Over the years, a plethora of books and magazine articles have been written about World War II in the Pacific. Too many are little more than a rehash of earlier works; others are poorly researched and have not been vetted for content.
Still, some outstanding books and articles continue to come out from time to time, but the one thing they all have in common is that little or no reference is made to what happened to the Micronesian population whose island homes became battlegrounds.
Even more incomprehensible to this researcher and onetime resident of the Mariana Islands is the fact that, although more than 900 Chamorros and Carolinians died during the fighting on just one island—Saipan—out of an estimated population of between 3,000 and 4,000 (based on a Japanese census done prior to the war), those deaths never made it into official government records. For example, in the official U.S. Marine Corps history of the Battle of Saipan, The Beginning of the End, by then-Major Carl W. Hoffman, no islanders are listed among the casualties.
The Spanish first colonized the Mariana Islands in the late 17th century. Although the Chamorros resisted at first, they did not resist for long. Most were uprooted from the northern islands and forcibly relocated to Guam, where many died from diseases to which they had no resistance.
The Spanish ruled until the end of the 19th century, giving up Guam to the United States following the Spanish-American War of 1898. The following year, Spain sold the rest of its island possessions to Germany. The Germans remained until 1914, when the Japanese took possession, ruling the islands under a League of Nations Class C mandate for the next 30 years.
In the early 1800s a few brave seafarers from the Caroline islands requested permission from the Spanish to settle on one of the islands north of Guam, namely Saipan, after their atoll was devastated by a typhoon. Over time, some Chamorros living on Guam were allowed to return to Saipan and other islands to the north by Spanish authorities, and although there was some mixing of the two peoples, they remained culturally separate.
During the centuries of Spanish rule, the native population was decimated, and although the Chamorros retained many of their cultural practices and beliefs, they were strongly affected by the introduction of Western religion and ideas. The Chamorro language survived, but it now includes many Spanish words.
The Germans were few in number and concentrated on exploiting the islands mainly for copra. Their colonial regime lasted for only 15 years.
When the Japanese arrived in 1914, large numbers of Japanese, Okinawans, and Koreans immigrated to the islands. Most settled in for the long haul. Some Japanese—mostly men, but also some women—married into local families. And although the Chamorros and Carolinians were colonial subjects and treated as second-class citizens, they did benefit economically and in other ways.
The Japanese brought electricity to the islands and planted sugar cane and other crops. They also revitalized the economy in other ways, allowing native peoples to prosper for the first time. Jobs were plentiful, and locals could make money from renting out their lands to the Japanese, mostly for growing sugar cane.
This all changed, however, with the coming of war in February 1944, when Rear Admiral Marc Mitscher’s fast carriers struck soon after the 4th Marine Division seized the Marshall Islands. Four months later, two U.S. Marine divisions and one U.S. Army division landed on the southwest coast of Saipan. The fighting lasted for almost three weeks, but organized resistance did not end until December 1945 with the surrender of Captain Sakae Ōba and his party of stragglers.
Of the estimated 28,000 Japanese combatants on Saipan, fewer than 2,000 survived. Likewise, of the many Japanese, Okinawans, and Korean civilians, thousands would die during the fighting. Others either committed suicide or were killed by Japanese soldiers to prevent them from surrendering. More died while trying to flee by ship as the result of attacks by U.S. submarines.
Civilian Memories of Homefront Combat
Vicky Vaughan—née Setchan Akiyama—was born on Saipan in 1933. Her father, Tomomitsu, was Japanese—or Pedro, as he was known by his Chamorro in-laws. Her mother, a Chamorro, was Abalina Sablan Reyes.
Vicky was one of seven children born to Tomomitsu and Abalina before the war (Three more were born to Tomomitsu’s second wife after Vicky’s mother died.). Vicky was one of only three to survive. Her father became separated from the family during the fighting and was never seen again. Her grandfather was killed, as were other members of her extended family, many of them before her eyes, when the dugout, covered with coconut logs, they were hiding in was caught in the fighting between Japanese and U.S. forces. After the war, neither her one surviving brother nor one surviving sister ever wanted to talk about what happened.
Sister Antonieta Ada’s Japanese name was Nishikawa Kimiko. She was one of six children. Her biological father was good friends with Juan Martinez Ada and his wife, Anna Cepeda Ada. The Ada family had three children, but two died young, and the third died sometime during the war, so Nishikawa was given to the Adas to raise.
During the fighting on Saipan, all of Sister Antonieta’s Japanese family was killed except for her older brother. He moved to Japan after the war, but Sister Antonieta stayed with her Chamorro family and eventually joined the Mercedarian order of the Catholic Church. As a missionary to Japan years later, she reconnected with her brother, although she could no longer speak Japanese and he could not speak English.
Prior to the coming of the war to the islands of Micronesia, most of the people I interviewed had fond memories of the Japanese, many of whom lived out their lives there, at least until the coming of war. It was a time not only of peace, but of prosperity. This attitude changed however, once Japanese military personnel started arriving in the spring of 1944.
Unlike their civilian counterparts, the Japanese troops had no connection with the local population. Chamorros and Carolinians living in the main village of Garapan were forced from their homes and had to make do with living rough on their farms if they had one. The schools and churches were closed, and once the fighting started, food and especially water became difficult to come by. The Japanese were on constant lookout for anybody suspected of helping the Americans. People were arrested, and sometimes executed for having Western names or even a tattoo that might suggest some foreign attachment. Being found with a radio in one’s possession was especially dangerous. One Japanese by the name Zenjiro Ikuta was held in the Japanese jail for just that reason.
Ikuta had immigrated from Japan to California in the early 20th century with his family, attended school in Oakland, married a local Caucasian woman, and had three children with her. Sometime in the 1930s, they divorced, and he moved back to Japan. Later, he ended up on Saipan.
Manny T. Sablan, who worked as a messenger boy for the Japanese police, remembers Ikuta as one of several locals held in the jail at the time of the invasion. In his oral history interview, Sablan related how Ikuta spoke English better than Japanese and was used to translate the interrogation of several American fliers who were also held in the jail.
According to Sablan, once the U.S. forces landed, the locals in the jail were released and told to head for the hills. The jailed Americans were executed. Ikuta was never seen or heard from after that.
In his oral history interview, another Sablan—David Sablan—related how, when his family was forced out of their comfortable home in Garapan, they took all their books, plus an organ that one of his sisters learned how to play. After the Americans first bombed Saipan, the Japanese came to their ranch. They ripped apart all the books and burned them. They also tore apart the organ. The Sablans learned only later that they were looking for some sort of communication equipment, thinking the organ had something to do with it.
After the Japanese soldiers left, the Sablans moved to higher ground and spent the next few weeks in a cave with other islanders, fearing the Japanese would return to their ranch and destroy more than books and an organ. They stayed in the cave until after the Battle of Saipan was over and they were rescued by three U.S. Marines. David met up with the Marines years later at a reunion.
Throughout the German and Japanese colonial periods, Micronesians from the Marianas and other island groups were sent out to work in phosphate mines in the Palau Islands or to work in some other capacity. Some ended up as far away as present-day Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. A Chamorro by the name of Danile Aldan was sent to Indonesia during the war and did not return to Saipan until the 1980s.
A few Chamorros, such as Juan Blanco and Henry S. Pangelinan, were permitted to go to Japan to study, and in some cases to work. Pangelinan even took a Japanese wife back to Saipan with him.
Juan Blanco, with permission from his father, was taken to Japan as a grade-schooler. He lived with a Japanese couple and was treated as a son. He did well academically and in sports. However, his father became concerned about the war as it turned against the Japanese and ordered him home, where he was allowed to continue his studies on Saipan at a Japanese school even though he was not Japanese.
On the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded Guam. The small number of U.S. military personnel there were soon overrun, and the Japanese occupied Guam until August 1944, when the Americans returned. During the Japanese occupation, Chamorros from Saipan were sent there to function as interpreters. Some were forced to witness and, in some cases, participate in the beating of Guamanian Chamorros. One such witness is the wife of Luis Crisostomo, who was tried and convicted for the murder of a Guamanian by the name of Pedro Dumanal, a veteran of the U.S. Navy. Along with the other interpreters, he was tried and sentenced to time in a local stockade. The convicted interpreters were later released at the insistence of the United Nations after their families complained.
Of all the islands in the Marianas chain, only Saipan, Tinian, and Guam were invaded. The others were cut off, isolated, and subjected to regular surveillance and bombings. On Rota, just to the north of Guam, the only town on the island was reduced to rubble by American bombers. There were several thousand Japanese soldiers on the island, and they, along with the minority island population, were forced into the hills and jungles. Food was a problem for all. However, in the case of the Japanese military, pigs, chickens, and even crops belonging to locals were confiscated, forcing the Chamorros to hunt for fruit bats, coconut crabs, and even small birds.
Jose King, whose father was Korean, and mother was Chamorro, remembers the last 15 months of the war as a time of hunger, thirst, and desperation. Few babies born during this period survived because their mothers could not produce enough breast milk. Jose also relates how they could not fish or farm during the day due to the almost constant presence of American aircraft over the island.
The Japanese likewise suffered. One Japanese officer recruited Jose’s older brother, Ignacio, to work for him. Ignacio was good enough with a slingshot to take down small birds and was used by the Japanese officer because of this skill. However, Ignacio was later killed by a strafing American fighter plane.
Another Ignacio—Ignacio Dela Cruz, also of Rota—was one of many who were arrested then later executed by the Japanese on suspicion of being a spy. According to his son, living on Saipan at the time I interviewed him, his father had white skin compared to most natives, and had a lot of tattoos from his days of working on whaling ships prior to the war.
Ignacio was imprisoned in a cave along with a Catholic priest, also suspected of being a spy. Ignacio’s son was delegated by his mother to take food to his father every day. However, the last time he took food to his father he learned that he had been taken out and executed by the Japanese along with the priest.
Rosalia Alden Fleming was a third-generation Chamorro living on Yap Island. Her first husband was killed in an accident during the war, and Rosalia did not remarry until five years later. After the war, the high chiefs on Yap requested that all the Chamorros then living there be returned to the Mariana Islands. At the time, Tinian, just a few miles south of Saipan, was uninhabited. At war's end Tinian was abandoned by U.S. forces. They left Quonset huts filled with food, clothing, and even an ice-cream machine, as well as a variety of vehicles and gasoline to run them.
For the first couple of years the Chamorros on Tinian did not have to farm or fish unless they wanted to. If a jeep or truck broke down, they simply found another to take its place. Food and clothing were there for the taking. However, even though the war was over, the northern part of Tinian was kept as a U.S. military reserve. In recent years, it has become a Marine Corps training base. One of the airstrips on North Field that once supported B-29s has been resurfaced for use by modern-day aircraft.
There were other Chamorros living on Yap, some of whom had been there for several generations. The Untalan family, originally from Guam, is a good example. Willard Price, a well-known American writer at the time, and his wife were among the few Westerners who managed to spend time traveling by ship to various Mandate islands as they were referred to before the war. They traveled on board a Japanese passenger ship out of Japan, visiting Saipan and also spending a month on Yap. They stayed with the Untalan family and got to know them well. One of the daughters, Filomina, was married to a Filipino weatherman by the name of Agapito Hondonero. Agapito had been sent there by the American colonial government in the Philippines years earlier. There was a submarine communication cable station there from which typhoon warnings could be relayed to the Philippines.
Agapito and Filomina had two children, Baltazar and Caroline. Later in the war, Agapito was arrested by the Japanese Kempeitai (military police). Jose Untalan Diaz was a nephew of Filomina. He worked as a police officer for the Japanese on Yap and was one of the last to see any of the prisoners alive, including Filomina and her children. In an interview I had with him in Guam in the 1990s, he said he was authorized to take Filomina and her children with him, the Japanese not suspecting her of being a spy, only her husband. Again, according to Diaz, Filomina knew what awaited her husband and stated, “We are going to die with him.”
Not long after, they were taken to the Palau Islands along with several downed U.S. aviators and members of Underwater Demolition Team 10 off the submarine USS Burrfish (SS-312). All were later executed, and to this day their bodies have not been found.
Filomina’s twin sister was also at this interview and became quite emotional in relating these events that had taken place more than half a century earlier.
In 1978, the American Memorial Park on Saipan was dedicated, along with a wall listing the names of U.S. servicemembers who were killed or went missing during this battle. It was not until the early 2000s that something similar was erected in memory of the islanders who lost their lives, even though they did not fight on either side.
