Mañagaha is a small islet which lies off the west coast of Saipan within its lagoon in the Northern Mariana Islands. Although it has no permanent residents, Mañagaha is popular among Saipan's tourists as a day-trip destination due to its wide sandy beaches and a number of marine activities including snorkeling, parasailing and jet skiing.
Garapan is the largest village and the center of the tourism industry on the island of Saipan, which is a part of the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Garapan, as a census-designated place, has an area of 1.2 km² and a population of 3,588.
Landing Beaches; Aslito/Isely Field & Marpi Point, Saipan Island is a National Historic Landmark District consisting of several discontiguous areas of the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. The sites were designated for their association with the Japanese defense of Saipan during World War II, the 1944 Battle of Saipan in which Allied forces captured the island, and the subsequent campaigns which used Saipan as a base. The district includes the landing beaches where the Allies landed, the remnants of Japanese airfields Aslito and Marpi Point, and Isely Field, the Allied airfield built over much of Aslito from which B-29 bombers were used to bomb the Japanese home islands. Included in the Marpi Point area are Suicide Cliff and Banzai Cliff, two locations where significant numbers of Japanese military and civilians jumped to their deaths rather than surrender to advancing forces. The loss of Saipan was a major blow to the Japanese war effort, leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, The landmark designation was made in 1985.
North Field is a former World War II airfield on Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Abandoned after the war, today North Field is a tourist attraction. Along with several adjacent beaches on which Allied forces landed during the Battle of Tinian, the airfield is the major component of the National Historic Landmark District Tinian Landing Beaches, Ushi Point Field, Tinian Island.
The Maritime Heritage Trail – Battle of Saipan is located within the protected waters of Saipan lagoon in the Northern Marianas archipelago. The majority of the dive sites including two Japanese shipwrecks, two Japanese aircraft, two US aircraft, a US landing vehicle and two Japanese landing craft can be found in the clear waters between Garapan, Tanapag Harbor, and Mañagaha Island while further south in Chalan Kanoa Lagoon there are three US tanks.
The Japanese Lighthouse is an abandoned lighthouse situated atop Navy Hill in Garapan, Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The lighthouse is one of the few surviving pre-World War II, civilian structures built by the Japanese.
Suicide Cliff is a cliff above Marpi Point Field near the northern tip of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, which achieved historic significance late in World War II.
Banzai Cliff is a historic site at the northern tip of Saipan island in the Northern Mariana Islands, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Towards the end of the Battle of Saipan in 1944, hundreds of Japanese civilians and soldiers jumped off the cliff to their deaths in the ocean and rocks below, to avoid being captured by the Americans. Not far away, a high cliff named Suicide Cliff overlooks the coastal plain, and was another site of numerous suicides. At Banzai Cliff, some who jumped did not die and were captured by American ships.
The Japanese Hospital or Saipan Byoin is a historic World War II-era hospital complex on Route 3 in Garapan, a village on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. The three concrete buildings are the largest Japanese-built structures to survive the war. The main hospital building is an L-shaped structure with a domed entrance at the crook of the L. A second, smaller building housed the pharmacy, while the third is an underground circular chamber of unknown purpose. All were in deteriorating condition when surveyed in the early 1970s. The complex has since undergone restoration, and the main hospital building now houses the Northern Mariana Islands Museum.
The Campaneyan Kriso Rai, also known as the Catholic Belltower, is a historic church tower in Garapan, the largest village on Saipan island in the Northern Mariana Islands. Built in 1932, it is the only element of the island's most prominent Roman Catholic church to survive bombardment in World War II. The tower, a concrete structure 3 metres (9.8 ft) square and 10 metres (33 ft) tall, was built by Spanish Jesuits brought in by the Japanese South Pacific Mandate administration, and stood next to an 1860 wood-frame church.
The Chudang Palii Japanese World War II Defensive Complex is one of the largest surviving World War II defensive establishments in the Northern Mariana Islands. Located at the base of a limestone bluff overlooking the island's airport, it consists of an extensive series of tunnels, walls, enclosures, gun emplacements and other features. These were built in 1944 and 1945, probably with forced labor, after the Japanese decided to embark on a program of in-depth island defenses after Allied successes against defenses that were limited to shore-based establishments. These works are characterized by an extensive use of native materials, and by the use of manual labor to dig tunnels, trenches, and other features.
The Hachiman Jinja is a derelict Shinto shrine off Kagman Road on the island Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, and one of the few on those islands to survive relatively intact. The shrine, dedicated to the kami Hachiman, was probably built in the 1930s by the Japanese administration of the South Seas Mandate as part of a program to Japanize the large number of Ryukyuan and Korean workers on the island. The shrine survived the World War II Battle of Saipan in remarkably good condition, although its main torii fell, and two komainu were lost. The main honden received some maintenance in the 1970s, and the property has received some maintenance from a local landholder. As of 2019, it is in total disrepair.
The Japanese 20mm Cannon Blockhouse is one of many relics of World War II on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. It is a concrete blockhouse, semi-circular in shape with a diameter of about 6 metres (20 ft). Its walls are 1.22 metres (4.0 ft) thick with four firing ports large enough to accommodate 20mm cannons, originally equipped with steel sliding shutters. A steel door 25 millimetres (0.98 in) thick provides access to the structure at the rear, sheltered by a concrete wall and covered defensively by a machine gun port. The blockhouse is located near the center of what is locally called Big Agingan Beach, on the south coast of the island, about 20 metres (66 ft) from the shore. It was built in some haste by the Japanese forces defending Saipan in 1944, and was captured by Allied forces early in the Battle of Saipan.
The Nan'yō Kōhatsu Kabushiki Kaisha complex was the main support base of the Nan'yō Kōhatsu Kabushiki Kaisha (NKKK) on the island Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands. The NKKK was an economic development company established by the Empire of Japan to develop the territories of the South Seas Mandate, which it oversaw between the First and Second World Wars. In the Northern Marianas, the company aggressively developed arable areas for sugar cane farming, importing workers from Japan, Okinawa, and Korea. Each of the three major islands had major support facility. On Tinian, this area, now roughly where the island's largest community, San Jose is located on the south coast, consisted of an extensive development, most of which was destroyed during the Battle of Tinian in the Second World War. Of this large complex, only four buildings or structures remain, all of which have been listed on the United States National Register of Historic Places, as rare surviving examples of pre-war Japanese architecture on the islands.
The Unai Obyan Latte Site is a prehistoric archaeological site on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. Located near Obyan Beach on the south coast of the island, it is the site of what was once a fairly extensive village, which was significantly disturbed by Japanese defensive preparations during World War II. The site includes the fragmentary remains of a single latte stone house site and a wide scattering of surface-level remains. Excavation of the latte house site in the 1940s by the pioneering archeologist Alexander Spoehr yielded evidence of a length period of occupation. The village at Obyan was documented in early Spanish accounts of the island, and was probably abandoned when the Spanish forcibly relocated the entire island population to Guam in 1698.
The Unai Achugao Archaeological Site is a major archaeological site on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. This site is one of the first sites at which reliable radiocarbon dates were acquired for the early habitation of the island, which were dated to about 3500 BCE. Excavations at the site also yielded more than 3,000 pottery fragments, which were used in the early classification of pottery types in the region. The site also included a nearly-intact habitation surface which was protected by a fossilized coral reef.
The Gongna Beach defenses are a collection of World War II structures built on or near Gongna Beach in Tamuning on the island of Guam, now a United States territory. These defenses were erected by the Imperial Japanese Army during its occupation of the island 1941–44. The three surviving elements were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. They are located well north of the main Allied landing areas of the 1944 Battle of Guam.
The NMI Museum of History and Culture, also known as the NMI Museum, is a museum in Garapan, Saipan hosting exhibitions about the Chamorro and Carolinian people and also displays artifacts, documents, textiles, and photographs from the Spanish, German, Japanese, and American periods in the Northern Mariana Islands. The museum has repatriated a significant number of historic objects from the Marianas that were held nationally and internationally in private collections and by foreign museums, companies, and militaries. More than one million dollars has been invested in its collections. The historical buildings on the grounds have been renovated to preserve them, prevent further deterioration, and safeguard visitors. The museum is located across from Sugar King Park.
