Tinian

Tinian was settled by the ancestors of the CHamoru long before European contact, and the island holds the clearest evidence of how they built: on the edge of today's San Jose, twelve massive latte stones were raised as the pillars of a great house, the largest ever raised in the Marianas. Legend attributes them to the chief Taga, and the site has carried his name ever since.

After the Chamorro–Spanish wars, Spain moved the population to Guam, and for well over a century Tinian was almost empty, used as grazing land and worked by a few herders — cattle remain part of the island's economy. Germany held it briefly from 1899, and Japan took the Marianas in the First World War. Under the Japanese mandate the island was covered in sugar cane, with a mill and a Japanese and Okinawan population many times larger than the CHamoru community.

American forces landed at Unai Chulu on the north-west coast on 24 July 1944, and the fighting ended about a week later. The Seabees then turned the flat northern plateau into North Field, an airbase with four long runways from which B-29s flew against Japan; the aircraft that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki took off from here in August 1945. The base emptied as quickly as it had grown. Tinian passed through the Trust Territory years to Commonwealth status in 1978, gave over most of its northern land to United States military use, saw its only casino, open since 1998, close in the mid-2010s, and was badly hit by Typhoon Yutu in 2018. Renewed American military construction has returned work and traffic to the airfields.

Tinian is a CHamoru island with a small Carolinian presence and a Filipino community drawn by work, and its social life turns on the Catholic parish at San Jose. The church calendar sets the year: baptisms, confirmations, rosaries for the dead and above all the village fiesta, when families open their houses and cook for days. Obligation runs through everything — a funeral or a wedding involves whole clans, and help with food, money and labour is given and returned.

Because the population is so small, the island feels like one extended family. Drivers lift a hand to each other, children are watched by any adult nearby, and news travels before the telephone does. Elders hold authority, and the CHamoru language is used at home alongside English, with Tagalog heard in shops and kitchens.

Local pride attaches to particular things: the latte stones and the Taga legend, the hot peppers grown in island gardens, cattle raised on Marpo pasture, fishing and a long tradition of cooking for a crowd. The war is close as well, in memorials the municipality maintains, in Japanese and American visitors who come to the airfields and the cliffs, and in family memories of the camps. Visitors are met with straightforward friendliness and a certain wry patience about how quiet the island is.

About two thousand people live on Tinian, nearly all of them in San Jose or on the slopes just above it. The island is a municipality of the Commonwealth with its own mayor and council, and government is the largest employer, followed by the school, the health centre, small businesses, construction and work connected with the military projects in the north. Fishing, cattle and market gardens supplement household incomes rather than driving the economy.

Supplies arrive by ship and by the small aircraft that shuttle from Saipan, so shelves can look thin before a delivery and prices are higher than on the main island. Petrol, power and water costs weigh on households; electricity comes from imported diesel. Typhoon Yutu tore through the island in 2018, and the rebuilding of houses, the school and public buildings shaped the years that followed.

The rhythm is unhurried: work in the cooler hours, a long midday, and evenings on porches or at the beach. Weekends mean barbecue, softball and basketball, fishing trips and church. Young people leave for Saipan, Guam or the US mainland for schooling and jobs, and the population has drifted down for decades, though the military build-up has brought contractors, rental demand and a debate about land, water and noise that dominates local politics.

Tinian eats the CHamoru table, and chilli runs through it. Small hot peppers grown in gardens and along fences go into fina'denne' — the sauce of soy or vinegar with onion, lemon and chilli that accompanies nearly every meal. Barbecue chicken and beef short ribs cooked over charcoal, hineksa' aga'ga' or red rice coloured with achote, and kelaguen of chicken, beef or reef fish dressed with lemon, grated coconut and onion make up the standard plate.

Beef matters more here than on other islands, because cattle have been raised on Tinian since the Spanish period and local meat turns up at fiestas and fundraisers. Fish and octopus come from the reef, and household gardens supply breadfruit, taro, cassava, bananas, papaya and mango. Apigigi' — grated cassava and coconut baked in a banana leaf — and sweet coconut candy are the classic sweets.

Everyday eating also includes Filipino cooking, with adobo, pancit and fried fish over rice at village kitchens, and the tinned meats and instant noodles that travel well to a small island. Drinks are imported beer and soft drinks, coconut water from a machete-opened nut, and fruit shakes; the biggest spreads of the year come out of village fiesta kitchens rather than restaurants.