From the archives: Saipan airport exhibit details evolution of As Lito airfield
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| As Lito became Conroy Field then later Isely Field in 1944 |
Saipan airport exhibit shows As Lito airfield evolution
By Alexie Villegas Zotomayor
Associate editor / reporter
Marianas Variety
www.mvariety.com
(Published in June 2012)
IT was the first operational airbase in
Micronesia. Such was the historical significance and importance of the Aslito
airfield, where the present Saipan International Airport now stands and where
an exhibit chronicling its evolution is on display.
Northern
Marianas Humanities Council executive director Scott Russell and University of
Guam and Australia National University research associate Wakako Higuchi teamed
up to work on the 10-panel exhibit now on display in the airport’s departure
area.
Russell told Variety that it took them
close to three years, including research, to put it all together.
“The field was actually the first in
Micronesia to have had aircraft land on it. We knew none of this before Wakako
[Higuchi] began her research,” said Russell.
Acknowledging Higuchi’s research,
Russell said she relied on primary Japanese sources that they did not have
access to before.
“She found new information that had not
been published, at least in English, previously about the early development of
Aslito,” he said.
Higuchi, for her part, told Variety
that initially, she could not find any reference to Aslito, “but I started to
pick up little by little from archival information.”
Being in English and Japanese was a
requirement of the Historic Preservation Office for the Commonwealth Ports
Authority to have the public exhibit, which shows the airport’s development and
its historical significance.
Russell told Variety that the idea
behind this exhibit is to research the history of both airfields and the roles
they played during the war and to be able to get the information in two
languages at the airport.
The resulting 10-panel exhibit, whose
layout and production was overseen by Dr. Dave Tuggle, shows in prose and
photographs the development of the formerly sugarcane farmlands into Aslito
Airfield during the Japanese period, to Isely Field under the Americans, and to
the present Francisco C. Ada/Saipan International Airport.
In her studies, Higuchi discovered
Aslito Airfield used to be part of the Nanyo Kohatsu Kaisha’s farmlands.
“It was a Japanese sugarcane farm,”
said Higuchi, who pored over documents about the Japanese Administration Period
in the Marianas in the Japanese Defense Ministry.
“I studied research about Aslito, then
I found how significant the area itself [was] for Japan and the Japanese
Administration of the Marianas,” confessed Higuchi.
Russell said there are two parts to
Aslito: Aslito and Isely.
As Lito, he said, was the Japanese Navy
air station, and then there was Isely Field, which was the first operational
B-29 base in the Marianas.
According to Russell, the two fields
were both important for their own reason.
Russell told Variety, “The new Saipan
International Airport sits on the two airfields.”
He said there was Aslito, then Isely on
top of Aslito, and finally the Saipan International Airport on top of Isely.
Asked if their research on Aslito would
be made available elsewhere, Russell said “the exhibit is just specific to the
airport.”
Located at the east side of the
departure area, the exhibit, according to Russell, gives people who use the
airport an understanding of the historical significance of where they are.
Russell and Higuchi trace the early
beginnings of Aslito from the founding of the village in the 1920s as part of
the sugarcane cultivation.
Matsue Haruji, also known as the Sugar
King, made possible the growth of the sugarcane industry on Saipan, with Aslito
the first farm placed under cultivation by Matsue’s company Nanyo Kohatsu
Kabushiki Kaisha.
As part of the Japanese Imperial Navy
operation, the NKK was ordered by the Navy to cede 245 acres of farmland and
covertly convert this expanse of flatland into an airstrip, efforts they kept
under wraps in order to avoid stirring the suspicions of U.S. military forces
on Guam.
On July 20, 1933, a squadron of 10
Mitsubishi B2M1 carrier attack bombers shipped from Tateyama, Japan took off
from Aslito and headed to Pagan.
This flight was integral to the
Special-Great Exercise conducted in the Marianas-Ogasawara area, which lasted
for 86 days.
The presence of the Emperor Hirohito himself,
who observed the exercise from aboard the battleship Hiei, and the
participation of Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu and three members of the imperial
household, made the exercise a significant one.
Following the completion of the
Saipan-Pagan flight, the Aslito airfield was abandoned, only to be revived in
1937 when a survey was commissioned to lay out an L-shaped airfield.
To accommodate the new facility, the
NKK ceded 1,960 more acres of sugarcane farmlands.
Thus commenced the three-year,
three-phased construction of the airfield.
By the end of 1939, the Aslito Naval
Air Base had a 1,200 m. long and 800 m. wide paved runway.
Aslito became the first operational
airbase in Micronesia.
But the airfield would soon pass hands
to the Americans, when they invaded Saipan on June 15, 1944.
On June 18, 1944, the 165th Regimental
Combat Team headed by Colonel Gerard W. Kelly secured the airfield with no
opposition from Japanese forces.
The Aslito Airfield was renamed Conroy
Field in honor of Colonel Gardiner J. Conroy, former head of the combat team,
who was killed in action in the Gilbert Islands.
This was short-lived as the Navy
renamed the airfield Isely Field in honor of Commander Robert H. Isely, who was
shot and killed while leading an attack against Aslito.
On Nov. 24, 111 B-29s of the 73rd Bomb
Wing took off from Isely Field to conduct the first air raid mission on Japan.
Under General Curtis Lemay, the U.S.
revised its air raid strategy with by dropping incendiary bombs during
low-level night raids.
This strategy was tested on March 9,
1945 when a total of 334 B-29s from Saipan, Guam and Tinian flew to Japan
between 5,000 to 7,000 feet of altitude carrying 2,000 tons of bombs.
In 10 months of combat, the 73rd Bomb
Wing flew 9,894 combat sorties and dropped close to 50,000 tons of firebombs.
Isely was then considered one of the
world’s largest airbases, with two paved 8,500-foot taxiways and 186
hardstands.
From 1945 until its closure in 1949,
the airfield was used for emergency and refueling purposes.
Over the next two decades, commercial
flights used Koblerville Field, until its deterioration in 1968 led to the
revival of Isely Field.
On Dec. 15, 1975, the first commercial
aircraft landed on what is now known as the Saipan International Airport.
Higuchi believes that understanding the
history of the airfields will lead one to understand Saipan’s place in history.
Said Russell, “That airfield played a
very significant role in both the prewar and WWII era histories of Japan, the
U.S. and the Marianas.”
He only wished that the exhibit could
have been located in a more prominent area, so more people could learn to
appreciate the airport’s place not just in American and Japanese but also world
history.
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