Laurel outlook., 1944-09-20
Rebuild Saipan
At Swift Pace
Amazing Feat of Marines ir
Americanizing Island
Efaced in Battle.
By End LIEUT.. JIM G. LUCAS
u. S. Marines.

u. y. Marines.
SAIPAN, MARIANAS ISLANDS,
(Delayed)-Violently, convulsively
war has brought a change to Saipar
as peace could not have done in &
generation.
Only the physical outline Of the
island remains the same. Ever
Saipan's mountains and plains are
losing their old contours.
For As years, before June Is, 1914
Saipan lay under the control of the
Japanese. In 1921 Japan closed its
ports to white men, permitting only
a h~alf-dozen Spanish Catholics to re-
main at their mission posts.
Since June Is, thousands of Amer
lean marines and soldiers have
come, unbidden, to its shores. The
ensuing battle wrecked its cities,
and destroyed its cane fields, saw its
army annihilated, it's people in
termed and finally, on July 9, meant
the raising Of the American flag on
Saipan.
The period from June Is to July 9
was one of destruction, in which the
island was overrun and all vestige
of the past went up in smoke and
flame.
The Saipan which has been re-
built, if only partially, in the last
10 days, July 9 to 10, is one so
changed that history must some day
marvel at the rapidity with which
East became West.
Suddenly Americanized.
For an island whose people had
only the remotest knowledge of the
Occidental and his way of life, Sal
pan has suddenly become almost
completely Americanized.
Japan's Wanted claims to goth
century progress certainly did not
extend to Saipan. Until June 10,
only the army and navy owned
trucks and automobiles. For the
rest of the island population, the
most accepted means of transport
was a crude oxcart, or at best, a
bicycle.
Garapan and Charan-Kanoa boast
Gu IlOueIH DullOAiSo, PioAiDNS'
electric lights, a newspaper, bar
Der shops, bakeries, a bank, street
curbing, hospitals, libraries. But in
the rural districts, the average home
was a matched hut, with a ma to
sleep on, another to eat on, and a
stall for the OK.
Saipan's daily menu leaned heav-
lily to fish and rice, mainstays on
the diet of her people, who ate from
tiny tables with legs only a few
inches high, seated on the floor.
What little change had come to
Saipan in the last 45 years had
come slowly, patiently, smoothly.
There was little Indication that her
people had ever been in a hurry,
or ever intended to be.
Today, 10 days after the close of
the battle, all of this has changed.
Garapan has been completely de-
stroyed. 1t is impossible to imagine
100 per cent destruction of a city of
10 1000 people, but here on Salpan 1T
is an unanswerable fact. In all OF
Charan-Kanoa, there is hardly an
unQdmdReQ DullulHB.
In their place, however, there are
already dozens of tent cities through
out the length and breadth of Saipan
tent cities completely American.
No longer is fish and rice the
mainstay of the islands diet. Amer
leans prefer their bread and meat,
their potatoes and gravy, and their
"hot Joe" to wash it down.
Thousands of heavy trucks, jeeps,
reconnaissance cars, squad cars,
tanks and tractors roar up and down
the island. The driver of each vehi-
Gle is invariably in a mad rush.
Take Up New Way of Life.
There is hardly an acre of Saipan
which has not known the blunt nose
of the bulldozer; hardly an inch of
its soil which has not felt the foot
step of Americans.
There are newspapers or Saipan,
but they carry the news in English,
with datelines out of Moscow, Lon
don, New York. There are bakeries,
but they turn out light bread and
biscuits. There are paymasters and
banks, but they pay in American
greenbacks. There are post offices,
but they sell stamps with the pic
ture of George Washington and Abb
raham Lincoln, and they send their
cargoes to the east.
Most of the islands population eats
in mess halls, out of American mess
gear.
Literally, we have overrun Sal
pan, forcing upon it our way of life.
Today, Saipan is as American as
New York city, Ration, New Mexico,
DR. Harrington, Texas. And this is just
the beginning. Only 10 days have
passed since the island was official
secured. Fighting still bursts forth
isolated spots.