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Aging Warriors Return
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By Frank S. Rosario
Reprinted from Pacific Magazine, August 2004
For a few days in June, a group of old men erased six decades and were again young, strapping soldiers and airmen. They once again found themselves on Saipan’s white sand beaches, and walking along the ridge tops of the island’s rugged hills. But this time, instead of being under intense enemy fire, they were alone with their memories of fallen friends and battles waged long ago.
About 50 veterans of the U.S. military forces that stormed ashore in what is now the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, returned to Saipan in June to mark the 60th anniversary of that pivotal action in World War II. Among the veterans was one of the war's most famous aviators: Paul Tibbets Jr., the U.S. Air Force pilot who guided a B-29 bomber from Tinian Island, just south of Saipan, to Hiroshima, Japan, and dropped the first atomic bomb used against an enemy.
While Tibbets, and his two surviving crewmen received much attention, this year's anniversary celebration was also a time for aging locals who survived the horrific battle to recall their experiences 60 years ago. Among them was David M. Sablan, now 72 and a well-known business executive, who recalled how a baby's cry saved him and 50 other Saipanese from death.
Sablan was 12 when U.S. Marines and Army troops fought their way ashore on Saipan's western beaches in June 1944. His family hid in one of Saipan's many limestone caves and watched U.S. forces come ashore in landing craft. Sablan recalls it was a few days later when he heard someone outside their cave calling out in Japanese to come out and surrender.
His father, who was sleeping, was awakened and walked out of the cave with his hands up. There, he found three U.S. Marines waiting with rifles ready. The elder Sablan told them in English, "I surrender."
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Surprised to find an islander who spoke English-Saipan, like the other Northern Mariana Islands, had been a Japanese protectorate since 1920-the Marines asked Sablan who he was. "I am Elias P. Sablan," he told them. The Marines said they had been told to look for him, as he was one of the only three locals who spoke English. One of the Marines, a lieutenant, was a young Midwesterner named John Sullivan.
Surprised to find an islander who spoke
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 Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets speaking on Saipan at the invasion commemoration program.
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English-Saipan, like the other Northern Mariana Islands, had been a Japanese protectorate since 1920-the Marines asked Sablan who he was. "I am Elias P. Sablan," he told them. The Marines said they had been told to look for him, as he was one of the only three locals who spoke English. One of the Marines, a lieutenant, was a young Midwesterner named John Sullivan.
The search found 2,300 John Sullivans who served in the Marines during World War II, but eventually the list was narrowed down to eight possible Marines. Sablan contacted each of them, and eventually got in touch with the same John Sullivan who served on Saipan. Sullivan in turn wrote an eight-page letter to Sablan.
Two years later, David Sablan went to the U.S., bought a car in San Francisco, and accompanied by three Catholic priests, drove cross country to Sullivan's home in Ottowa, Illinois. Sullivan returned to Saipan in the 1960s, and with the Sablan family returned to the hillside cave where their lives first intersected. It was at that time that Sullivan told the family that he had already pulled the pin on a grenade, and was about to throw it into the cave, when he heard a baby cry.
Memories of a crying baby were also still clear in the mind of retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Lawrence F. Snowden, who also returned to Saipan this past June. Snowden was a 23-year-old first lieutenant with the 4th Marine Division that stormed the beaches on June 15, 1944. "These beaches that looked so serene today were being fought for that day," Snowden said. "We were confident we thought we could establish beach head on the first day."
Although it took three days, Snowden said that on the first day alone more than 20,000 Marines landed with 2,000 casualties. Like other war veterans, Snowden doesn't like talking about personal experiences because it is so difficult. But he remembered one incident quite well. In one area in Chalan Kanoa, a village in south-central Saipan, Snowden found about 20 dead Chamorros on a field. Then he heard a baby crying. A little girl, possibly two, was clinging to her dead mother. He asked one of his men to bring a Chamorro man from the camp, who picked up the girl and tried to comfort her.
"That's when the ugliness of the war hit me," Snowden said, who broke down and cried, as he recalled his two-year old son he left behind in California when he was deployed overseas. Snowden later told Pacific Magazine he does not know what happened to that two-year old Chamorro girl.
For retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets, Jr., there was no question about what happened after his services in the Marianas. As the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Tibbets has long been at the center of the controversy surrounding the use of the weapon.
For the first time since the war, Tibbets returned to Saipan and Tinian to take part in the 60th anniversary commemoration. Tibbets was the keynote speaker at the Court of Honor at American Memorial Park on Saipan as well as at the gathering of veterans at the Atomic Bomb Pit at Tinian's North Field, the area that was used to place the atomic bomb in the Enola Gay. During the war, the Tinian airfields were known as the largest airport in the world.
Now 89, Tibbets was a 29-year-old Air Force colonel when he was given his top-secret assignment. On June 17th, standing at the exact spot on Tinian where his bomber was loaded with the A-bomb, Tibbets recalled his assignment, the crew he assembled, the training, the departure for a six-hour flight to Japan, and the actual dropping of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima at 9:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945.
More than 200 thousand people died as a result of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. After the bomb left the plane, Tibbets said there was a lurch and he quickly turned the huge aircraft 159 degrees. Just then the sky in front of him lit up. Shortly thereafter, Tibbets ate lunch and slept for two hours during the flight back to Tinian.
Asked later whether he ever regretted what he did in dropping the atomic bomb, Tibbets said, "No. Absolutely not." The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and later Nagasaki are thought to have saved at least one million U.S. lives that might have been lost in an invasion of Japan. This year's commemoration ceremony is expected to be the last time most of the U.S. veterans return to Saipan and Tinian.
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