Visitors Center harks back to World War II

The American Memorial Park Visitors Center will be unveiled tomorrow at 4:30pm and will open with a World War II exhibit just in time for the 60th anniversary of the end of the conflict.

Site manager and park ranger Chuck Sayon said the 10,000-square-foot complex was completed at a cost of $5.7 million with construction time taking a little over 18 months. In actuality, he said, the Visitors Center took 10 years of planning and three administrations to be completed.

“The plans for the Visitors Center were first drawn up during the term of Gov. Froilan Tenorio. The administration of Teno [Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio] was pretty much when we found the financial resources to start the project and the term of Gov. Juan N. Babauta was when we finally started construction as well as negotiated the acquisition of all the artifacts that needed to be brought in for the exhibit,” said Sayon.

NOT YOUR TYPICAL MUSEUM

“Views from the Crossroads: Battle of the Marianas” will take visitors through the pre-war years, when the Northern Marianas was placed under Japanese mandate; the build-up to war; the Battle of Saipan itself; the use of the islands’ airfields for bombing operations against Japan; and the recovery of the islands.

“The American Memorial Park is legislated by Congress and we have certain missions to perform. One of those missions is to interpret and retell the story of World War II and honor the people that died during that horrible time in our history. I hope, through this exhibit, we will be able to fulfill that mission,” said Sayon. “And besides, the Battle of Saipan was just as important as the Battle of Normandy in terms of turning points in the war effort.”

The exhibit, conceptualized by Aldrich Pears Association of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and constructed by Seattle-based Pacific Studio will not only have the feel, sound, and look of an average museum tour, but more, according to Sayon.

“We have a state-of-the-art exhibit. We have sound, things to feel, things to interact with. Any young kid, old-timer, or any person going in for that matter, won’t be disappointed. They’ll get noise, sound, they’ll get vibrations, they’ll hear what went on during the war and they’ll see what went on during the war,” he said.

WAR ARTIFACTS APLENTY

Relics of the war are scattered all throughout the exhibit. Although original plans to have a M4 Sherman Tank greet visitors entering the exhibit was shelved, it still has its fair share of artifacts from the war including a Japanese Zero fighter propeller, standard infantry rifles, bullets, helmets, water containers, and other equipment used by both sides during the war.

“We have all sorts of small artifacts and we’ve put them all in glass cases because they’re pretty valuable. We’ve gotten on loan some from the CNMI Museum artifacts and some are our own stuff which we either dug up ourselves or acquired somewhere,” said Sayon.

Sayon also said he was not kidding when he said the exhibit is state-of-the-art and he has high-tech sensors that alert staff of visitors getting too close to artifacts to prove it.

Also helping accentuate the visual experience, according to Sayon, are the dozens of circa World War II black and white photos and maps hanging on the walls detailing the Battle of Saipan and the Allies’ island-hopping campaign in the Pacific theater.

HONORING A DEFEATED FOE

Explaining the significance of the certain periods of the exhibit and the artifacts, photos, and maps they contain are quotes on the walls appropriately rendered in English, Japanese, Chamorro, and Carolinian.

Sayon said the National Park Service acknowledges that the Japanese market is the No. 1 tourism market of the Commonwealth and that was the reason why they translated text to Japanese all throughout the exhibit.

“It’s basically for everybody to go there and educate themselves about what happened during the war. At the same time, we also know that about 80 percent of the Commonwealth’s tourists are Japanese, so we gave a lot of the interpretation efforts in reaching out to the Japanese, so they could come out and see what happened here in the Marianas during World War II,” he said.

Sayon also said, it should not be forgotten that the Northern Mariana Islands was part of Japan before and during the war and that’s one reason the Japanese maintain such a close bond with the islands.

In a couple of exhibit scenes, visitors using telephones could also listen to first-hand accounts of the war from its main protagonists—American and Japanese soldiers and the civilian population that was caught in the crossfire.

However, one of the most compelling parts of the exhibit is its re-creation of caves that hundreds of Chamorro, Carolinian, Okinawan, and Japanese civilians ran to in an effort to escape the conflict.

To complete the experience, visitors could even squeeze themselves into the claustrophobic confines of one of the reconstructed caves and hear the frightened murmurs of people exhausted by war.

WAR ENDS

Near the end of the exhibit is a section honoring the men who flew the B-29 Super Fortress, that struck targets deep in the Japanese homeland from their bases in the Northern Marianas—including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ultimately brought Japan to the peace table.

The exhibit comes to an end with a gallery that attempts to compress the 60 years that transpired after the war and showing the recovery of the Northern Marianas and its eventual transformation into the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

AUDIO-VISUAL ROOM

The Visitors Center also has a 120-seat audio-visual theater with equipment installed by R&A Soundhire. Sayon said the AV room would be used for screenings of World War II documentaries and other related material and as a venue for guest speakers brought in to talk about the war.

R&A Soundhire Rico Pabalan said the AV room has a fully automated presentation system and has a projection unit that has a built-in scaler. He said everything in the AV room is pretty much controlled through a touch panel and the entire system is capable of running any computer software brought in.

CEMENTING THE CNMI’S REPUTATION

Sayon believes the newly opened Visitors Center and its accompanying exhibit would further cement the CNMI’s reputation as one of the best destinations for World War II veterans in this part of the world.

“Every time veterans come here, I’ve been told that they feel that we’ve been the warmest, the best in terms of hospitality, and certainly do a great job honoring their sacrifices during World War II, more than any other place they’ve visited throughout the Pacific. Hopefully this [Visitors Center] will add to that experience,” he said.