The Marianas Trench, almost seven miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, is the deepest spot on earth. From its depths rises a great chain of mountains whose peaks aren't capped by thin air and heavy snow, but blanketed by palm trees and a heavy, tropical humidity, for this great chain of mountains, taller than the Himalayas, is reduced to a string of overlooked islands by the vastness of the Pacific.
Southernmost of the Marianas Islands is Guam, a United States territory for over a century, spoils to the victors of the Spanish-American War. Only 120 miles to the north, lies the island of Saipan and the rest of the Marianas Islands stretch further north into the immense emptiness of the Pacific. These islands have a common history, except for this century's which brought war, geopolitical manipulation, and the United States to their soil.
For most of the first half of the 20th century, Guam was an outpost of Americanism amidst an expanding Japanese empire which occupied the rest of the Marianas. At the height of World War II, Japan's empire encompassed four island chains scattered halfway across the North Pacific and stretched into the Southern hemisphere. American soldiers spent four years island hopping their way across the Pacific, pushing the Japanese back to Japan. When the war was over, Guam was returned to its special status as a United States territory, while its nearest neighbors in the Marianas chain were lumped together with the diverse cultures of other North Pacific islands as American wards. The United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific received little aid and little attention from its American administrators except for when atomic bombs were tested in its lagoons.
Fifty-five years later, even after becoming a part of America, the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI) still receives little attention, allowing an illicit trade in human labor to thrive on American soil.
Saipan, the largest of these islands, about the same size as the San Francisco peninsula, was the first of the Northern Marianas to begin to develop in Guam's image of four-lane highways and tropical strip malls, high rise hotels and a tourist trade. Over twenty years later, with this process incomplete, it has done so the most prominently. The island's tropical rainforest perched against the backdrop of ocean has made millionaires out of many Saipanese overnight as indigenous lands are sold at a premium to foreign corporations constructing hotels, golf courses, discos, nightclubs, massage parlors and strip malls.
