and they were absolutely right. Amanda did the research, and Nick arranged the airfare and hotel accommodations, so all we had to do was show up. Since we are retired, we are not used to any real work of any kind, so this fit in with our lifestyle perfectly.

The only possible glitch is that we were traveling on a shoestring and decided to share a hotel room. The kids like us so much that they didn’t want to be separated from us even a little bit. Yep, we are that cool. The hotel, however, allowed a maximum of three people to a room, ignoring the fact that there was sleeping room for four. Nick had learned a lot growing up with Roger, including the maxim that it’s ok to lie a little to save some cash. We had to decide who of the four of us was the least obvious person among us. This person would have to slink around the resort unobtrusively, Ninja-like, staying under the radar of the three-person-max police. It seems crazy, I know, but for some reason, we chose Roger. There was some logic to it at the time, but I can’t remember for the life of me what our reasoning was.  Anyway, we chose the very person MOST likely to strike up conversations with security guards, random Japanese tourists, and terrified Russian nymphets. More on that later.

We weren't the only tourists who stood out like dogs' balls.

We didn’t bank on the possibility that we would be the only Caucasian non-Russians in the 435-room hotel. Yep. We didn’t exactly BLEND. As the Aussies used to say, we stood out like dogs’ balls. This surprised us, since Saipan is American, more or less. It is a part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, and belongs to the US. However it is FAR from the US mainland, and only a five-hour flight from Vladivostok, Russia, and even closer than that to Japan. Since there aren’t many tropical islands within a stone’s throw of those places, the tourists flock here.

The Japanese presence on the island is huge (and we are happy to report that they are much friendlier toward Americans they meet on the beach than they were in July 1944.)  Signs on storefronts, at tourist attractions, and in advertising are mainly Japanese, with Russian running a close second. Many shop employees don’t speak English at all. The tourist map we used to navigate the island had captions in all three languages. We are accustomed to dealing with people who speak other languages, but it was disconcerting to deal with that in America. Very interesting, but strange.

Typical signage in Saipan

We spent a day driving around the island checking out the historic WWII sites, of which there are many. Roger’s Uncle Dick fought there in the invasion, and it must have been hell.  The memorials include the disturbing Suicide Cliff and Banzai Cliff, where thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilian families committed suicide when the island was taken by the US.

The bomb pit for Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb.

Was Enola Gay? The highlight of the vacation was a day trip to Tinian. The island is just off the southern shore of Saipan, a stone’s throw really. The ferry no longer runs, though, so it was a ten-minute flight in a tiny four-passenger plane. Once there, we rented a car and toured the nearly deserted island.  Amanda navigated with the skill of a Micronesian seafarer, and a good thing because our road map was outdated, out of scale, and at times just plain wrong.

Like Saipan, Tinian teems with WWII sites, but unlike Saipan there are few tourists, Japanese or otherwise. During our first three hours driving around, we saw only three other cars. We drove down Runway Able, the runway that the Enola Gay used on its bombing run to Hiroshima, and saw the pits used to load the atomic bombs before the flights. The bombs were so big and so heavy they couldn’t be loaded conventionally.  So they dug two concrete pits, positioned Little Boy and Fat Man, then taxied the B29’s over the pits and winched them into the bomb bays.  The island is scattered with ruins of Japanese bomb shelters, weapons, buildings, and vehicles--all accessible and ready to be explored.

Not all the sights were war-related. Tinian is home to the House of Taga, which has the largest latte stones in the Marianas Islands. Big suckers. Never hear of latte stones, you say? Neither did we until we arrived in Guam. Latte stones are two-piece upright pillars that supported a traditional house. They are all over Guam and the other Marianas and are common symbol of the area.

Latte stone, Amanda, and Nick

Then there was the Tinian Shrine, a Shinto site from the Japanese occupation that was nearly impossible to find.  The map had it wrong, and we circled for some minutes until we found a few actual residents in a driveway.  We stopped to ask directions, and they explained that the road shown on the map no longer existed, and it was impossible for us to find it.  “We’ll take you,” they said and Josiah, Frances, and J.J. piled into a pickup, with Josiah perched in the back of the pickup, king-like on a bench seat removed from a mini-van and with a sun-shielding umbrella over his head.  We followed them off-road up a jungle track to the shrine, overgrown and eerie in the dappled jungle sunlight.

Russian Nymphets: Don't they have bugs in Siberia?

There is only one adventure to relate from the Saipan trip, much to everyone’s relief.  Late one evening, Roger decided to take a walk down by the pool to reconnoiter.  He took the elevator from 7, pressed Ground, and was surprised when the elevator stopped on 2.  Waiting in front of the opened elevator stood a twenty-something Russian, obviously in distress. She wrung her hands and said, “Help! Please! Come!” and she motioned to the opened doorway to her room, visible from the elevator.  Thinking someone must be hurt, Roger followed her into the room, where her girlfriend stood sobbing and shaking, still dripping from the shower. 

“What’s wrong?” They pointed to the bathroom, its door shut. They took turns pointing to the bathroom and sobbing.  They were terrified.  “What is it?” One girl put her hands under her chin, as one might imitate a rabid chipmunk, and made a noise that sounded like “beep…beep…beep.”

So Roger opened the bathroom door—cautiously, to be sure—and looked around, scanning the floor beneath the sink.  The girls gathered closely behind him.  “No! No!” they said, as they pointed to a washcloth on the vanity shelf.

Roger shut the door, always prudent.  “What is it?  A mouse?”  “No mouse.”  “A rat?”  “No rat.” She indicated with her fingers something the size of a half-inch or so, and repeated the pantomime of the rabid chipmunk. “Beep…beep…beep,” she said, probably in Russian.

So Roger bravely re-entered the bathroom, girls watching anxiously from behind, and proceeded to pound the shit out of the washcloth with a hairbrush until he heard the expected “crunch”. He removed the washcloth, and found beneath it a cockroach the size of a Tylenol caplet, promptly flushing it down the toilet.

“Everything is good now,” he reassured them. “My job here is done.  Everything is o.k.”  He felt pretty damned good, truth be told.  They were very grateful (not that grateful, as it turned out), and Roger got a warm hug from one of the girls, and a wet and sticky one from the other.

We met them at breakfast the next morning, and they were still effusively grateful, although in Russian.  With this confirmation, we now believe this story to be true.  The girls explained that they were from Khabarovsk, 500 miles north of Vladivostok, and that all the Russians one sees in the Marianas are from eastern Siberia, a five-hour flight.  That explains the throngs of Russians, comrades.  So we were able to do a Good Deed, improve American-Russian relations immeasurably, and learn something at the same time.  This is why we like to travel.

Saipanda, silliest marketing mascot ever, is actually a bit of word play in Japanese. "SAI" is the                                                                            the Japanese word for rhinoceros, so a Saipanda would look like...Get it? The Japanese LOVE IT.