Camp Susupe ‘guest’ to visit Saipan

As an 8-year-old girl at the close of World War II, MarshaRose Joyner—daughter of a military father stationed on Saipan—has fond memories of climbing the fence around the Camp Susupe Detention Center, and sneaking in to play with the Chamorro children living within the compound.

On Jan. 19, 2009, Joyner returns to Saipan for the first time since 1949, to deliver a special keynote address for the third annual MLK Day Commemoration organized by Saipan’s African American Cultural Preservation Committee Inc., with support by the Northern Marianas Council for the Humanities.

“We’re privileged and honored to have Ms. Joyner return to Saipan and share her story with us for MLK day,” says Joe Hill, AACPC committee president. “As people who actually lived during those times get harder to find, it’s rare to find individual servicemen who were stationed here to tell their story, rarer still to find entire families. So to have the perspective of a civilian dependent who is also African-American, and who actually spent time inside the camp, is quite unique.”

Joyner’s connection to the Pacific region is a unique one. MarshaRose’s father—Marshall Hood—a sergeant in the U.S. Army, was assigned to an ordnance unit (recovering unexploded bombs, equipment etc.) after the battle of Saipan. In 1946, after traveling on military orders with her mother cross-country by train from Maryland to California, then by steamship to Hawaii, then by seaplane to Guam—where they reunited with her dad—the family journeyed to Saipan where they stayed until 1949. Even at that young age, the experience had a profound effect on her.

Having lived and experienced her memorable U.S.-to-Pacific Island journey during the “Jim Crow” era in the U.S., where white racism was law, she was witness to, and victim of, one brand of prejudice and segregation. On Saipan, she witnessed another form of segregation and discrimination at Camp Susupe. She went on to be an activist for many civil rights causes, accumulating many honors and accomplishments, and then returning to Hawaii in 1970, where she currently resides (excerpt from her memoirs will be available online ). She is an advocate of indigenous rights as project director for the Pacific Justice and Reconciliation Center.

This wife, mother, grandmother and cancer survivor says of her life’s purpose, “I see my role in life as a grain of sand. To make a truly beautiful pearl there must be a grain of sand in the oyster. To make a truly beautiful world…there must be people like me…the irritants that keep everything growing.”

As part of this year’s upcoming MLK commemorative activities in the CNMI, (this year’s theme: Color of Unity, the Pacific Way) she will be sharing her lifelong perspectives on the significance of Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights Movement, and its impact on the people and way of life here in the Pacific.

Plans are for Joyner to conduct workshops on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota. She will be arriving on Saipan on Tuesday, Jan. 13, at 8:50pm. (All are welcome to come out to greet her at the airport; use contact number below first as some items on schedule are subject to change).

The MLK Day event, mini-march, forum, essay finalist performances, and keynote address will take place on Monday, Jan. 19, 2009, at American Memorial Park beginning with a public forum at 1pm. All are invited to attend and participate.

Monday, Jan. 19, 2009, marks the third official commemoration of Martin Luther King Day since Gov. Benigno Fitial signed the bill enacting Martin Luther King Jr. Day as an official CNMI holiday. [B][I](PR)[/I][/B]