Marie Soledad Castro, a member of the Association of Construction Battalion, donated a 63-year-old plaque made out of 95 percent Japanese warplane and 5 percent American warplane to the American Memorial Park Museum. <\/p>\n
The plaque was given to her by her friend, James Olsen, who was a member of the 101st Battalion World War II Seabee. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he gave it to me and told me all about it, including where it came from, I told him I appreciate it but the place that the plaque really belonged to is at the Memorial Park Museum,\u201d Castro said. <\/p>\n
There were a total of 384 members of the 101st Seabee Battallion who came to Saipan in 1944 right after the Battles of Saipan and Tinian. <\/p>\n
The 101st Seabee Battalion helped rebuild the island by constructing roads, boat docks, bridges and other infrastructure. <\/p>\n
While on island nearing Christmas Day, the battalion held a Christmas Party for approximately 300 native children. <\/p>\n
The late Harry Olsen, who was a member of the 101st Seabee, recalled the event vividly and jotted down the experience in a letter before he passed away, stating that it was \u201ca very memorable experience I can never forget.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the statement shared by Castro, Olsen said that on Christmas Day in 1944 the 101 Seabee Battalion sent a convoy of trucks to the civilian villages and picked up 300 lively children ages 7 to 15 years old. <\/p>\n
At the time, the children were living in confined areas of the island along with native adults until such time as the island was free of Japanese holdouts. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll the children had just gone through a horrible time with all the bombing and most youngsters were left with a family,\u201d Olsen stated. <\/p>\n
The children were brought back to the Seabee camp and were assigned to a Seabee who acted as his or her escort to the Christmas party. <\/p>\n
The children were fed ice cream and cake, and had a special visit from Santa Claus. In return the children sang native Christmas songs to the Seabees. <\/p>\n
Castro was among the 300 native children. She said she was 11 years old at the time and that the experience is impossible for her to forget.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the very first time I ate ice cream and it tasted so good,\u201d Castro said. <\/p>\n
She never lost touch with her Seabee friends and attends the yearly reunion where she was made an honorary member of the 101st Seabee Battalion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re all very kind veterans. And through the years, they all have treated me like a daughter,\u201d Castro said. <\/p>\n
Olsen presented Castro the plaque that he earned from his time served in World War II. <\/p>\n
According to Castro, Olsen told her that he wanted her to have it because he was getting old and did not have any children.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of them have already passed away, but they will never be forgotten. Without them, we would not be enjoying life on Saipan as we are doing now,\u201d Castro said. <\/p>\n
AMP superintendent Sarah Creachbaum accepted Castro\u2019s donation and said the gift and the story should be shared with all those who visit the museum. <\/p>\n
The plaque now hangs conspicuously on the wall in the lobby of the museum. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marie Soledad Castro, a member of the Association of Construction Battalion, donated a 63-year-old plaque made out of 95 percent Japanese warplane and 5 percent American warplane to the American Memorial Park Museum. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}