Category: Pacific
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The Japanese governor of the Northern Marianas had been widowed so he took a special trip to Japan to find himself a new wife. He found a young woman he was smitten with in the American protestant church’s orphanage. Soon, a wedding was officiated and he planned to head back to Saipan with his new…
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IT was May 11th 1942 when Capt. Ethel Sally Blaine Millett, nine other Army nurses and three other women were officially captured by the Japanese at the USAFFE base hospital in Cagayan. “We stayed there until July… We were taken from Cagayan and we went to Davao by a dirty little boat,” she said. On…
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Since fifth grade, she had been dreaming of going to the Philippines. Perhaps it was written in the stars that she would go there after all Capt. Ethel “Sally” Blaine Millett, an Army nurse, from Missouri, finally got the chance she had long been waiting for. Following her nursing training in San Diego in 1939,…
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“Will I die?,” asked a Chamorro youth as he lies on the operating table, having sustained gunshot wounds to his abdomen. Captain Wilma Leona Class Jackson, kindly responded that he wouldn’t, and the young man replied with resignation to his fate, “I don’t care if I do. If I die, I will not have to…
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With the American forces entrenched on Saipan, the plan had already been set for the taking of Guam. As the American forces dealt with the remaining Japanese troops on Saipan, they had set their sights on bombarding Guam. By July, the bombings continued on a more regular basis. According to Admiral Nimitz’ diary, on July…
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IT took him 65 years to set foot again on the island of Saipan. Sylmar, California-resident John Fusano — whose family once had a canning of olive and olive oil business in the San Fernando Valley, the Cristo Fusano and Sons olive canning factory and oil mill — was overjoyed at having his wish come…
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It was his son’s curiosity that whetted his appetite to gather more details about what had happened to them on Saipan, those weeks they faced their fears as they claimed the island from Japanese military stranglehold. Mark Leary Matthews was in his 30s when he asked his father, WWII veteran Carl Matthews, how come they…
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In an interview with this reporter on the Fourth of July in 2012, she said, many of her contemporaries had passed away and she was grateful to be around still. For Jean, she did not know of any other WWII female veteran still living. With four brothers in the military, she wanted to experience what…
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A musician and former Los Angeles Times proofreader returned to Saipan on Feb. 4, 2014, and was honored for his service in the Battle of Saipan. Lloyd Coulson Glick served on the USS North Carolina that bombarded Saipan along with the Fifth Fleet during WWII. He arrived aboard the cruise ship Crystal Serenity that pulled…
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The Spanish-American War, which partitioned the Marianas between the United States and Germany, and World War I, which gave the Northern Mariana Islands to Japan, brought no bloodshed to the Northern Mariana Islands. World War II, however, was to devastate the islands and change the islanders’ fundamental way of life.