‘It will take 2 years to correct errors’

For the past four years, the family of Miguel P. Tenorio has been urging the American Memorial Park staff to correct a glaring error in one of its displays—a picture showing the World War II hero but with the wrong name.

“It was in the morning of 8 July that I took two prisoners on top of the Banzai Cliffs. I talked with them at length trying to convince them that to continue fighting would amount to sure death for them,” states an entry in one of the catalogues at the AMP’s Visitor Center and WWII Exhibit Hall.

At the bottom of the article is the photograph of two U.S. Marines talking to an unidentified child with a barbed wire in front.

The article was an account by Tenorio of a historic moment during the Battle of Saipan.

Unfortunately, the credit was given to the wrong person—Private First Class Guy Gabaldon, V Amphibious Corps, US Marine Corps.

His son, Larry Tenorio, told Saipan Tribune he first informed AMP about the error in 2005.

“I want them to change that,” he said.

He went to check again in 2007 and was promised that all would be taken into consideration but that it takes about seven months to fix the matter.

This week, he would try to make a third request.

Park ranger Nancy A. Kelcher said yesterday it will take about two years to fix the problem because many items such as pictures are not identified and would need a special project to put in changes.

“It was a typographical error, just like some of the many photographs here,” Kelcher said.

The process would take about two years since this would need a comprehensive project to fix all the errors and identify some of the people in the photos.

Since AMP is federally funded, she said they need to propose a budget for this to the National Park Service, which is the right agency to approve such a project.

“I’m persevering to fix the problem. I’m just gathering more information. These photos are permanently placed here but the people in it are not identified. We have to do something about it,’ she said.

She said those who may have known some of the people in the photographs could help the park identify them.

“Someone may have know them,” she said.

Tenorio recalled that his father was a local scout during the war. The Japanese captured him and later transferred him to Majuro, then to Honolulu. He was suspected as a spy.

Years later during the 1980s, the elder Tenorio and his wife accompanied their daughter Winnie for a medical checkup in Hawaii.

The Veterans Administration office there immediately held a big party for him upon recognizing his presence there, according to the younger Tenorio.

His father died in 1986.