Northern Mariana Islands: History

Pre-20th-Century History

The Northern Marianas were settled around 1500 BC by Chamorros who shared cultural ties with Guam's indigenous people. This early group of Chamorros are responsible for the 'latte stones' found throughout the Marianas. Reaching as high as 20ft (6m), these limestone posts are capped with a piece of limestone or brain coral in the shape of a large bowl.

Ferdinand Magellan named the islands the Islas de los Ladrones (Islands of Thieves) in 1521; they were renamed Las Marianas upon the arrival of Spanish priest Luis Diego Sanvitores, in honor of the Spanish queen Maria Ana of Austria. In 1668, Sanvitores and five other Jesuits established the first mission in the Marianas, touching off two decades of hostilities between the priests and less-than-welcoming Chamorros. Spanish troops managed to quell the uprising in the late 1680s.

In the hopes of more effectively converting the Chamorros, the Spanish relocated most of them to Guam. Most of the natives on Rota, however, managed to hide out in the hills and avoid capture, and today the Chamorros on Rota are the least mixed in the Marianas. Around 1820, the Spanish allowed islanders from the western Carolines to move to the larger Mariana Islands. The Carolinians managed Spanish cattle herds and maintained a presence in the Marianas at a time when Spain was concerned over German intentions in the area.

After Pope Leo XIII declared Spain's sovereignty over the Marianas in 1885, the now Hispanicised Chamorros were encouraged to move back to the Northern Marianas from Guam. They were given farmland, but by that time the Carolinians had already settled much of the best coastal land.

Modern History

Germany bought the Northern Marianas from Spain in 1899, hoping to develop copra production. But German control only lasted until WWI, when Japan took over. The Japanese were more interested in sugar cane than copra, and they cleared groves of coconut palms and tropical forests to create more farmland, often removing ancient latte stones. By the mid-1930s, sugar cane operations in the Marianas were providing the Japanese with 60% of all revenues generated in Micronesia.

When the Japanese first arrived, there were about 4000 Chamorros in the Marianas; on the eve of WWII there were over 45,000 Japanese and immigrant workers there, dwarfing the indigenous population and overwhelming the native culture. But the worst was yet to come: the Marianas were among the bloodiest battlegrounds of WWII. Closer to Japan than the rest of Micronesia, the Marianas were key to Japan's defensive perimeter and to the United States' Pacific strategy. In summer 1944, the USA landed in Saipan with a huge invasion force and simultaneously attacked a nearby Japanese fleet. Suffering minor losses, the Americans wiped out most of the fleet, but fierce land battles resulted in hundreds of casualties. The Japanese - both military personnel and civilians - were decimated, with nearly 40,000 lives lost.

The USA used Tinian to stage air raids on Japan, including the atomic bomb drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bypassed by the US invasion forces, Rota came out of the war relatively unscathed; Saipan and Tinian, though, were devastated, as was the sugar cane industry. The United Nations made the Marianas a department of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands in 1947 and gave the USA exclusive rights to administer them and to establish and maintain military bases (and to prevent other countries from doing the same).

Rather than encourage economic development, the USA administered the islands by providing handouts. In 1948, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) closed off half of Saipan to islanders and outsiders alike, using the northern part of the island for covert military manoeuvres. In 1961, Saipan and Rota petitioned the US government to be integrated with Guam. The request was repeated nearly every year until 1969, when Guamanians voted the idea down, in part because of the ill feelings some of them still felt toward those Saipanese who had acted as interpreters during Guam's occupation by the Japanese.

When the CIA moved out of Saipan in 1962, the Northern Marianas were finally opened to visitors. The following year, the Trust Territory headquarters was moved into the CIA's old offices on Saipan. The people of the Northern Marianas voted to become a US commonwealth in 1975, ensuring continued US economic support. In return, the US military got to lease nearly 30 sq mi (75 sq km) of land in the islands. Under the terms of the commonwealth agreement, the Northern Marianas retain the right to internal self-government, while the USA retains control of foreign affairs. In 1986 a new commonwealth covenant became effective, granting islanders US citizenship.

Although the Marianas aren't directly in the typhoon belt, recent storms have caused serious damage. The worst was super-typhoon Keith, which blew through in November 1997, causing widespread havoc but no death or injuries. The other disaster affecting the islands was the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, which caused a drastic dropoff in tourism and sent real estate prices plummeting.

Recent History

Workers from around Asia were drawn to Saipan with the promise of high wages and American citizenship, and discovered instead sweatshop working conditions as the Marianas have special exemption from normal US wage and immigration laws. In 1999, workers filed suits against several American clothing designers and retailers.

The Asian financial crisis hit the islands hard at the end of the 1990s, emphasising the economic role played by the US, and especially by the US military. By mid-2000, about 3000 undetonated Japanese WWII bombs had been exploded by the US Navy at sites around Saipan. Two year later a court injunction banning US Navy manoeuvres was overturned, despite environmentalists' protests.

In the past few years, the garment industry, traditionally Saipan's strongest, made US$5 million less in 2005 than gambling revenue; poker machines are in every village on Saipan and bring with them the full gamut of social problems.

But there's no better indicator of the CNMI's economic woes than Japan Air Lines' termination of its Saipan services, it withdrew for good in October 2005. CNMI officials are naturally aghast at the decision - they estimate it will cost the government US$80 million a year in lost revenue.

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