Touring Tinian...

Although I'd been to Saipan a number of times, I'd never been to Tinian. I've tried once before, but the ferry is a bit sporadic. This time, I took no chances. I called, emailed and asked everybody who'd know about the ferry. We checkout out of our hotel and did make it on.

This map isn't remotely to scale, but the layout is vaguely close...

Despite Anna getting sick on the boat (and missing the puke bag...) we got across safely. However, the boat was late by about an hour. So, even though we only had time for a 4 hour tour, it now had to be crammed into 3 or less hours. It's a small island, but that still cuts it close.

We had a tour bus lined up and after an unexpected stop off at their convenience store, we were off.



The famous See Bees did a bear share of development back in war time. That includes the layout of the streets which they patterned after Manhattan New York. Even the names are the same.

This bronze cast "map" is hard to see, but if you enlarge it, you will see a road map that you could almost overlay on Manhattan.

The first stop we made on the tour were the Taga Latte Stones. Latte Stones are believed to be used by the ancient Chomorro as housing foundations. These at the House of Taga are the largest known in existence.




For most people, however, they come to Tinian for the war history. That was certainly the case with my father. There are plenty of pieces of the war lying around. In most cases, there's no need to make anything nationally protected, the locals have seen it all and not enough people go there.

Blown out Japanese Bunker

This is the inside of the bunker. It must have been a pretty hot inferno.

The Japanese left this to honor the many that died there.

If someone from the the Mainland US knows about Tinian, then they know it because it is the island from which the Anola Gay took off to strike Hiroshima with the A-Bomb.

This is runway the plane took off from. We drove down the runway, but alas did not take off...

The plane was too low to the ground to load the a-bomb into the plane. So they had to dig pits to house the bomb, drive the plane over pit, and then raise it into the open belly. From hearing the story I expected to see a mild mannered dirt hole. Instead, I found this...

You have to hand it to the military, they don't do anything temporarily, even digging pits.

And before we knew it, our time was up. By the time we made it back to the ferry, we were the last ones there. The boat was waiting for us. Our tour guide handed us food and we had to take it on the boat with us. We got back to Saipan, ate the food and were very tired.

We had a bit of time to visit some friends I have that live there and then we were on a plane back to Guam.