Saipan

The Marianas were settled by the ancestors of the CHamoru thousands of years ago, and Saipan's villages sat beside the lagoon long before Europeans arrived. After the Chamorro–Spanish wars, Spain moved most of the northern islands' people to Guam, and Saipan stood almost empty for well over a century. Carolinian voyagers from the atolls to the south settled at Garapan and along the west coast in the early nineteenth century, and CHamoru families returned from Guam, which is why the island has two indigenous peoples today.

Spain sold the islands to Germany in 1899, and Japan took them during the First World War, governing under a League of Nations mandate from 1919. Japanese, Okinawan and Korean settlers came in thousands to work a sugar industry, and Garapan grew into a town with schools, shops, a shrine and a narrow-gauge sugar railway around the coast — its population outnumbered the islanders.

That world ended in June and July 1944. American forces landed on the beaches at Chalan Kanoa on 15 June and fought north for more than three weeks in one of the Pacific war's costliest battles; Garapan was levelled, and the fighting closed with mass civilian and military deaths at the cliffs of Marpi. The United States administered Saipan afterwards, basing the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands government on Capitol Hill from 1962, a hillside settlement built in 1948. Voters chose Commonwealth status in political union with the United States, effective in 1978, and residents became US citizens in 1986. A garment boom in the 1990s and Asian package tourism since have shaped the modern island, along with Typhoon Yutu in 2018 and the closure of the borders in 2020.

Saipan is the cultural centre of the Commonwealth, and its identity rests on two indigenous peoples. CHamoru and Carolinian families keep distinct languages, dances and crafts — Carolinian communities at Tanapag and elsewhere hold on to weaving, canoe-building and the memory of long-distance navigation — while both are bound by clan obligation, respect for elders and a strong Catholic calendar. Each village keeps a patron saint, and its fiesta means Mass followed by open houses and tables of barbecue that anyone may join.

Layer on that the island's other communities. Filipinos make up a large part of the workforce and have brought their own churches, shops and festivals; Japanese, Korean and Chinese businesses run much of the tourist trade; and American institutions, sport and schooling frame public life. English is the working language, with CHamoru, Carolinian and Tagalog heard everywhere.

Public culture is strongest in the open air: Liberation Day parades in July, gatherings on the Susupe civic grounds, fishing derbies, village basketball and softball, and Sunday gatherings on the beaches with generators, coolers and grills. The 1944 battle remains present in memorials, in Japanese and American pilgrimages to Marpi, and in family stories of the internment camps. Visitors are treated with courtesy, and a little formality towards older people goes a long way.

About 43,000 people live on Saipan, nearly nine tenths of the Commonwealth's population, spread through villages along the west coast and across the middle of the island rather than in one dense town. Government is the largest employer, followed by tourism, retail, construction and the small businesses that serve them; a substantial share of workers are from the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia on federal work permits, and many islanders have moved to Guam, Hawaii or the US mainland for jobs and study.

The economy has been unsteady for a generation. The garment factories that once filled industrial lots closed in the late 2000s, the casino project that dominated Garapan in the mid-2010s collapsed, and the flow of visitors from China, South Korea and Japan has never fully returned to its earlier levels. Power and water costs are high, electricity comes from imported diesel, and the utility's rates and outages are perennial local news. Recovery from Typhoon Yutu is still visible in patched roofs and empty shells of buildings.

Days start early and work stops for the hottest hours where it can. Families shop at supermarkets stocked with American and Asian imports, fish from small boats, and gather for baptisms, funerals and fiestas that cross whole extended families. Boxing, basketball and beach barbecues fill weekends, and the American calendar of holidays runs alongside the island's own.

Saipan eats CHamoru at home and Asian out. The local plate is barbecue chicken or short ribs grilled over charcoal with hineksa' aga'ga' — red rice coloured and flavoured with achote seed — and kelaguen, meat, chicken or reef fish dressed with lemon juice, grated coconut, onion and hot pepper. Fina'denne', a sauce of soy, lemon or vinegar, onion and chilli, goes on everything, and kå'du soups and grilled or steamed fish round out a home meal. Apigigi', grated cassava and coconut wrapped in a banana leaf and toasted, is the classic sweet, along with sweet coconut candy and tropical fruit from garden trees.

The island's Filipino community has made turo-turo canteens a daily habit, with adobo, pancit, lumpia and fried fish over rice for a few dollars. Garapan's strip carries Japanese sushi and ramen counters, Korean grills, Chinese kitchens and American burgers and pizza, a legacy of both the tourist market and the decades of Japanese rule. Spam and other tinned meats hold a place in island cooking that predates any fashion for it.

Weekly street markets bring cooks out to sell barbecue, noodles and coconut sweets, and village fiestas produce the biggest spreads of the year. Drinks are mostly imported beer and soft drinks, with fresh coconut water, calamansi juice and local fruit shakes as the island alternatives.