We slept quite well last night thanks to the United-induced jetlag. We got some pastries from the lobby before going for a walk around the nearby Memorial Park. There are a few memorials dedicated to the Americans as well as the locals who lost their lives during the battle for Saipan. We would have checked out the visitor’s center which is run by the National Park Service, but it is only open about three days a week, and today wasn’t one of them.
Then we drove a bit south along the coast to the the beaches where the Americans did the bulk of their amphibious landings. While under Japanese artillery fire, some of the landing craft carrying the American tanks were hit. The American Sherman tanks, as it turns out, didn’t do great when half-submerged under water. They either ran aground, bogged down, or slogged along so slowly, they became easy targets for further Japanese artillery strikes.
Two of these Shermans are still standing exactly where they were left in 1944. The depth of the water was never greater than four or five feet, but the distance from shore where these tanks stalled out was great enough where it could have caused problems for their crews even if they made it out. I swam to the further tank first while Nicole watched from the shoreline. It was maybe a 400m swim. I didn’t take the most efficient route due to the currents, but eventually got there.
It was pretty trippy to see it up close. Over the decades, the Sherman has effectively become an artificial reef. Over the course of my swim, by far the majority of the fish were spotted immediately around the tank. After making a lap around the tank, I swam back to shore to meet Nicole to check out the second Sherman.
Nicole led us on a 5-minute swimming journey to tank two. The top hatch is stuck open indicating that the crew attempted to make a swim for it. It would have been a challenge even in the relatively shallow water for a tank crew with gear to make it to the shore with any speed. It would have taken them at least 10 minutes from tank two, and probably 30+ minutes from the first one. The fates of the specific crews is unknown, but I am very curious as to how it played out for them.
Bricole, everyone’s favorite celebrity couple, returned to the hotel to recover from our ambitious tank swimming and did a bit of souvenir shopping at a nearby ABC store (the same ABC store that is ubiquitous in Hawai’i) and also a store simply called, “I ❤ Saipan.” As Saipan is essentially the closest U.S. soil to Asia, the souvenir shops have tapped into this by selling all kinds of things that had very little to do with Saipan, but a lot to do with stereotypical America. Dreamcatchers? Check. Denim vests? Check. Trump magnets? Check. A large variety of hats saying “I love Alaska”? . . .Um. Check.
It was surprisingly difficult to find something that wasn’t completely tacky, but we were able to find a magnet that actually had Saipan on it and not Trump. We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging by the pool whilst looking out at the ocean. After our lounging we drove back up the coast to a place called Bird Island. Evidently there are a lot of bird species that congregate in the area, but we just stopped at an overlook to take in the views.
We returned to the Micro Beach area to have a very hearty loco moco for dinner. Tomorrow we depart from Saipan back to Guam and ultimately Japan. There are also direct flights from Saipan to Japan, but they don’t operate every day, and doing it this way will actually give us more time in Japan to close out our trip. We are excited to get back to Japan after so many years of restrictions, but there will be a bit of a temperature drop to contend with that will feel especially harsh after the heat and humidity we’ve been enjoying this past week. Nevertheless, let’s hope that Duolingo Japanese I’ve been practicing will pay off.
passports & pepto bismol 