Sunday, December 29, 2013
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Monday, December 16, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
Fe Ada Cepeda, 71
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Tan Escolastica Tudela Cabrera: Pioneering Chamorro businesswoman, 83
BY ALEXIE VILLEGAS ZOTOMAYOR
www.mvariety.com
LOVE and take care of each other.
These were Tan Escolastica Tudela Cabrera’s last words to
her children before she breathed her last yesterday. She was 83.
She passed away at her Capital Hill residence at 5:15
a.m. yesterday.
Her son, Sid Cabrera, confirmed to Variety that his
mother arrived from Hawaii a week ago and she was taken to the hospital on
Saipan over the weekend.
“Yesterday, we took her up to the house on Capital Hill,”
said Cabrera.
He said he and his siblings were with her. “We were
around her through the night.”
He also said, “Her condition deteriorated very fast.”
Cabrera was brought to Hawaii early this year for medical
treatment.
While in Hawaii, Cabrera said the Cabrera matriarch was
ready to go.
Before she left Saipan, she complained of difficulty
breathing.
Cabrera recalled that his mother was still talking last
night.
He said his mother reminded them to “take care of each
other and to follow in her footsteps.”
Daily rosary is being held at the Kristo Rai Church in
Garapan.
Cabrera said that,
tentatively, they have set her burial for Tuesday next week at the CNMI
Veterans Cemetery.
The Mass of Christian Burial will be officiated next
Tuesday at the Mt. Carmel Cathedral at 1 p.m.
Tan
Esco Cabrera
|
Tan Escolastica or “Esco” to those who frequent her
stores in Chalan Kanoa and on Capital Hill, was a devout Catholic. She
regularly recited the rosary and attended Mass.
She was born on February 10, 1930.
At age five or six, she enrolled at a Catholic school. By
the age of seven, she had her first communion.
She went to the Japanese school kogakko for Chamorro and
Carolinian students.
At Saipan kogakko, Cabrera told Variety in an interview
two years ago, they were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, storytelling, and
farming.
She also recalled they planted Carnations and sold the
flowers to Japanese officers’ wives for 10 cents a bundle.
At the age of 81 during the interview, Cabrera could even
recall the last names of her Japanese teachers from first to third grade:
Kaneko, Tominaga and Sugaruma.
She told this reporter that of all the teachers, she
found Sensei Sugaruma “very bad.”
Cabrera remembered how the teacher, who moved from Kagman
to Garapan, would employ corporal punishment.
“He was very strict. He would beat us up,” she said.
During the time she spent at the kogakko, she learned
Nihongo or Japanese. She said it was mandatory and that they were told to speak
Japanese to their parents.
She graduated and finished at the top of the class,
recalling that her diploma had the emperor’s signature.
But this diploma and other belongings were lost when war
came to Saipan in 1944.
At the time, she said, the Japanese had been talking
about an imminent war but they only informed their fellow Japanese, leaving the
Chamorros and Carolinians out.
She said when the Japanese took Guam, two of her brothers
were recruited to work there.
She was put to work at the planned airbase on the stretch
of land from what is now Toyota to the police station in Chalan Kanoa. Many
women worked and dug at the proposed site for the Japanese airbase.
‘We drank our tears’
When war came, the Cabrera family, like every other family,
went into hiding in caves.
Initially, they wanted to hide in a large cave that could
house about 200 people; unfortunately, the Japanese kicked them out.
They had no choice but to hide in a smaller cave where 39
of them huddled together.
During the time inside the cave she said they just sat —
they couldn’t stand up.
They stayed at her father’s farm near a spring. Despite
this, they couldn’t come out of the caves as bombing intensified.
As the pangs of hunger
and thirst gripped them, the children cried. As others hushed them up for fear
of being found, Cabrera said she remembered her father Tun Vicente Ramirez
Tudela telling her sisters, “Never mind. Keep crying and drink your tears.”
They wept to slake their thirst.
After 19 days, they were found by an American soldier and
they were brought to Camp Susupe.
On her way to the camp, she remembered seeing the road
littered with dead people.
At the camp, she said they slept on the sand and there was
no privacy.
The camp internees also
initially had to deal with severe diarrhea.
After six months at the camp, they moved to Chalan Kanoa
village where the old houses of employees of the NHK sugarcane company stood.
Esco, the Entrepreneur
At 15, she resolved that she would no longer go back to
school; she wanted to work and earn a living for her family.
She volunteered to work as a tailor for Commander Victor
Schauss’s wife in As Matuis.
Later she worked for Commander Smith.
Escolastica
Cabrera at work in her kitchen. Photo courtesy of the University of Hawaii
Trust Territory Archives
|
Later still she worked at the commissary, answering phone
calls at a beauty salon where she earned 35
cents a day or $8.50 a month.
When the opportunity arose for her to buy the salon’s
equipment for $500, she went to the Bank of America and took out a loan that
funded her Escolastica Beauty Salon in Chalan Kanoa.
She kept the business until 1953, two years after she
married police officer Gregorio Cabrera.
Then she was the first to venture into selling clothes.
She also sold bread.
Later, she pioneered the sale of bento lunches, serving
lunch and snacks to students at Mt. Carmel School and Hopwood.
Each bento sold for 10 cents.
She and her husband would wake up at 2 a.m. to prepare
the meals.
Then she was offered the chance to serve coffee and
snacks at the airport.
Cabrera said she never felt tired, hungry or sleepy. She
wanted to work and eke out a living for her 13 children.
She relocated to Capital Hill after buying a piece of
property in 1959.
There her store would
be frequented by employees of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.
Then Typhoon Jean came in 1969, destroying her store and
taking two years to rebuild.
All her life she worked and worked hard.
Her advice to the young generation, she told Variety in
2011, “Do not be lazy. Work hard.”
She asked the young generation to learn from the manamko’
and follow their example.
This was what she also told her children the other night
— “follow in my footsteps.”
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Saipan, Tinian to celebrate 70th Anniversary of Pacific's D-Day in June 2014
Saipan, Tinian to hold 70th Anniversary of the Pacific's D-Day in June 2014
(70TH
ANNIVERSARY BATTLES OF SAIPAN/TINIAN COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE) — Eight months from
now, the Northern Marianas will be commemorating the 70th
anniversary of D-Day in the Pacific.
The Commemoration Committee for the 70th
Anniversary of the Battles of Saipan and Tinian will be holding a weeklong
celebration of peace on June 10-16 on both islands of Saipan and Tinian with
the theme “Reunion of Honor.”
Coinciding with this slate of weeklong
activities, the Northern Marianas Humanities Council will be having a history
conference where academicians and historians will give presentations on the
theme, “Cultures in War: Combatants, Islanders and Settlers in the Pacific War
(WWII) and After.”
The celebration will culminate on June 15,
2014 — the 70th year of the invasion of Saipan.
An ecumenical service will kick off the
celebration, to be followed by a parade that will include visiting American and
Japanese veterans and their families.
At the American Memorial Park’s Court of
Honor, the committee will be holding a recognition ceremony honoring the
veterans and their families.
Moreover, there will be a “fire side chat”
with the veterans that will allow the younger generation to get to hear their
personal accounts of the war and their stories of survival and hope.
Local families will also be afforded the
opportunity to get to know them more through the Adopt-A-Vet program.
For those interested to take part in this
historic occasion, the Military History Tours and Valor Tours have prepared
their calendar chock full of activities including guided island tours to
cultural and historic sites like the invasion beaches, coastal bunkers and
caves, Japanese airfield landmarks surrounded by B-29 taxiways and accompanying
parking "hardstands" and more. Visit their sites at www.miltours.com
or at www.valortours.com.
Sponsors, volunteers and vendors are highly
encouraged to take part in this historic occasion.
Visit the Marianas and be part of this
historic celebration of peace and honor.
For more information, contact 70th
Anniversary Battles of Saipan/Tinian Commemoration Committee Chairman Vicente
“Ben” Camacho at 287-5351 or email at Vicente.camacho@gov.mp
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Mediterranean cuisine at the Caravan Restaurant. Call 670.234.0638.
From the archives: Saipan Intermediate School / Hopwood Class of 1957
The members of Class 1957 of Saipan Intermediate School (Hopwood) are seen in a reunion last July 2011 hosted by Frank and Fe Cepeda at their As Matuis residence on Saipan.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Plane crashes on Tinian, 3 dead
Star Marianas plane crashes in Tinian jungle; 3 dead, 4 survivors
www.mvariety.com
ALL PHOTOS by MARIANAS VARIETY/alexie villegas zotomayor
TINIAN — Three people were killed and four survived a plane crash in the jungles of Mt. Laso early Sunday morning.
www.mvariety.com
ALL PHOTOS by MARIANAS VARIETY/alexie villegas zotomayor
Governor Eloy S. Inos and other local officials gather at Agingan Point on Saipan. Photo by Marianas Variety |
TINIAN — Three people were killed and four survived a plane crash in the jungles of Mt. Laso early Sunday morning.
This is the second fatal crash following a Nov. 19, 2012
incident on Saipan that claimed the life of a female tourist.
The fatalities in Sunday’s crash were pilot Luis Silva,
and two unidentified — one male and one female — tourists from China.
Silva, who was in his late 40s or early 50s, was a former
Freedom Air pilot and was described as “very experienced.”
The four survivors, also Chinese tourists, were flown to
the Commonwealth Health Center a little past noon.
The plane was a Piper Cherokee 6 PA-32 belonging to Star
Marianas and the reason for the crash has yet to be determined.
CNMI and federal authorities set up a unified command
post at the Puntan Agingan early yesterday morning and held a media conference
at around 10:30 a.m. to announce details concerning what was then described as
a missing aircraft carrying six passengers and a pilot that left Tinian at 2:40
a.m. yesterday.
“All we know is that there is a report of an overdue
plane. That is what we are trying to validate,” Special Assistant for Homeland
Security and Emergency Management Marvin K. Seman said in the media conference.
He was joined by Gov. Eloy S. Inos, Lt. Gov. Jude U.
Hofschneider, Commonwealth Ports Authority Executive Director Maryann Lizama,
Francisco C. Ada. Saipan International Airport manager Edward B. Mendiola, DPS
Commissioner James Deleon Guerrero, Marianas Visitors Authority Managing
Director Perry Tenorio, Press Secretary Angel Demapan, the governor’s legal
counsel Teresa Kim-Tenorio, American Red Cross-NMI chapter executive director
John Hirsh.
While the press conference was going on, Variety learned
that a report was received that the crash site had been found on Tinian where
three U.S. Navy helicopters had been dispatched.
As the command post was relocating to Sugar Dock, Seman,
Inos, Hofschneider, Lizama and other officials, flew to Tinian immediately.
Seman said they received information sometime around
10:30 a.m. that a helicopter had spotted the crash site on Mt. Laso here on
Tnian.
The four survivors were airlifted to Saipan immediately.
Seman said a little after 11 a.m. they received a call
that the bodies of the pilot and the passengers were found in the wreckage on
Mt. Laso.
Search and rescue
As soon as notice was received that an aircraft with six
passengers and the pilot was missing, the unified command consisting of federal
and local responders began search-and-rescue operations.
Vessels from CPA Harbor Patrol, DPS Fire and Rescue
Boating Safety and the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Assateague conducted a search by
water while helicopters from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron Two Five searched
by air.
Seman said the plane left Tinian at 2:40 a.m. and was
bound for Saipan. The flight usually takes 8 minutes.
“We got the call at roughly 4 a.m. about an overdue
flight,” Seman said.
The wreckage was scattered around, he added, referring to
the scene at the site which is about a 5-minute drive from 8th Avenue or east
of the International Broadcasting Bureau.
As of the 3 p.m., Seman said they had yet to identify the
bodies pending the arrival of Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel.
The crash site is an area covered with thick foliage and
local and federal responding units used a bulldozer to clear a path to the
site.
“It is really thick in there,” said Seman. “It wasn’t a
pleasing site.”
Tinian Mayor Ramon M. Dela Cruz said the three fatalities
included the pilot, adding that parts of the airplane were scattered about.
“There were two bodies trapped under the engine — the
pilot and one female passenger. The other fatality — a male —was found outside
the plane on the ground,” he said, adding that the site was “gruesome.”
Theories
Seman said the aircraft probably tried to make an
emergency landing and hit the trees.
Other sources who declined to be named said that the
pilot had complained about his schedule.
“It could be a case of fatigue,” sources said.
The pilot’s girlfriend Lorraine, who was at the crash
site at around 2:30 p.m. yesterday, said her boyfriend did not have a heart
condition.
Another source who knew Silva said the pilot was in “good
shape.”
But Variety learned from other sources on Tinian that the
pilot had figured in a minor incident on the runway. On Saturday, just as his
plane was taxiing the runway en route to Saipan, the aircraft hit a ditch.
Variety was also told that, while the plane was hovering
near the Voice of America transmitter, Silva called the tower on Saipan to
check the weather. This was the last message heard from the pilot.
Extricating the bodies
As of 4:30 p.m., the bodies remained at the crash site as
the FBI and DPS continued the investigation.
Seman said the crash was an “isolated event.”
Close to a year ago, another Star Marianas Air Piper
Cherokee Six PA-32 crashed on Saipan.
Then, the aircraft was piloted by Jae Choi who sustained
injuries and was medevacked to the Philippines for further treatment.
His passengers were one Filipino and four Chinese, one of
whom died.
Prior to this crash, the last aircraft accident to occurr
was on Aug. 11, 2006 involving Taga Air’s Piper PA-32-300 aircraft but all
seven people on board survived.
Stable condition
The four passengers who survived the plane crash were in
stable condition, according to the Commonwealth Health Center yesterday
afternoon.
CHC emergency preparedness coordinator Warren Villagomez
said in a press briefing at the hospital that they received the first call
about the incident at 5:45 a.m., Sunday.
CHC was placed under a “Code D,” or Code Disaster, alert
at 8:45 a.m. and the first two victims arrived in the hospital’s emergency room
at 12:43 p.m., followed by two other victims at 12:44 p.m.
Villagomez said the victims were tourists. After the
press briefing, members of the media were led to a room where the victims’
families and friends from China were being assisted by the American Red
Cross-NMI chapter. None wanted to make comment.
The emergency room physician, Dr. Marty Rohringer, said
the three adults were “in critical but stable condition,” while the child was
in “serious but stable condition.”
CHC chief executive officer Esther L. Muna did not want
to release more information about the survivors because their families had not
been notified yet. Variety was told by sources that the child was three years
old while the other passengers are in their 20s or 30s.
Variety also learned from sources that the first two
victims who arrived at the hospital were a man and a woman followed, a minute
later, by another woman and a child.
Rohringer said the patients were conscious when they were
brought in.
“We had an excellent response to the Code D calls so all
surgeons, anesthesiologists and staff came to assist,” he added. “So there was
no manpower shortage at all. We acted promptly. We were actually standing in
the hallway as the patients arrived.”
He said two of the adult patients required emergency
surgery while the third adult “may or may not” need surgery, as the ER staffers
had stabilized the patient very well “so the patient may not need to go to the
OR although we thought the patient might initially.”
Villagomez said the response was a well-coordinated
effort, adding that their previous disaster preparedness training and exercises
had paid off.
“I thank everyone who was part of the response effort,”
he added.
All the needed doctors and nurses were mobilized
immediately, he said as he also acknowledged the assistance provided by the Red
Cross led by John Hirsh.
“We have family members of the victims here and we are
providing everything that we can to calm them and mitigate the situation,”
Villagomez said.
Hirsh said the Red Cross has a long history of working
very closely with CHC, “and we value that partnership that really played out
today.”
He said there were a lot of volunteers who came to the
hospital to comfort the families and friends of the victims.
Muna said they assured the families and friends of the
victims that the survivors were provided with the best care from a medical team
that was quick to respond.
In a media release yesterday, Tinian Transportation
Management Solutions Inc., which is doing business as Star Marianas, said:
“The company is very sorry about this tragic loss. We are
doing everything possible to assist the victims and their families.
“We are also cooperating with [federal authorities] in
investigating the cause of the accident and we are not at liberty to discuss
the specifics of the accident at this time.
“We want to thank DPS, CPA, U.S. Coast Guard, CHC, THC,
Red Cross and other rescue and response personnel.
“[T]he notifications to the families in China have not
been made at this time. Therefore, we are unable to provide a list of the
passengers.”
As of 7 p.m. Sunday, Federal Bureau of Investigation and
Department of Public Safety personnel were still at the crash site in the
jungle.
At 4 p.m., authorities brought out the first body while
federal and local authorities were extracting the remaining two bodies from the
airplane.
From the main road, where the command post was set up,
authorities had to create an access road by using a bulldozer to clear the
vegetation. From there, one had to walk for 10 to 15 minutes to reach the main
crash site.
“We have been up since 4 a.m., and we had to use a
bulldozer to clear the area to help federal and local authorities reach the
site,” Office of CNMI Homeland Security and Emergency Management acting special
assistant Marvin Seman told Variety.
Before lunch time, a boat from DPS boating safety office
ferried the department’s crime scene technicians from Sugar Dock to Tinian
following the discovery of the bodies and the airlift of the four survivors by
a U.S. Navy helicopter to the Commonwealth Health Center
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