Brief Historical Summary
EDITED FROM Starting Northern Marianas College, A Negotiation Perspective by Kit Porter 1993 Harvard University
LOCATION
The Mariana Islands are the tip of a volcanic ridge within the more than sixty-eight million square miles of the Pacific Ocean that stretches from New Guinea to Japan along the edge of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of any ocean in the world. The Northern Mariana Islands chain extends for 183.5 square miles from the southern island of Rota to the northern island of Farallon de Pajaros. The islands lie within the westerly trade winds of the North Pacific and thus became part of the principal sailing route from Asia to North America, causing the early Spanish travelers and later the Germans to be interested in them as part of the sailing trade route from Spain, around South America, across the Pacific Ocean, stopping at various islands before reaching the Mariana Islands, and then on to the Philippines. The distance from Germany is equally as great. Japan wanted to expand its limited property to include the Mariana Islands. The United States, concerned about protecting its Hawaiian boarder, has wanted to maintain a military presence on these islands. The islanders became accustomed early on to distant countries wanting control of their land, to the missionaries of these countries wanting to change their customs, and to the representative leaders of these countries wanting to adjust island activities to their own needs.
Geologically, the Northern Mariana Islands are either formed from limestone or volcanic rock. Most rise from the sea as terraces fringed with coral reefs. Natural resources are minimal in the Northern Mariana Islands, providing just enough to support the local population. Copra (dried coconut) and handicrafts were the main export items prior to World War II, when scrap metal was added to the list. The islands' proximity to Japan, 1,550 miles away, suggests that fruits and vegetables might be viable export products for the people living in this tropical climate, but inadequate storage facilities, undependable transportation, and frequent typhoons have made farming on a large scale historically unreliable. Also, for most of recorded history, it was extremely difficult to ship agricultural products because means of refrigeration were poor. Most families have their own farms that may include a few pigs and chickens, along with breadfruit, papaya, mango, banana, orange, lemon, and coconut trees, and possibly a planting of string beans, yams, or cabbages.
Geographically the Northern Mariana Islands occupy the north-western corner of Micronesia, a somewhat arbitrary term distinguishing the group of islands in the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean from those in the southwestern part (Melanesia) and the eastern half (Polynesia), which included the Hawaiian Islands. There is little commerce or communication between the Northern Mariana Islands and islands in Melanesia and Polynesia, with the exception of Hawaii. Great distances between islands, historical and cultural differences, poor communication systems, and minimal but expensive transportation are some of the reasons for the Northern Mariana Islands' relative isolation.
Transportation has, in part, defined the relationship between islands. From 1975 to 1983, Air Micronesia (Continental) was the main airline serving the Northern Mariana Islands. There was a twelve-hour flight twice a week starting in Hawaii, with the plane making stops in the Marshall Islands (Majuro), Kwajalein (a U.S. military base), Pohnpei, Truk, and Guam before reaching Saipan, the district center and then capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. On a different route there were flights twice a week from Guam to and from Yap and Palau (Koror). Daily flights made the half-hour flight from Guam to Saipan, with some stopping on Rota. From Guam there was a daily seven-hour flight between Hawaii and Guam on Pan American. Transportation between various islands of the Northern Mariana Islands, however, was usually by ship or boat. In order to attend a Trust Territory-wide meeting, some participants would encounter delays for as long as three weeks, due to lay-over time between boats or planes. Planes were frequently over-booked, and storms often delayed travel. In the 1980s more travel options opened up. The least expensive way to travel to the United States from Saipan was via Northwest Airlines, with a twelve-hour layover in Japan before getting a connecting flight to Hawaii from which the traveler could continue on to the U.S. mainland.
PACIFIC OVERVIEW
The islands that form Japan and the Kingdom of Tonga are the only ones in the Pacific to have escaped domination by a Western power. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish, Germans, British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Russians laid claim to many of the islands in the Pacific Ocean. But explorers did not always have support for their claims from home. Great Britain, France, and the United States were all responsible for a variety of Pacific Islands but were hesitant to assume the economic and moral responsibility, as well as the defense obligation for properties so far from home; in the twentieth century, the United States assumed full responsibility for the Micronesian islands. Within this framework, the Northern Mariana Islands had "a long and not altogether happy experience as minor pawns in the international rivalries of great powers."
The second half of the twentieth century has been a time of change and independence for Pacific Islands in general. Between 1962 and 1980, eight South Pacific territories became constitutionally independent, joining Tonga, which had never been under colonial rule. Two others formed a connection of free association with New Zealand. One report stated that the people of the Pacific are "more politically fragmented than any other people on earth." Six million people are divided into twenty-two political units with an average population of seventy thousand. The Northern Mariana Islands with its population of fifteen thousand is smaller than the average, but it has faced in the last few decades the choices that most island groups have contemplated when they have debated independence versus dependence, and a range of options in between.
THE NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS
The southern islands in the Mariana Islands chain are usually referred to by name: Guam, Rota, Aguijan, Tinian, and Saipan. The islands north of Saipan are referred to en mass as the Northern Islands. Most of the Northern Islands are volcanic in origin, with steep cliffs, little flat land, and no reef-protected bay areas. During the American administration, a government field-trip vessel made the difficult trip to the Northern Islands three or four times a year, but few people in the NMI have ever been to the Northern Islands. Plane travel to the northern island of Pagan, however, has occasionally been possible. The few inhabitants of the Northern Islands usually come to Saipan for high school and higher education; their educational needs have traditionally been planned for and financed by the Northern Mariana Islands Department of Education..
ROTA
Rota, eighty-five miles from Saipan and thirty-five miles from Guam, is the only island in the Northern Mariana Islands to have maintained a steadily indigenous population since the landing of the Spanish--a fact of which the people are very proud. They consider their Chamorro language to be purer than that spoken on other Mariana Islands. Because of its high cliffs and flat sabana land, Rota also has some of the best farmland and water in Micronesia. Almost every family on Rota has a farm that provides fruits and vegetables for their use. The main employer between 1976 and 1983 was the government.
Along with the rest of the Northern Mariana Islands and Micronesia, Rota became a United Nations Trusteeship, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) administered by the United States in 1947. In 1952 it remained with the Trusteeship under the Department of Interior and had the status of an independent district, while the rest of the Northern Mariana Islands were put under U.S. Navy administration. In 1962 the Navy relinquished its administration and Rota subsequently joined the rest of the Northern Mariana Islands, with main administration offices located on Saipan. On different occasions the people of Rota have considered joining Guam rather than Saipan and have used this possibility as a negotiation ploy. It is cheaper and easier to travel to Guam from Rota than to Saipan.
Rota had no high school until the 1980s. Many parents, knowing they would be sending their children away to school anyway, chose to have them stay with family on Guam and attend high school there rather than sending them to the Trust Territory Government High School on Saipan.
TINIAN
Tinian has not had Rota's continuous population. For much of its history Tinian has been populated by foreign labor. The Spanish emptied the island in 1694 and then imported 250 islanders from the Carolinian Islands in 1869 as laborers and then moved them to Saipan when the agricultural plan failed. The Germans used Tinian for cattle grazing. The Japanese brought in foreign workers for sugar cane and other types of farming. Tinian was well fortified during WWII. Highways, runways and an excellent harbor still remain. Almost uninhabited after World War II, Tinian received 430 Chamorros between 1946 and 1948 whose forebears had settled in the Micronesian district of Yap during the Spanish and German times. In the 1960s and 1970s Tinian's population of about eight hundred people lived in one village and made a living as ranchers or vegetable farmers. A large cattle ranch occupied most of the island in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s large garment factories were built on the island, and foreign labor was imported to work in them. Tinian has one elementary school, and thereafter its students go to Saipan for high school.
The Covenant agreement between the United States and the Northern Mariana Islands provides that the United States has the option to use Tinian for a military base for up to one hundred years. In 1974 the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines started using the island for training and began planning for a possible post-Vietnam defense base.
SAIPAN
Saipan, the largest Northern Mariana island is where the central government of the Northern Mariana Islands is located. Its population during the 1970s and early 1980s numbered roughly twelve thousand. Most of Saipan's villages boarder a stretch of beach on the lagoon; east to west, they are San Roque, Tanapag, Garapan, Oleai, Susupe, Chalan Kanoa, and San Antonio. Another village, San Vicente, is located in the Southeast. Most villages consist of a church, a school, a few small stores, and tin-roofed houses. American-built communities consist of clusters of cement houses located on Capital Hill and Navy Hill. The east end of the island, named Marpi, and the north side are largely unpopulated. High cliffs rise directly from the ocean, and roads that were once paved are, in the 1970s and 1980s, overgrown with brush. Recent changes involve the building of resorts in the Marpi area, which was closed for many years due to live munitions.
The Spanish moved Saipan's ancient Chamorro population to Guam in 1698, and in 1815 they permitted about two hundred Carolinians, whose home island had been destroyed by a typhoon, to settle on Saipan. In 1816 Chamorro population now mixed with Spanish, Mexicans and Philippines started returning from Guam to Saipan. The Guamanian and Saipanese Chamorros now saw themselves to be more advanced than other Pacific Islanders. They had become Catholic and received some vocational training--the seeds had been planted for the eventual political separation in the 1970s.
By 1865 around 1,000 Carolinians had settled on Guam, Saipan and Pagan, with the ones from Guam moving to Saipan in 1901. This Carolinian population would remain distinct from the Chamorro population with their culture and values remaining close to those of Micronesian Islands from which they came. They had not experienced the forced change from the Spanish that the Chamorros had. The Saipanese Carolinians maintained a matrilineal culture, clan ties to the Yapese islands, their own traditional leaders, and their own language. They did not tend to intermarry with the Chamorros. Thus the Northern Mariana Islands would have two distinct cultural populations through the twentieth century.
The separation between the Chamorros of Guam and those of Saipan became more than one of just distance when the United States purchased Guam in 1898 and the rest of the Mariana Islands were purchased by the Germans. This meant that the United States kept Guam when Japan obtained the Northern Mariana Islands in 1920. Saipan was the site of fierce fighting during World War II. Following World War II the U.S. once again took control of the Mariana Islands, but now their rule did not include rejoining Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. One reason was that the Guamanians harbored "bitter feelings against the Saipanese because many Saipanese were used by the Japanese to guard Guamanians during the Japanese occupation." Another was the American plans for the island of Saipan.
From 1949 to 1952, during the civil war in China, Saipan was a CIA training location for National Chinese agents, and the island was closed to most travelers. Saipan was isolated. It continued to be administered by the Navy until the 1961 United Nations Visiting Mission to Micronesia "was sharply critical of American administration in almost every area...The Visiting Mission said that Saipan, under Navy administration, was benefiting from `financial discrimination' at the expense of the remainder of Micronesia" and that the practice encouraged separatism. The people of Saipan had employment and educational opportunities not available to other Micronesians. The Saipanese were beginning to see themselves more as Americans and less as Micronesian. Many, under the encouragement of the Navy, were expressing an interest in reintegration with Guam. Many were attracted to the benefits of American citizenship and the higher wages paid on Guam. This hope came to an end, however, when Guam rejected reintegration in a 1969 vote.
The Navy involvement had an additional influence. In order to support the base, cement administrative buildings and housing had been built along with an infrastructure of roads and electricity. As a result of this development, in 1962 Saipan became the headquarters for the Trust Territory Government, relocating there from Guam, where it had been moved from Hawaii in 1953. Saipan thus became the capital of Micronesia and became the home for many Micronesians who came from their districts to work.
The Mariana Islands are the tip of a volcanic ridge within the more than sixty-eight million square miles of the Pacific Ocean that stretches from New Guinea to Japan along the edge of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of any ocean in the world. The Northern Mariana Islands chain extends for 183.5 square miles from the southern island of Rota to the northern island of Farallon de Pajaros. The islands lie within the westerly trade winds of the North Pacific and thus became part of the principal sailing route from Asia to North America, causing the early Spanish travelers and later the Germans to be interested in them as part of the sailing trade route from Spain, around South America, across the Pacific Ocean, stopping at various islands before reaching the Mariana Islands, and then on to the Philippines. The distance from Germany is equally as great. Japan wanted to expand its limited property to include the Mariana Islands. The United States, concerned about protecting its Hawaiian boarder, has wanted to maintain a military presence on these islands. The islanders became accustomed early on to distant countries wanting control of their land, to the missionaries of these countries wanting to change their customs, and to the representative leaders of these countries wanting to adjust island activities to their own needs.
Geologically, the Northern Mariana Islands are either formed from limestone or volcanic rock. Most rise from the sea as terraces fringed with coral reefs. Natural resources are minimal in the Northern Mariana Islands, providing just enough to support the local population. Copra (dried coconut) and handicrafts were the main export items prior to World War II, when scrap metal was added to the list. The islands' proximity to Japan, 1,550 miles away, suggests that fruits and vegetables might be viable export products for the people living in this tropical climate, but inadequate storage facilities, undependable transportation, and frequent typhoons have made farming on a large scale historically unreliable. Also, for most of recorded history, it was extremely difficult to ship agricultural products because means of refrigeration were poor. Most families have their own farms that may include a few pigs and chickens, along with breadfruit, papaya, mango, banana, orange, lemon, and coconut trees, and possibly a planting of string beans, yams, or cabbages.
Geographically the Northern Mariana Islands occupy the north-western corner of Micronesia, a somewhat arbitrary term distinguishing the group of islands in the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean from those in the southwestern part (Melanesia) and the eastern half (Polynesia), which included the Hawaiian Islands. There is little commerce or communication between the Northern Mariana Islands and islands in Melanesia and Polynesia, with the exception of Hawaii. Great distances between islands, historical and cultural differences, poor communication systems, and minimal but expensive transportation are some of the reasons for the Northern Mariana Islands' relative isolation.
Transportation has, in part, defined the relationship between islands. From 1975 to 1983, Air Micronesia (Continental) was the main airline serving the Northern Mariana Islands. There was a twelve-hour flight twice a week starting in Hawaii, with the plane making stops in the Marshall Islands (Majuro), Kwajalein (a U.S. military base), Pohnpei, Truk, and Guam before reaching Saipan, the district center and then capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. On a different route there were flights twice a week from Guam to and from Yap and Palau (Koror). Daily flights made the half-hour flight from Guam to Saipan, with some stopping on Rota. From Guam there was a daily seven-hour flight between Hawaii and Guam on Pan American. Transportation between various islands of the Northern Mariana Islands, however, was usually by ship or boat. In order to attend a Trust Territory-wide meeting, some participants would encounter delays for as long as three weeks, due to lay-over time between boats or planes. Planes were frequently over-booked, and storms often delayed travel. In the 1980s more travel options opened up. The least expensive way to travel to the United States from Saipan was via Northwest Airlines, with a twelve-hour layover in Japan before getting a connecting flight to Hawaii from which the traveler could continue on to the U.S. mainland.
PACIFIC OVERVIEW
The islands that form Japan and the Kingdom of Tonga are the only ones in the Pacific to have escaped domination by a Western power. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish, Germans, British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Russians laid claim to many of the islands in the Pacific Ocean. But explorers did not always have support for their claims from home. Great Britain, France, and the United States were all responsible for a variety of Pacific Islands but were hesitant to assume the economic and moral responsibility, as well as the defense obligation for properties so far from home; in the twentieth century, the United States assumed full responsibility for the Micronesian islands. Within this framework, the Northern Mariana Islands had "a long and not altogether happy experience as minor pawns in the international rivalries of great powers."
The second half of the twentieth century has been a time of change and independence for Pacific Islands in general. Between 1962 and 1980, eight South Pacific territories became constitutionally independent, joining Tonga, which had never been under colonial rule. Two others formed a connection of free association with New Zealand. One report stated that the people of the Pacific are "more politically fragmented than any other people on earth." Six million people are divided into twenty-two political units with an average population of seventy thousand. The Northern Mariana Islands with its population of fifteen thousand is smaller than the average, but it has faced in the last few decades the choices that most island groups have contemplated when they have debated independence versus dependence, and a range of options in between.
THE NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS
The southern islands in the Mariana Islands chain are usually referred to by name: Guam, Rota, Aguijan, Tinian, and Saipan. The islands north of Saipan are referred to en mass as the Northern Islands. Most of the Northern Islands are volcanic in origin, with steep cliffs, little flat land, and no reef-protected bay areas. During the American administration, a government field-trip vessel made the difficult trip to the Northern Islands three or four times a year, but few people in the NMI have ever been to the Northern Islands. Plane travel to the northern island of Pagan, however, has occasionally been possible. The few inhabitants of the Northern Islands usually come to Saipan for high school and higher education; their educational needs have traditionally been planned for and financed by the Northern Mariana Islands Department of Education..
ROTA
Rota, eighty-five miles from Saipan and thirty-five miles from Guam, is the only island in the Northern Mariana Islands to have maintained a steadily indigenous population since the landing of the Spanish--a fact of which the people are very proud. They consider their Chamorro language to be purer than that spoken on other Mariana Islands. Because of its high cliffs and flat sabana land, Rota also has some of the best farmland and water in Micronesia. Almost every family on Rota has a farm that provides fruits and vegetables for their use. The main employer between 1976 and 1983 was the government.
Along with the rest of the Northern Mariana Islands and Micronesia, Rota became a United Nations Trusteeship, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) administered by the United States in 1947. In 1952 it remained with the Trusteeship under the Department of Interior and had the status of an independent district, while the rest of the Northern Mariana Islands were put under U.S. Navy administration. In 1962 the Navy relinquished its administration and Rota subsequently joined the rest of the Northern Mariana Islands, with main administration offices located on Saipan. On different occasions the people of Rota have considered joining Guam rather than Saipan and have used this possibility as a negotiation ploy. It is cheaper and easier to travel to Guam from Rota than to Saipan.
Rota had no high school until the 1980s. Many parents, knowing they would be sending their children away to school anyway, chose to have them stay with family on Guam and attend high school there rather than sending them to the Trust Territory Government High School on Saipan.
TINIAN
Tinian has not had Rota's continuous population. For much of its history Tinian has been populated by foreign labor. The Spanish emptied the island in 1694 and then imported 250 islanders from the Carolinian Islands in 1869 as laborers and then moved them to Saipan when the agricultural plan failed. The Germans used Tinian for cattle grazing. The Japanese brought in foreign workers for sugar cane and other types of farming. Tinian was well fortified during WWII. Highways, runways and an excellent harbor still remain. Almost uninhabited after World War II, Tinian received 430 Chamorros between 1946 and 1948 whose forebears had settled in the Micronesian district of Yap during the Spanish and German times. In the 1960s and 1970s Tinian's population of about eight hundred people lived in one village and made a living as ranchers or vegetable farmers. A large cattle ranch occupied most of the island in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s large garment factories were built on the island, and foreign labor was imported to work in them. Tinian has one elementary school, and thereafter its students go to Saipan for high school.
The Covenant agreement between the United States and the Northern Mariana Islands provides that the United States has the option to use Tinian for a military base for up to one hundred years. In 1974 the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines started using the island for training and began planning for a possible post-Vietnam defense base.
SAIPAN
Saipan, the largest Northern Mariana island is where the central government of the Northern Mariana Islands is located. Its population during the 1970s and early 1980s numbered roughly twelve thousand. Most of Saipan's villages boarder a stretch of beach on the lagoon; east to west, they are San Roque, Tanapag, Garapan, Oleai, Susupe, Chalan Kanoa, and San Antonio. Another village, San Vicente, is located in the Southeast. Most villages consist of a church, a school, a few small stores, and tin-roofed houses. American-built communities consist of clusters of cement houses located on Capital Hill and Navy Hill. The east end of the island, named Marpi, and the north side are largely unpopulated. High cliffs rise directly from the ocean, and roads that were once paved are, in the 1970s and 1980s, overgrown with brush. Recent changes involve the building of resorts in the Marpi area, which was closed for many years due to live munitions.
The Spanish moved Saipan's ancient Chamorro population to Guam in 1698, and in 1815 they permitted about two hundred Carolinians, whose home island had been destroyed by a typhoon, to settle on Saipan. In 1816 Chamorro population now mixed with Spanish, Mexicans and Philippines started returning from Guam to Saipan. The Guamanian and Saipanese Chamorros now saw themselves to be more advanced than other Pacific Islanders. They had become Catholic and received some vocational training--the seeds had been planted for the eventual political separation in the 1970s.
By 1865 around 1,000 Carolinians had settled on Guam, Saipan and Pagan, with the ones from Guam moving to Saipan in 1901. This Carolinian population would remain distinct from the Chamorro population with their culture and values remaining close to those of Micronesian Islands from which they came. They had not experienced the forced change from the Spanish that the Chamorros had. The Saipanese Carolinians maintained a matrilineal culture, clan ties to the Yapese islands, their own traditional leaders, and their own language. They did not tend to intermarry with the Chamorros. Thus the Northern Mariana Islands would have two distinct cultural populations through the twentieth century.
The separation between the Chamorros of Guam and those of Saipan became more than one of just distance when the United States purchased Guam in 1898 and the rest of the Mariana Islands were purchased by the Germans. This meant that the United States kept Guam when Japan obtained the Northern Mariana Islands in 1920. Saipan was the site of fierce fighting during World War II. Following World War II the U.S. once again took control of the Mariana Islands, but now their rule did not include rejoining Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. One reason was that the Guamanians harbored "bitter feelings against the Saipanese because many Saipanese were used by the Japanese to guard Guamanians during the Japanese occupation." Another was the American plans for the island of Saipan.
From 1949 to 1952, during the civil war in China, Saipan was a CIA training location for National Chinese agents, and the island was closed to most travelers. Saipan was isolated. It continued to be administered by the Navy until the 1961 United Nations Visiting Mission to Micronesia "was sharply critical of American administration in almost every area...The Visiting Mission said that Saipan, under Navy administration, was benefiting from `financial discrimination' at the expense of the remainder of Micronesia" and that the practice encouraged separatism. The people of Saipan had employment and educational opportunities not available to other Micronesians. The Saipanese were beginning to see themselves more as Americans and less as Micronesian. Many, under the encouragement of the Navy, were expressing an interest in reintegration with Guam. Many were attracted to the benefits of American citizenship and the higher wages paid on Guam. This hope came to an end, however, when Guam rejected reintegration in a 1969 vote.
The Navy involvement had an additional influence. In order to support the base, cement administrative buildings and housing had been built along with an infrastructure of roads and electricity. As a result of this development, in 1962 Saipan became the headquarters for the Trust Territory Government, relocating there from Guam, where it had been moved from Hawaii in 1953. Saipan thus became the capital of Micronesia and became the home for many Micronesians who came from their districts to work.