A grateful NMI remembers

In his World War II memoir Goodbye Darkness, William Manchester noted that most soldiers who fought in the Pacific Theatre didn’t know at any one time where they were among the thousands of islands dotting that vast ocean. Many Americans today are equally unfamiliar with the Pacific island chain that has become the newest member of the American political family, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Fewer still know that Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen fought a critical World War II battle in these very islands. Some of those men may have hailed from your hometown.

Sixty years ago, flames of artillery fire and clouds of smoke obscured our clear island skies. The whisper of the tropical wind was lost in the thunder of explosions and cries of war. Our blue lagoon ran red with the blood of dying American soldiers. On invasion day, June 15, 1944, the indigenous people of the Northern Marianas were terrified. A mandated territory of Japan at the time, we’d heard stories of these foreign “devils,” as the Americans were called.

Only later did we learn that the invading U.S. troops were not foe, but friend. Indeed, they were our liberators from centuries of colonization by Spain, Germany, and Japan and for the first time, we were accorded the framework through which we could decide our own political destiny. In a free election in 1976, citizens of the Northern Mariana Islands voted overwhelmingly to become a commonwealth in political union with the United States of America.

In June of this year, we will dedicate a full week of activities to commemorate the 60th Anniversary Commemoration of the WWII Battles of Saipan and Tinian. We will be honoring returning veterans and their families for their service and sacrifices. We also will be welcoming back Enola Gay pilot Gen. Paul Tibbets (ret.) and his surviving crew, who embarked from Tinian to Hiroshima with the first atomic bomb, Little Boy, (August 6, 1945) and at the American Memorial Park (jointly established by the National Park Service and the Northern Marianas government), we will be dedicating a memorial to the indigenous people of the Northern Marianas who died of war-related causes.

We have come a long way since that fateful day of invasion. While we continue to preserve and promote our indigenous Chamorro and Carolinian cultures, we also embrace the 21st century wholeheartedly. Our modern-day tourism industry beckons to tourists who answer the call from Japan, other Asian countries, and beyond.

We invite you during this June’s celebration or at any other time of the year to experience the living history of the Northern Marianas, where our tropical sun is outshone only by the warmth of gratitude in our hearts for those brave service members who helped pave our way to freedom 60 years ago. Our grateful islands remember.

Lt. Gov. Diego T. Benavente
Chairman, Committee for Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of WWII