Saipan Remembers Its Less-Famous D-Day -- 50Th Anniversary Of Key Wwii Battle In The Pacific

TOMORROW MARKS the 50th anniversary of the battle of Saipan, where U.S. forces ousted the Japanese to establish bases for the air attacks on Tokyo. In its own way, the victory was as significant as D-Day was in Europe. -----------------------------------------------------------------

SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands - President Clinton won't be there. Nor will any other heads of state, or lines of satellite dishes and TV trucks.

But for the 50th anniversary of D-Day in Saipan - a fierce, three-week battle that helped end the war in the Pacific - there will finally be a fitting memorial.

"The trees will have to come later," Froilan C. Tenorio, governor of this U.S. commonwealth in the Northern Mariana Islands, said as he spread a stack of blueprints out on a table in his office. "But, after all these years, I think that we are finally going to have something."

That something is American Memorial Park, a $4.5 million project Saipan's leaders have mulled over for years, but never got around to building until Tenorio gave the plan a push after he took office in January.

Construction workers have been working around the clock for three weeks to prepare for tomorrow's anniversary, pouring concrete for the park's amphitheater, setting up fairgrounds and erecting a wall listing the names of thousands of Americans who died in the assault on Saipan.

Saipan is the second-largest island in the Marianas chain, about 3,800 miles west of Honolulu and 1,600 miles south of Tokyo. It was at the fringe of the Japanese empire during World War II, but today is under U.S. jurisdiction.

D-Day on Saipan came early on June 15, 1944, when the Marines' 2nd and 4th divisions landed on its southwestern beaches under heavy fire from Japanese artillery and anti-boat guns. By nightfall, more than 1,500 Americans had died.

Before the island was secured on July 9, 71,034 U.S. troops would come ashore, and 3,100 would die along with 300 Chamorro natives and almost all of the 30,000 Japanese defenders.

It was a crucial victory for America, putting Japan's main islands within reach of its B-29 bombers. Saipan became the take-off point for devastating firebomb raids on Tokyo and other major Japanese cities.

It was from the neighboring island of Tinian that the A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were launched.

"We like to think that it was those bombs that ended the war," said Tenorio.

Saipan, which was virtually denuded by the fighting, is once again covered with a lush blanket of sweet-smelling plumeria, palm and mangrove and bright orange blossoms from indigenous trees.

The government plans to mark the D-Day anniversary with nearly a month of celebrations, including Marine bands, a fly-by featuring U.S. fighters based in Japan and a parade by U.S. veterans. About 250 American and Japanese veterans are expected over the next month.

Memorial organizer Nancy Weil said she was disappointed that, considering all the pomp and ceremony afforded to Normandy last week, Saipan's 50th is going virtually unnoticed by many Americans.

"Americans are so biased toward Europe," she said. "This was a horrible, horrible battle. The Japanese have come back and buried their dead. They have memorials all over the island. But the park is our first real memorial for the Marines."

Each day buses filled with Japanese tourists - most of whom have come to the island to golf, dive or sunbathe - wind their way to the island's northern slopes. The mountains are cluttered with reminders of the brutal fate that met the Japanese soldiers and civilians in the battle's closing days.

Many light incense at mass memorials on "Banzai Cliff" and in the Last Command Post, a shell-ridden bunker.

Others peer silently off the cliff, where hundreds of Japanese jumped to their deaths rather than surrender to the Americans.

"We're already forgetting the lessons we should have learned," said Nobuyuki Koike, a middle-aged business executive from Tokyo who offered his prayers at Banzai Cliff. "We forget it could happen again."