{"id":82105,"date":"2004-06-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-06-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9fd1fcd2-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e"},"modified":"2004-06-24T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-06-24T00:00:00","slug":"9fd1fce3-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/9fd1fce3-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e\/","title":{"rendered":"150 Japanese arrive for WWII memorial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Days after the celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Battles of Saipan and Tinian, some 150 Japanese would arrive today on Saipan for an annual memorial service to honor those who perished during World War II.<\/p>\n<p>Tour operator Pacific Development Inc.\u2019s Gordon Marciano said the group would arrive on Saipan in two batches today for the 18th Annual Shiko Gakuen Mission set on Saturday. Marciano said the group would stay on-island for five days.<\/p>\n<p>PDI and the Marianas Visitors Authority collaborate on the annual visit of the Japanese group, which conducts a memorial service at the Shiko Gakuen Memorial Monument at Banzai cliff.<\/p>\n<p>This Saturday\u2019s memorial service would be from 10am to 12noon, according to the MVA, which invited the public to attend the ceremony\u2014the 18th in about two decades.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe annual memorial service is held through prayers at the Shiko Gakuen Memorial Monument at Banzaii cliff to honor the memory of those [who] were lost in the war,\u201d said MVA managing director Vicky Benavente.<\/p>\n<p>Benavente said the monument was built in October 1988 to memorialize the Japanese and people of diverse nationalities who died during World War II.<\/p>\n<p>Benavente said the annual mission stress the importance of world peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Days after the celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Battles of Saipan and Tinian, some 150 Japanese would arrive today on Saipan for an annual memorial service to honor those who perished during World War II.<\/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-82105","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\/82105","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=82105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}