Today was spent touring Saipan. Saipan is a very lovely island with beautiful beaches. The water is so clear and blue that you wish you could just spend the day swimming around. You’d need a bucket full of sunscreen, but it would be worth it.
Today we started at the American Memorial Park, a National State Park. It’s a nice little park and museum. If you remember from our day at Pearl Harbor, Gregg and I had lunch with WWII veteran Courtland Pelton. I’ll refer to him as Mr. Court from here out, as he prefers to be addressed as Court, but everyone compromises by calling him Mr. Court. Anyway, the museum park rangers had him lay a memorial wreath in a small ceremony. It was very nice and Mr. Court took the opportunity to hug each of the lovely female park rangers at least once.
After the park, we toured the landing beaches, including the north Red Beach, where Mr. Court came ashore in 1944 at the battle for Saipan. If I’m not mistaken, it was his first time back since leaving after the war. The tour guides requested that no one approach him, so that he could he could have his own time. I did notice one fellow tour goer with high tech looking equipment discretely filming him approach the beach. Later, he got the contact details from Mr. Court’s grandson, Zac, so that he can send him the footage. Mr. Court took off his shoes and walked down to the beach and up and down for quite a while.
After lunch, we went to the very moving spot of Banzai cliffs. This is an extremely sad location. The Japanese had spread propaganda that the American troops were going to capture the women and tortue the children. So hundreds of men, women and children jumped off the cliffs to avoid capture by the Americans. Women flung their children and babies off the cliffs before jumping themselves. It’s estimated that over one thousand people committed suicide here.
So as I was standing the top of the area, Mr. Court came to stand beside me. Gregg and his grandson walked down a bit to the cliff’s edge. I didn’t realize that we were just north of the Red landing beach, where Mr. Court had been driving the Higgins boats back and forth. As we were standing there, he pointed to the water and these were his words to me,
“Do you see how the current is running? I got my rear end chewed out pretty badly because I slowed the boat down. There were hundreds of bodies in the water. They told me they were already dead, but somehow it didn’t seem right, to run over a baby with the boat. The Japanese told them that we were going to take the women to the ships and bar-b-que the children. And they believed it.”
I can’t say that I’ve been rendered speechless many times in my life, but this was one of those times. But I guess there really was nothing to say. Here I was, thinking about the parents who feared so much for the safety of their children, that they threw their kids to certain death, rather than have them tortured. And at the same time, Mr. Court is having a vivid memory of hundreds of dead bodies in the water and having to hit them with his boat. And all of this due to propaganda spread by the Japanese. It was just incredibly sad.
After we had a chance to refresh, there was a presentation by James Scott, talking a bit about this book and the B29’s, leading up to the bombing of Japan. With the rules of the Geneva convention, I did wonder how we were able to bomb Japan. And it appears that the Geneva convention was modified in 1977 to forbid the attack of civilians and civilian locations, even if there are military sites near the area. So there’s that, I guess.
We’re on to Guam tomorrow, of the final days of this leg of our trip, of course highlighted by the trip to Iwo Jima. The time is passing quickly.
~Dawn
