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TINIAN: A Brief History and Tour Guide:

Hard paper, laminated full color cover with 94 pages glossy printed pages, featuring 210 photographs and maps in black and white and color, this booklet reviews the history of the island of Tinian from its geologic formation to the present day.

From the author...
In 1987, after living on Guam for ten and a half years, my wife Carmen and I moved to Tinian with our three children and a lot of memories. I had written and published two volumes in the Pictorial History of Guam series; The Americanization and Liberation – 1944. Carmen insisted that I now write the history of her island, Tinian.

I quickly discovered that the history and the people of Tinian and the Northern Mariana Islands were far different from their distant Chamorro cousins on Guam. It turned out to be a very pleasant experience learning about one of the most unique histories in the Pacific. Possibly that is why no other historian had attempted it.

To begin with, the island had been completely depopulated by government order three different times under three different foreign regimes. As a result, virtually the population of Tinian today originated less than sixty years ago. What happened before is mostly in foreign repositories in Spanish, German and Japanese.

The islands were colonized by a group of Southeast Asian people, probably Filipinos, some 3,500 years ago. They gradually inhabited all the island, evolving with the necessities of nature, developing a unique language and culture, and reached a population of more than 40,000 by the time Magellan arrived in 1521. By 1700, Tinian and all the islands north of it had been depopulated and the told Chamorro population on Guam and Rota was 3,700.

Tinian was not repopulated until the 1860s when a Guam businessman acquired a lease on the island and imported Carolinian laborers. In 1890, when they requested the Governor at Guam to afford them a school with a teacher and a church with a priest, the Governor decided to remove them from the island rather than spend the money. Tinian was depopulated again.

The next recorded permanent inhabitant on Tinian was a Guamanian named Pedro Salas Dela Cruz who had migrated to Saipan along with some other Chamorros during the German administration in response to an offer of free land. The German District Administrator apparently took a liking to the man and sent him to Tinian with a group of cow boys to round up the cattle that still roamed the island, left over from the Spanish Administration. He became famous for using foot lassos to catch the cow and was nicknamed Pedro’n Lasso, for which the mountain he kept his camp is now named.

Pedro remained at his job when the Japanese took control of Micronesia at the opening of World War I. In 1922, after Japan secured its mandate over Micronesia through the League of Nations, and them by treaty with the United States, they began developing sugar as an export commodity. Bull dozers changed the natural history of the island for ever, removing the native vegetation and planting sugar cane.

When Japan began preparing for its war for control of the Pacific, Tinian was turned into a major military base with the Japanese 1st Naval Air Fleet commander stationed at Ushi Airdrome on the flat northern end of the island. When the Japanese began to install defensive canons and anti-aircraft guns, all the Chamorros were removed from the island.

Two weeks after capturing Saipan in the bloodiest battle of the war to date, the men of the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions captured Tinian in what Marine General “Howlin’ Mad” Smith declared as the perfect amphibious operation of the Pacific War.

Then the Navy delivered several battalions of Seabees to build the bases. The runways weren’t even paved when the first squadron of Superforts arrived at the newly named North Field on Tinian, formerly Ushi Airdrome. Joined by other members of the XXth Air Force based on Saipan and Guam, the B-29’s knocked the Japanese to their knees.

The atom bombs launched from Tinian on August 6 and 9, 1945, delivered by the men of the 509th Composite Bomb Group, were the knock out blow. They forced Emperor Hirohito to surrender unconditionally. The war was won from the air and millions of lives were saved from what would have been a bloodbath on the shores of Japan.

As the military quickly demobilized, Tinian became extra baggage. All the Japanese and Korean civilians who had been kept at Camp Churu on Mt. Lasso were sent home. The materials of war were either sent back to the states, shipped to Taiwan, formerly Formosa, or dumped in the ocean. The troops went home and Tinian was abandoned, depopulated again.

One of the most curious migrations in history then took place. There was a population of some 800 Chamorros living on Yap, some of the families dating back to 1815 and the establishment of the first Spanish government offices there. In 1948 about 600 of them were allowed to move to Tinian, swamping the small population that consisted of Manuel Dela Cruz, son of Tun Pedro’s Lasso, and a few Hocogs and Borjas.

After the war, U.S. Naval Civil Affairs managed the islands until 1947 when the Marianas became part of the U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific, administered by the Department of the Interior. They remained in this questionable political status until.

In January 1978, the first government of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, in political union with the United States, was inaugurated.

Tinian anticipates a bright future, unless international political events, such as a potential conflict with South Korea, once again interrupts the destiny of the people of Tinian.

TINIAN: A Brief History and Tour Guide:

Hard paper, laminated full color cover with 94 pages glossy printed pages, featuring 210 photographs and maps in black and white and color, this booklet reviews the history of the island of Tinian from its geologic formation to the present day.