Saipan then and now

[B][I]Third of a four-part series[/I][/B] [B]Saipan before Commonwealth status and the economic ‘boom’[/B]

Before the island’s association with the United States and for a long period following Saipan and Tinian’s devastation as a result of the war, the Northern Marianas were remote and largely isolated during which time there was no economy worthy of the term.

In the days before jets, the trip to Saipan required many mind-numbing hours. Including ground time for refueling, the flight from San Francisco to Honolulu took 9 1/2 hours; from Hawaii to Wake Island, another 9 1/2 hours; from Wake to Saipan, 8 more hours. Imagine that! Today there is no place on the globe that can’t be reached in a much shorter period of time and in greater comfort.

Aside from the geographic isolation there were other reasons for the economic isolation. It was the period at the height of the Cold War. In the ’50s the CIA had closed off Saipan for use as a covert training base. The United States discouraged foreign investment by exercising the restrictive United Nation’s “favored nation clause,” which effectively prohibited any foreign investment on the islands. It was necessary to keep the covert training base a secret.

In 1962 the CIA closed its secret training complex and soon thereafter Saipan became the Trust Territory Government’s administrative center for managing the affairs of 2,100 islands spread over 3 million square miles of the western Pacific.

Even after the CIA facility was closed the restrictive foreign investment policy remained in place as an obstacle to some types of development until rescinded in 1973. The effort to remove this constraint was a direct result of the vision and work of David M. Sablan.

Those were the days when the islands were still largely devoid of many of the amenities of the mid-20th century, amenities that one would normally associate with a developed economy. In fact, there was no economy worthy of the name until around the mid-’80s and the introduction of the garment industry and the beginning of a fledging tourism sector.

It was a time when one reached the islands from the United States either on a PanAm Boeing 707, or on TransWorld Airlines flight #1 en route around the world, which landed in Guam for a short fuel stop before proceeding with its military passengers to battlefields of Vietnam then on to Bangkok and points west as the jet raced to catch the sun.

To get to Saipan from Guam one transferred to an ancient four-engine, 84 seat DC6, which flew with its onboard mechanic and a bunch of spare parts for a 45-minute flight to Saipan’s brush-lined, unlighted, coral airstrip at Saipan International at the southern end of the island.

Saipan’s airstrip had no control tower and a flyby was necessary to check the wind direction and scare away any stray dogs or cattle that might have wandered onto the weed infested landing path of World War II’s Kobler field situated at the southern tip of the island.

Disembarking from the aircraft one entered a small, dilapidated, sun-bleached, corrugated tin structure without doors and without glass in open air windows furnished with several roughly hewn wooden benches.

In those days before U.S. grant in aid for road improvement and surfacing, Saipan’s roads were largely pot-holed and were either choked with coral dust during dry periods or deep, water filled, bone shattering, axle breaking craters that had remained unimproved since the U. S. military left years before.

The Townhouse market (later Payless) was situated in a quonset hut. There were only two hotels—the Hafa Adai consisting of 10 plywood bungalows, each a little larger than a shipping container, and the 56-room Royal Taga Hotel (where the Saipan World Resort now stands). In those days long distance calls could not be made from one’s residence; overseas telephone calls had to be placed from an RCA booth in Susupe.

There were no recreational craft in the lagoon save one, a glass-bottomed boat operated by Tetsuo, a Palauan.

Middle Road was almost entirely undeveloped. It was another pot-holed, two-lane, dusty road with hardly a business on either side. The maximum speed possible was about 20 – 25 mph. It is amazing what a paved road can do to encourage investment and development along both sides of its length.

To even think of a tourism-based economy was a dream of only a few as the Japanese could only convert yen in an amount equivalent to $743. This amount was hardly sufficient to develop a tourism sector of any size even in view of a low price structure. A roundtrip ticket to Guam purchased at the Pan American Airline office, or from Continental Air Micronesia, was $28. Those were the days when there was only one flight a day and one cargo ship a month. The population of Saipan, Tinian and Rota combined was 12,256, including the employees of the Trust Territory Government, the islands’ major employer.

The purchasing power of the dollar at the time would be equal to about 18 cents today. The 2,376 registered vehicle owners, including those of the Trust Territory and Marianas District governments, purchased gasoline for 38 cents a gallon; rice was 13 cents per pound. There were 55 businesses in the Northern Marianas employing 673 people. The total annual government revenue was only $433,334 and the islands’ exports amounted to a meager $254,635. There was no private sector economy worth mentioning, no tourism, no garment factories, only government jobs for the most part.

Personal computers, fax machines and the Internet were unheard of and slide rules were still widely used. Doctor Torres hospital was located where the college is today. Capital Hill Housing built by the CIA was considered by some to be among the best on the island. The single Duty Free Store was housed in the Royal Taga Hotel and was no larger than a row of telephone booths and 10 people in the shop made a crowd. The number of island restaurants could be counted on one hand.

There was very little money available on Saipan at the time. Nor was there much criminal mischief in those days, usually only rocks being reported thrown at someone’s tin roof. Or a stolen chicken. But don’t be misled—it was a great place to live. It still is.

[B]To be continued.[/B] [I]Editor’s Note: Portions of the above text may have been previously cited elsewhere by the author. Bill Stewart is a former senior economist for the NMI and has privately authored several books, including Saipan in Flames, a World War II account; the Business Reference and Investment Guide to the CNMI and several hundred thousand tourist and historical maps of Saipan, Tinian and Rota distributed free by MVA and island businesses. His other investment promotional materials published by the government include Introducing the Northern Mariana Islands: An American Doorstep to Asia and Tourism Investment Opportunities in the NMI.[/I]

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[I] William H. Stewart is an economist, historian and military cartographer.[/I]