Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands

• 1. Introduction

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  In 2020, the United States Census Bureau estimated that 43,385 people lived on Saipan, the largest island and the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The island lies in the western Pacific Ocean and belongs to an unincorporated territory of the United States. It stretches about 12 miles from end to end, measures 5.6 miles across, and covers roughly 115 square kilometers. About 90 percent of the territory's people live there. Its indigenous peoples are the Chamorro and the Carolinian, and both still call it home.

  For such a small place, Saipan has changed hands an unusual number of times. Spain, Germany, Japan and the United States have each governed it. How did that happen? What took place on its beaches in the summer of 1944? And why did factories here once stamp clothing with the words "Made in the U.S.A." while thousands of foreign workers had almost no rights?

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• 2. Voyagers and Galleons

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  Archaeologists have traced human settlement on Saipan across more than 4,000 years. They have found petroglyphs, ancient Latte Stones and other artifacts. These point to cultural ties with Melanesia and to similar stone monuments in Micronesia and Palau.

  In the Chamorro language, the island is simply Saipan. Some Carolinians, wishing to claim that their ancestors arrived first, say the name comes from the Carolinian word sááypéél. It means "a voyage empty," and it recalls a legendary voyage to the primordial island.

  On the 6th of March 1521, the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan landed in the southern Marianas. Saipan and Tinian were possibly sighted by Europeans on that voyage. A year later, Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa probably sighted Saipan from the ship Trinidad, which he commanded after Magellan died at the Battle of Mactan in Cebu. One of his men, Gonzalo de Vigo, deserted in the Maug Islands. He then lived among the Chamorro for four years and visited thirteen main islands in the Marianas, possibly including Saipan.

  The first clear evidence of Europeans on Saipan came in February 1600. The Manila galleon Santa Margarita, commanded by Juan Martínez de Guillistegui, wrecked on the island. Its survivors stayed for two years, until the ships Santo Tomás and Jesús María rescued 250 of them.

  Spain formally occupied the island in 1668, when the missionary expedition of Diego Luis de San Vitores named it San José. After 1670, Saipan served Portuguese, Spanish and occasional English, Dutch and French ships as a place to take on food and water. Disease brought by Europeans and conflicts over land caused the native population to shrink dramatically. In 1720, fearing the spread of leprosy and wanting better control and assimilation, Spain forcibly moved the Chamorros to Guam. The island became a set of ranches raising cattle and pigs to supply Spanish galleons sailing between the Philippines and Mexico.

  Around 1815, many Carolinians from Satawal settled on Saipan while the Chamorros were held on Guam. A typhoon had wrecked crops in the Caroline Islands. A leader called Chief Aghurubw sailed to Guam to ask the Spanish governor for permission to settle, and the Spaniards agreed. The newcomers' arrival came with a significant loss of land and rights for the Chamorro natives.

  The archipelago then sat under the protectorate of the Spanish General Government of the Philippines. Civil Guard members and soldiers from the city of Macabebe, in the province of Pampanga, often called at the islands to keep order.

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• 3. Sugar Under Two Flags

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  After the Spanish-American War of 1898, American forces briefly occupied Saipan. Spain then sold the island to the German Empire under the German-Spanish Treaty of 1899. Germany ruled it as part of German New Guinea for about 15 years. It made no attempt to develop or settle the island, so Spanish and mestizo landowners kept control of the land.

  In 1914, during World War I, the Empire of Japan captured Saipan. In 1919, the League of Nations awarded Japan formal control as part of the South Seas Mandate. Of all the islands in that mandate, Saipan counted among the most important, both militarily and economically. It became the center of Japanese settlement, and its main crop was sugarcane, which was refined and shipped elsewhere.

  Beginning in the 1920s, ethnic Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese and Okinawans immigrated and built large sugar plantations. The South Seas Development Company constructed sugar refineries. Japanese rule also brought extensive infrastructure, including port facilities, waterworks, power stations, paved roads and schools. Entertainment facilities and Shinto shrines appeared as well.

  By October 1943, Saipan had a civilian population of 29,348 Japanese settlers and only 3,926 Chamorro and Carolinian islanders. One landmark from this era still stands. A lighthouse built in 1934, when the Northern Marianas sat inside the Japanese Mandate, is now a cafe with views of the island.

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• 4. The Battle of Saipan

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  By mid-1944, nearly 30,000 Japanese troops were based on Saipan. Japan regarded the island as part of the last line of defense for its homeland and had committed heavily to holding it. The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy had garrisoned it since the late 1930s. They built many coastal artillery batteries, shore defenses, underground fortifications and an airstrip.

  From the 15th of June to the 9th of July 1944, the Battle of Saipan raged as one of the major campaigns of World War II. The United States Marine Corps and Army landed on the beaches of the southwestern side. After more than three weeks of heavy fighting, they captured the island. The battle cost the Americans 3,426 killed and 10,364 wounded. Of an estimated 30,000 Japanese defenders, only 921 were taken prisoner.

  The weapons used and the close quarter tactics also caused high civilian casualties. Some 20,000 Japanese civilians died during the battle. More than 1,000 of them jumped from the places now called "Suicide Cliff" and "Banzai Cliff" rather than be captured.

  Navy Seabees landed to begin construction projects. With Saipan taken, the American military stood only 1300 miles from the Japanese home islands. That put most Japanese cities within range of B-29 Superfortress bombers. The loss was a heavy blow to the government of Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō, who was forced to resign.

  The battle produced at least one famous story of persuasion. The 1960 movie Hell to Eternity tells how GI Guy Gabaldon convinced 800 Japanese soldiers to surrender. His key skill was fluent Japanese, learned because a Japanese-American foster family raised him in the 1930s. A 2011 Japanese film, Oba: The Last Samurai, follows Captain Sakae Ōba, who held out on Saipan until the 1st of December 1945.

  After the war, nearly all the surviving Japanese settlers were sent back to Japan. Today, American Memorial Park and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Museum of History and Culture tell the wartime story on the island.

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• 5. Becoming American

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  After World War II, Saipan joined the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, which the United States administered together with the rest of the Northern Marianas. American bases on the island closed or took on new purposes. Naval Advance Base Saipan, which operated from 1962 to 1986, served as headquarters for the United Nations trusteeship. East Field ended its military use in 1946 but kept serving as an airport until the 1960s. The ground later became a golf course.

  In 1975, the people of the Northern Marianas voted to join the United States. In 1978, Saipan became a municipality of the newly formed Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. On the 4th of November 1986, the islanders, Saipan's among them, became United States citizens, and the Northern Marianas formally became part of the country. From then on, American citizens could travel to and live in the islands without a passport, and the reverse also held.

  The commonwealth government spreads across two villages. The legislative and executive branches sit in Capitol Hill, while the judicial branch is headquartered in Susupe. Because the entire island forms a single municipality, most publications name Saipan as the commonwealth's capital.

  This American status has produced some surprising scenes. In 2024, Julian Assange made a brief visit to the federal courthouse of the District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands in Saipan. There he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obtain and disclose US national defense information.

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• 6. Made in the U.S.A.

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  In the 1980s, the United States government agreed that the Northern Marianas would be exempt from certain federal minimum wage and immigration laws. Tourism had long been a vital source of income, and hotels did multiply. Yet garment manufacturing became the island's chief economic force. Dozens of factories opened and employed thousands of foreign contract laborers, mostly young Chinese women, at low wages. The makers could legally label their clothing "Made in the U.S.A." and ship it to the American market free of tariffs. By 1998, Saipan exported close to $1 billion worth of apparel to the mainland.

  The list of brands that operated factories there for much of three decades included Gap, Levi Strauss, Phillips-Van Heusen, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ralph Lauren, Lord & Taylor, Tommy Hilfiger and Walmart.

  In 1991, Levi Strauss & Co. faced a scandal over six subsidiary factories run on Saipan by the Tan Holdings Corporation. The United States Department of Labor described the conditions endured by Chinese laborers as "slavelike." Tan was cited for sub-minimal wages, seven-day work weeks of twelve-hour shifts, and poor living conditions. Workers also alleged that their passports were taken. Tan paid what were then the largest fines in American labor history, with more than $9 million in restitution going to some 1200 employees. At the time, the Tan factories made 3 percent of Levi's jeans carrying the "Made in the U.S.A." label. Levi Strauss said it had no knowledge of the offenses, cut ties with the Tan family and introduced labor reforms.

  A report dated the 7th of January 1998 from the US Commission on Immigration Reform delivered a harsh verdict on the system. It found that temporary foreign contract workers dominated the commonwealth's immigration and now outnumbered US citizens. These workers had few rights and could not gain citizenship. The report named Kuwait as the closest equivalent. On the 31st of March 1998, Senator Daniel Akaka told the Senate that recruiters were charging foreigners a $6,000 fee for jobs that did not exist. Chinese contract laborers typically paid agents a fee equal to a year's salary, roughly $3,500, for a contract lasting only one year. In 2007, a federal official testified that 36 female victims of human trafficking had been served by a women's shelter in a single twelve-month period.

  In 1999, Sweatshop Watch, Global Exchange, Asian Law Caucus, Unite and the garment workers themselves filed three separate class-action lawsuits on behalf of roughly 30,000 workers. The defendants included 27 American retailers and 23 Saipan garment factories. By 2004, the plaintiffs had won a 20 million dollar settlement against every defendant except one. Levi Strauss & Co. was that one, and it won its case that same year.

  The lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his law firm were paid at least $6.7 million by the commonwealth government between 1995 and 2001. Their job was to change or block Congressional action affecting the commonwealth and its businesses. Roger Stillwell, a Department of the Interior official, pleaded guilty in 2006 to accepting gifts from Abramoff. In 2005-2006, Saipan's labor practices surfaced in the scandals around Congressman Tom DeLay and Abramoff, who had visited the island many times. Ms. magazine ran an exposé in spring 2006 titled "Paradise Lost: Greed, Sex Slavery, Forced Abortion and Right-Wing Moralists."

  Two books preserve the era. John Bowe's 2007 book Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy focuses on Saipan. Chun Yu Wang's 2009 book Chicken Feathers and Garlic Skin: Diary of a Chinese Garment Factory Girl on Saipan, told to Walt F.J. Goodridge, offers what is described as the only known first-hand account of factory and barracks life.

  The end came when the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade expired in 2005 and ended quotas on textile exports to the United States. From a high of 34 factories in the late 1990s, Saipan was down to 19 by March 2007. On the 15th of January 2009, the last garment factory closed. President Bush had signed Public Law 110-229 on the 8th of May 2008, despite a strong lobbying effort by Governor Fitial to stop it. Federal control of immigration began on the 28th of November 2009. The 2010 census counted 48,220 people on Saipan, 22.7 percent fewer than in 2000, as workers and their families went home or moved to Guam and the mainland.

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• 7. The Casino Gamble

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  By 2016, Imperial Pacific International Holdings was reportedly the largest taxpayer on Saipan. It is a Chinese company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and majority owned by the billionaire businesswoman Cui Lijie. In 2014, it received a 25-year license to build and operate casinos on the island, with an option to extend for 15 more years. At least five casinos operate on Saipan. Together they handled over $2 billion monthly in VIP bets, more than the largest casinos in Macau, and that drew accusations of money laundering. Local doctors also criticized the situation after dead and seriously injured Chinese workers, often working illegally on tourist visas, arrived at the hospital.

  The company's flagship Imperial Pacific Resort was meant to include a luxury hotel, casino, restaurants, retail space and leisure facilities, with completion due by August 2018. It was still unfinished in June 2019.

  On the 23rd of March 2017, a Chinese construction worker for the company fell from a scaffold and died. The Federal Bureau of Investigation searched one of the company's offices and made an arrest. On the 15th of February 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek published an investigative report on the death. An attorney for the Torres Brothers law firm, which represented the worker, said the report left out several facts. Imperial Pacific disputed all allegations of wrongdoing and sued Bloomberg for defamation. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security charged five individuals with harboring undocumented workers. Companies linked to the governing Torres family received $126,000 from the corporation in 2017.

  The casino closed in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never reopened. On the 19th of April 2024, the operating company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing more than $165.8 million in debts. A court-approved auction on the 26th of February 2025 produced a winning bid of $12.95 million in cash from Team King Investment (CNMI), LLC. The federal judge approved the sale on the 29th of April 2025, and it closed on the 20th of August 2025. The buyer received the unfinished hotel-casino building in Garapan. The casino license, the income tax receivables and the patron records stayed out of the deal.

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• 8. Reefs, Typhoons, and People

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  Saipan lies about 120 miles north of Guam and 5 nautical miles northeast of Tinian, across the Saipan Channel. Sandy beaches line the western shore, where an offshore coral reef shelters a large lagoon. The eastern shore is rugged, with rocky cliffs and a reef. The island's high point is Mount Tapochau, at 1560 feet. Unlike many Mariana peaks, it is a limestone formation rather than an extinct volcano. A statue of Jesus Christ crowns the summit, and on a clear day other islands come into view. About 2 miles north, Mount Achugao is interpreted as the remnant of a volcanic cone whose Eocene center lay not far north of today's peak.

  Bird Island, a nature reserve for birds, connects to Saipan only at low tide. Forbidden Island, on the southeast side, behaves the same way. Mañagaha, a popular 100-acre tourist island, lies about 10 minutes off the west coast by ferry. Beneath the water, a limestone cavern called the Grotto reaches 20 meters (70 feet) at its deepest and draws scuba divers.

  Tangan-tangan trees, known scientifically as Leucaena leucocephala, spread widely after World War II. They were introduced mainly to hold soil in place after the war devastated the landscape. Coconuts, papayas and Thai hot peppers, locally called "donni' såli" or "boonie peppers," grow wild. Local families cultivate mangoes, taro root, bananas and breadfruit, called "Lemai." Among the endemic birds are the Mariana fruit dove and the endangered Saipan reed warbler. BirdLife International recognizes several areas, including the Sabana, Bird Island and Kagman, as Important Bird Areas. Giant African land snails once became an agricultural pest. An introduced flatworm, Platydemus manokwari, has substantially reduced their numbers over recent decades.

  The Guinness Book of World Records has cited Saipan as having the least fluctuating temperatures in the world, with an average maximum of 84 °F. Typhoon season runs from July to December, and the island sees at least one typhoon a year. Super Typhoon Soudelor struck in 2015. On the 18th of October 2018, Typhoon Yutu made landfall, the second strongest typhoon ever to hit United States territory. It brought sustained winds of 130 mph and gusts up to 190 mph.

  Rain is plentiful, at 80 to 100 inches a year, yet the government water utility cannot deliver water around the clock to some areas. Large hotels make their own fresh water by reverse osmosis. Many homes collect rainwater in cisterns, and most residents buy drinking water because the tap water has a strong sulfur taste.

  The 2010 census described the island as 50.9 percent Asian, including 35.3 percent Filipino, and 34.9 percent Pacific Islander, including 23.9 percent Chamorro and 4.6 percent Carolinian. Churches hold services in English, Chamorro, Tagalog, Korean and Chinese. There are also three mosques for the Bangladeshi community and a Buddhist temple. In 2017, the album Music Of The Marianas: Made In Saipan vol. 1 gathered 20 songs by artists from church choirs to underground island hip-hop.

  Before the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the Republic of Ireland national football team held its training camp on Saipan. A heated argument there between captain Roy Keane and manager Mick McCarthy ended with Keane leaving the squad. It is still known as the Saipan incident, and a film about it, released in 2025, was not shot on the island.

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