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Saipan postcard

By The World ⋅ February 15, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment
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Saipan is the largest island of the US Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. It’s 3,000 miles west of Hawaii and it was the last place to join the United States. Fierce battles were fought there during WWII, to wrest control from the Japanese. Many who know Saipan are deeply fond of the Pacific island. One of those aficionados took The World’s Mary Kay Magistad on a little tour. Download MP3 (Photo courtesy of Matt Watts)

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KATY CLARK:  Sixteen hundred miles east of China lies the small island of Saipan.  Its part of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.  Saipan has a rich history, but lately its fallen on hard times.  Saipan’s garment factories were shown to have mistreated workers and its economy has gone the way of the global economy.  But those who know Saipan tend to think of it fondly.  One of them took The World’s Mary Kay Magistad on a tour of the island.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD:  The girls are dressed in grass skirts with white flowers in their long black hair.  They sway to the music as young men in vests and crowns woven of reeds stand behind them.  This is a bit of an island fantasy, peddled for the Japanese tourists who stop and take photos of these young dancers in front of an upscale souvenir shop in Saipan, just down the street from the Hard Rock Café.  Behind the dancers, through the glass doors, you see a couple of six foot teddy bears wearing signs that say “I love Saipan”.  Novelist Fred Kluge does too, in his own way.  He was here in the late sixties for the Peace Corps, editing a magazine.  He’s been coming back ever since.

FRED KLUGE:  This island never fails to surprise.  There’s always something weird and interesting going on here whenever I come back.  Whether it’s garment industries, Russian tourists, returning U.S. military, it’s always something.

MAGISTAD: This time, the something is closed up garment factories that used to employ thousands of foreign workers and an economy that many locals worry is in freefall.

KLUGE: So it’s not just that you see the garment factories close, there were about 30 of those, but you see abandoned shops and hotels and then finally houses.  That’s a little heartbreaking.

MAGISTAD: But not entirely surprising to Kluge given the complexities of how Saipan and the other Northern Mariana islands came to become the latest territory to join the United States in the 1970′s.  And all the debates since then about how much autonomy to retain, how much traditional island culture to protect and how much to open up to American ways and the global economy.  Kluge wrote about all this in a book called The Edge of Paradise, America in Micronesia.

KLUGE: The Marshall Islands and Palau became republics in a relationship of free association with the United States.  So did the so-called Federated States of Micronesia, but Saipan and the other islands of the Northern Marianas wanted a closer relationship with the U.S. which involved permanence and absolute, outright U.S. citizenship.  They wanted a closer deal.

MAGISTAD: And they go it.  But the relationship was already pretty close before that.  Close enough that the CIA was training Taiwanese on Saipan in the 1950′s to parachute into Communist China.  Its not clear what happened to them after their landed.  The training grounds were up on something called Capital Hill on a low mountain overlooking an aquamarine lagoon.  It became, and still is, the seat of government on the island.  Fred Kluge offers to take me up to look at it.

KLUGE: Now we’re curving uphill.  You know, this was Mount Olympus to the locals.  It became Trust Territory headquarters in the early fifties.

MAGISTAD: We come upon a cluster of buildings built like concrete shoeboxes, some with two stories.  The ones in better shape are being used by the current government.  The rest are dingy, decrepit.  Kluge remembers how impressed he used to be with this little American enclave with homes on a hill that could withstand a typhoon gale.

KLUGE: It was a world, the women played bridge and the men worked in the office.  It was a little like one of those novels set in the hill stations of India.  When I was a Peace Corps volunteer I thought boy, when I grow up, if I’m lucky I’ll live on a hill like this with a view of the sea and a house that’s typhoon-proof, oh wow, I will have made it.

MAGISTAD: But now, Capital Hill, like much of Saipan has seen better days.  Down below, many residents still hope something will help turn it all around.  But up here, a good chunk of old Capital Hill seems to have already given up the ghost.  As we head back down to sea level, Fred Kluge takes one last wistful look at it and says it was really quite a place once.  For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Saipan.


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Discussion

3 comments for “Saipan postcard”

  • Michael Bayer

    I lived there for two years in the middle ’90s, and found it to be a fascinating place. I miss it still and hope to get back there. It was unfortunate that the leaders built their economy on the back of foreign owned garment factories who employed only foreign nationals. Tourism, attracting mainly Japanese and Korean travelers, always seemed like a second thought. Hopefully the CNMI will make it through this downturn and emerge as a wonderful place.

  • Phil Kaplan

    Mary Kay Magistad’s story left out
    the most vital and telling part of the sad history of the CNMI, that being the status of internal contract workers who for the majority of the modern history of the place were the largest population group on the islands.

    I founded and staffed the Office of Human Right of the Catholic Church between 93-95. My work and others first exposed to the world
    the horrific status of workers on the Island. An article I wrote for the Washington Free Press can be found on the internet.

    I worked directly with over 1000 contract worker for the Church.

    The majority of contract workers were facing varying degrees of profound duress. The vast majority of statesiders, including former Piece Corp workers and those who lived on Capital Hill either aided the abusers or looked the other way.

    I documented that garment workers from China had been and were facing imprisonment in China for protesting inhumane working conditions of for challenging the government overlords while working in Saipan thus under the American flag.

    It was obvious then that the corrupt economic model the government was pursuing could not last. No serious effort was made to develop an economy that was not tied to the garment or hotel industries. That the garment industry would leave when trade policy would change was obvious.
    I express my concerns back then.

    The locals and their stateside allies had had but one interest, that being making as much money as possible and protecting their economic and sexual status.

    What has happened to the CNMI was predictable and just.

    The thousands of workers from the Philippines, China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka whose lives were profoundly harmed deserved to be remembered as the most instructive part of the story of Saipan.

  • http://www.saipanfactorygirl.com Walt F.J. Goodridge

    Hi Phil,

    My name is Walt F.J. Goodridge, a writer and entrepreneur now living on Saipan. I am the “as told to” co-author of Chicken Feathers and Garlic Skin: Diary of a Chinese Garment Factory Girl on Saipan by Chun Yu Wang (the only such account written).

    Prior to coming to Saipan–after discovering the book on Amazon–Mary Kay (and Nisly Lin Yi at The World’s Beijing office) contacted me and requested my assistance in telling exactly the part of the Saipan story you recount. I had a chance to meet and host Mary Kay while she was here, take her around to some of the abandoned garment factories, and introduce her to representatives of both “sides” of the discussion (former garment worker-Chun Yu/former factory manager) for interviews.

    If my information is correct, therefore, there will be a “Part 2″ to the Saipan story that gives some exposure to the garment factory era and experience from both sides, and explores the effects recent immigration/labor federalization is having on the contract worker situation here.

    Hopefully, given the 4 minute time constraints of the piece, enough will be shared to help to tell a bit more of a story that I, too, felt needed to be told.

    As someone who has lived here now for several years, I must add, however, especially for the benefit of those for whom this is an introduction to or first impression of Saipan, that, as is the nature of short media pieces, one never gets as complete a story as is needed to fully appreciate the subtlety and nuance of a given situation/story.

    Life on Saipan offers a uniqueness that, as Mary Kay’s interview subject pointed out in Part 1, keeps people captivated, and (as the first poster on the comments said) wanting to return.

    The garment era and its aftermath–while a critical issue on many levels and a necessary part of the story of Saipan–shouldn’t be used as the sole source of one’s perception of what the island was, is and may one day be all about. There is just something about Saipan!