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TINIAN WITH MOM AND DAD

February 12 we flew to Tinian and spent the night. All music on these videos (except the ambient music at the Tinian Pepper Festival) is from Kevin MacLeod, who has a wonderful website offering Royalty-free music at incompetech.com.
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Boarding for the flight across the 3-mile Tinian Channel.<br /> <br /> Keep track of your location as you view these photos and videos by clicking on the "Map This" button above.
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Boarding for the flight across the 3-mile Tinian Channel.

Keep track of your location as you view these photos and videos by clicking on the "Map This" button above.

BeverLi JoiMomCorinne RobertsonFreedom AirSPNSaipan Airportairplane

  • Boarding for the flight across the 3-mile Tinian Channel.<br /> <br /> Keep track of your location as you view these photos and videos by clicking on the "Map This" button above.
  • Spend 4 minutes and 8 seconds flying across the Channel with us. Start at Saipan Airport. Get nice aerial views of Saipan and the airport first. Then progress over Tinian. The abandoned-looking strip is the old North Field from WWII (more about that later). Then you will finish at the Tinian Airport as we make a successful landing. When you finish, if you feel like kissing the ground, please go ahead!
  • Looking north as we climb. Mt. Tapachau just over our wing.
  • 3 minutes and 15 seconds of a spectacular spouting horn (or, as the locals call it, blow hole).
  • Spend a minute and 9 seconds walking out onto, arguably I guess, the most important air strip in the history of the world: THE runway from where the nuclear age was launched, with the decisive strike which brought WWII, or at least the Pacific Theater portion of it, to a close.
  • Looking down the length of Runway Able, to the west.
  • If you choose to spend the next 3 minutes and 38 seconds riding with us the length of runway able, you may want to consider a few things: Think about the young men in the Enola Gay and what was going through their minds as they lifted off with that very special payload. Ponder the incongruencies: The number of innocent people killed vs. the number saved by an earlier end to the war. The momentous role of nukes in ending the bloodiest chapter in human history vs. the desperate need for extreme diligence to make sure that they are never used again.<br /> <br /> Also, reflect on the moment and the place: Should the most important air strip ever in the history of the world be allowed to weather to ruin, as this one is doing? Or should it be preserved and restored as a reminder to us and to our children? Is there more value in developing a site which could be a beacon shining the light of history to the world, or is the greater good served by allowing nature to decorate and eventually reclaim this little patch of asphalt?<br /> <br /> Is this indeed just a little patch of asphalt, or is it truly a portal to history?<br /> <br /> Think about it. I'll see you on the far end of the runway.
  • Just off Runway Able is the Service Apron, and just off the Apron are a couple of Japanese bomb shelters. And just outside one of these bomb shelters were these two goblins you can see in this photo!
  • Spend the next minute and a half inside this bomb shelter with me, if you would like!
  • You can see a hole blasted through the wall of the shelter to your left. When the Americans stormed this base, the Japanese had already moved on: There was no one in the shelters.
  • This was the control building for the Air Force Base, where controllers communicated with pilots and guided them on where to taxi, etc. The mud patterns at the end of the video are cocoons for a local type of wasp. Video runs for a little over 6 minutes.
  • Starts out with a bit of a "self portrait," then progresses to show the pit which was used to store the "Little Boy," as the first atomic bomb, delivered to Hiroshima, was called. At the end of the segment, you can see another structure in the distance. That is Bomb Pit #2, which held "Fat man," the one dropped on Nagasaki. <br /> <br /> And please: No comments about this video starting with one fitting the description of the thing which was stored in the bomb pit at the end!<br /> <br /> Music is from Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Interesting name for a web site, but I highly recommend it for anyone wanting Royalty-free music for any project.
  • Tinian Dynasty, where we spent the night.
  • Untitled photo
  • Self portrait in the elevator. Second floor and going down!
  • The local newspaper for my original home town (Laverne, OK -- where my parents still live) likes to run photos of locals holding the paper up at exotic places all over the globe. Here we are at Taga House, the largest of the very few remaining ruins of traditional Chamorro (the original people who inhabited these islands) building. The column in the background of the first scene of this 5-minute video is one of 8 original standing stone couplets, called "latte stones" (and pronounced just like if they were modern coffee rocks). You will see the rest of them scattered around throughout the video. All these stones came from Taga Beach, about 3/4 mile away. No one knows how the ancients transported them, how they placed the bottom column in place or (even more mysterious) how they placed the large bowl-shaped stone on top.<br /> <br /> The Marianas is the only place where this type of construction has ever been found. No one knows why the ancients built in this way. It appears to me to be ridiculously top-heavy, but here this one stands -- at least 800 years after it was erected (According to some, WAY more than 800 years after).<br /> <br /> At any rate, the 8 latte stones were arranged in 2 rows of 4, and a house was erected out of wood on top of the entire menagerie.<br /> <br /> Legend has it that the spirit of the daughter of a Chamorro chief resides inside that last standing latte stone, and that she will remain there until it topples. Locals tell of hearing her mournful cry on certain nights.
  • Dad, among toppled latte. I accidentally toppled a latte at a Starbucks not long ago, but that was a bit different......
  • Keep in mind that the cap stone on the standing latte has weathered tremendously. It used to be bowl-shaped, just as are the ones on the ground here. It looks impressively massive now, but I would estimate that around half of that stone is gone.<br /> <br /> By the way, the straight column is called a hiligi, the bowl-shaped cap stone a tasa.
  • Now, spend the next 4 1/2 minutes looking around Taga Beach and gazing into the spectacularly clear water of the Philippine Sea. You'll notice that all the railing "posts" are in the shape of latte stones. The latte is pretty much THE symbol of the Marianas, sort like the bee hive for Utah, George Washington's profile for WA State, and the instantly recognizable state shape for Oklahoma and Texas.
  • Now, spend 3 1/2 minutes gazing out from Tinian's version of Banzai Cliff. When the Americans liberated the Marianas, many Japanese hurled themselves off these cliffs to commit suicide. This is on the east side of Tinian, so you will be looking over the Pacific Ocean here. We drove maybe 5 miles or so from Taga Beach, and are on a different ocean!
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