Cat 5 Typhoon Yutu devastates Saipan, Tinian
(Updated Oct. 30.)
Just three years after Typhoon Soudelor, a Category 4 monster with sustained winds of 130 mph with gusts in excess of 160 mph, became the worst storm to strike Saipan and Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands in nearly 30 years, beleaguered citizens of the U.S. Trust Territory are facing another serious crisis.
Surprisingly, however, if early video is any indication, many of the larger buildings along the Saipan shore appeared to be in better shape than I expected, based on the early reports. To view the brief Oct. 26 Saipan KSPN2 News “Typhoon Yutu Round-Up,” please click here. .
On the other hand, global satellite images present a far starker view of Yutu’s destruction. To view the Weather Channel’s “Super Typhoon Yutu’s Destruction in Saipan, Tinian Seen in Before and After Satellite Photos,” please click here.
This aerial drone photo shows the devastation of Super Typhoon Yutu on Saipan. (Courtesy Raymond Zapanta, Saipan Tribune. )
The Washington Post framed the awful news as well as any of the U.S. media it its Oct. 25 headline: “Category 5 typhoon Yutu devastates the Northern Marianas in worst storm to hit any part of U.S. since 1935”:
Typhoon Yutu’s 180 mph winds overturned cars, knocked down hundreds of power poles and left an island of thousands without a medical center and another without an airport. Buildings were reduced to haphazard piles of tin and wood; if a structure wasn’t made of concrete, one resident said, it was probably wiped out by the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit any part of the United States since 1935.
. . . According to figures released by the Weather Underground website, Yutu was tied with the fifth-highest wind speed of any storm on record as it made landfall. Only a few storms, including 2013′s Super Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines, have been stronger, and even then not by much. For the United States, just one storm — the 1935 Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys — is believed to have been more powerful.
To read more of the Washington Post story, please click here.
Damage from Super Typhoon Yutu is shown outside Glenn Hunter’s home on Saipan, on Oct. 25, 2018. As the typhoon crossed over the island, the walls shook in Hunter’s concrete home, a tin roof over the garage blew away and howling winds terrified his cats. Maximum sustained winds of 180 mph were recorded around the eye of Yutu, which passed over Tinian and Saipan early Thursday local time. (Courtesy Glen Hunter via AP.)
Everyone knows know about Hurricane Michael, which made landfall at Mexico Beach, Fla., as a high-end Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph on Oct. 10, and has claimed at least 54 deaths, but if you blinked you’d miss the news about Yutu. Because the fortunes of the approximately 55,000-plus indigenous people of the Trust Territory of the Mariana Islands, consisting mainly of Saipan and Tinian, present no immediate political benefit to the U.S. media establishment, network coverage of the tragedy has been scant.
In the Weather Channel’s Oct. 26 update, “Super Typhoon Yutu Impacts: 1 Killed, 133 Injured by Storm,” we learn:
- Super Typhoon Yutu left major damage on the Northern Mariana Islands after a direct hit.
- The entire island of Saipan suffered damage and it may take weeks to restore power to everyone.
- The governor’s office confirmed one death and at least 133 injuries in Saipan.
In an Oct. 26 story, “Tinian destruction: 10 out of 10,” the Saipan Tribune reported, “On the smaller island of Tinian, which took a direct hit from Super Typhoon Yutu, most of the houses were destroyed, and even some concrete ones were reduced to rubble, resident Juanita Mendiola said.”
Recovery efforts were well under way by Oct. 29, and in a few parts of the island, power had been restored. To see the latest KSPN2 News reports, please click here.
Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area, October was always my favorite month, as its fresh, cool, blue days trumpeted the end of another hot, humid summer, but as we see, it can also be the cruelest month if you live in the wrong place.
“Our Lady of Mount Carmel intercede for All on Saipan and Tinian as they embrace their journey to Recovery,” Saipan residents Evelyna and Carlos Shoda, spared from certain months without power, wrote from their temporary home in Fountain Valley, Calif. “Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us.”
Frances Sablan, secretary of the Amelia Earhart Memorial Monument Committee and a close friend of Marie Castro, its guiding light, wrote in understatement Oct. 25, “Si Yu’us Ma’åsi’! We need all the prayers to help us through this recovery phase!”
Just after midnight, Oct. 27, my prayers were answered when I received a brief email from Marie Castro: “Thanks for your prayers,” she wrote. “Allen [Marie’s nephew] came and shut all the shutters to secure the house from the typhoon, Yutu. I was in total darkness for two days. I did not have any damage around the house, everything is OK other than fallen trees along Navy Hill. I was reading the book [Truth at Last, presumably].”
With the recent news of Josephine Blanco Akiyama’s return to Saipan at age 92, I had been cautiously hopeful that some progress was being made there in favor of the planned Earhart Memorial Monument. But this worthy cause and all the controversy it brings will now be set aside for another time, as far more pressing matters occupy the unlucky citizens of Saipan, Tinian and the rest of the Mariana Islands.
Your prayers are needed and appreciated.
Josephine Blanco Akiyama returns to Saipan
Josephine Blanco Akiyama, whose childhood sighting of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan at Saipan’s Tanapag Harbor in the summer of 1937 ignited the true modern search for America’s First Lady of Flight, returned to her birthplace Oct. 6 and was warmly welcomed by family and friends at an invitation-only reception hosted by the Amelia Earhart Memorial Committee at Garapan’s Fiesta Resort and Spa Oct. 9. (Boldface mine throughout.)
At the reception dinner, also attended by reporters from the Marianas Variety, Saipan Tribune and Saipan’s KSPN2 News, Josephine, appearing well at 92, who’s lived in San Mateo, Calif. since 1957, said she still “still vividly remembers her only encounter with the American aviator,” Lyn C. Lirio wrote in her Marianas Variety story Oct. 11, headlined, “2 say they saw Amelia Earhart on Saipan.”
This happened in 1937, Josephine said; she was 11 years old and didn’t know the woman’s name until much later, nor did she say anything publicly about it until she was 20 years old, working on Saipan as an assistant to Navy dentist Dr. Casimir Sheft.
Josephine Blanco Akiyama (second from left, seated) poses with her Blanco family at the dinner hosted by the Amelia Earhart Memorial Monument Committee, led by Rep. Donald Barcinas and Marie S.C. Castro, at Fiesta Resort & Spa on Tuesday evening. Photo by Lori Lyn C. Lirio, Marianas Variety.
In her story, Lirio cited two key paragraphs from the 1960 book that started it all, Daughter of the Sky, by Paul Briand Jr.:
In the summer of 1937 Josephine was riding her bicycle toward Tanapag Harbor. She was taking her Japanese brother-in-law, J.Y. Mastsumoto, his lunch and was hurrying along because it was nearly 12 noon. Josephine has a special pass to the Japanese military area near the harbor. Not even Japanese civilians were admitted to the area unless they carried the proper credentials. The young girl rode up to gate, stopped her bicycle, and presented her pass. The guard allowed her into the restricted area. On the way to meet her brother-in-law, Josephine heard an airplane flying overhead. She looked up and a saw a silver two-engine plane. The plane seemed to be in trouble, for it came down low, headed out into the harbor, and belly-landed on the water.
The plane crash-landed in the harbor. She and her brother-in-law joined the people who gathered to watch. She saw the American woman standing next to a tall man wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt, and was surprised because the woman was not dressed as a woman usually dressed. Instead of a dress, the American woman wore a man’s shirt and trousers; and instead of long hair, she wore her hair cut short, like a man. The faces of the man and woman were white and drawn, as if they were sick.
The most surprising aspect of the evening featured Joaquin Salas, a relatively unknown native Chamorro, whose claimed eyewitness account was discussed in Rich Martini’s “Amelia Earhart on Saipan” YouTube video, but, to my knowledge, has been otherwise unreported, telling the group he was also 11 years old when he saw Earhart on Saipan — in front of his family’s house in Chalan Kanoa. Lirio continued with Salas’ account:
“I saw a Japanese military truck. They were loading three people — two men and one lady. A Japanese soldier used black ribbons to tie their hands. They parked in front of our house. We were watching them,” he said, adding that it was the first and last time he saw Earhart. “I don’t where the Japanese took them.”
Lirio added that Rep. Donald Barcinas, president of the memorial committee, “said their plan to build an Amelia Earhart monument on island has the support of the Marianas Visitor Authority, the Department of Public Lands, the Historic Preservation Office and the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs.” This sounds encouraging, but with the exception of a recent significant donation by a local, independent couple, the vast majority of contributions to the memorial has come from U.S. contributors, and remains a relative pittance.
The headline story of the May 27, 1960 edition of the San Mateo Times was the first of several written by reporter Linwood Day based on Josephine Blanco Akiyama’s eyewitness account (photo inset above right) that set the stage for Fred Goerner’s first visit to Saipan in mid-June 1960 and led Goerner’s 1966 bestseller, The Search for Amelia Earhart. Day worked closely by phone with Goerner, and on July 1, 1960, the Earhart frenzy reached its peak, with the Times announcing “Amelia Earhart Mystery Is Solved” in a 100-point banner headline. None of the major newspapers in America ever touched this story, though some of the smaller papers in flyover country did run it.
Rep. Barcinas said Josephine’s eyewitness account “is a living testimony — she is a living history, and we are very proud and honored to have her here. She is in the books written about Amelia Earhart.”
To read the Marianas Variety story, please click here.
Meanwhile, Saipan’s other newspaper, the Saipan Tribune, whose coverage of the monument issue has been tepid since the proposal was announced last February — see “$150K requested for Amelia Earhart statue” and “Group behind Earhart memorial seeks assistance from Rotary Club” — showed up, but one can only wonder why they bothered.
A moving photo of Josephine with two of her nephews at the dinner is nice, but otherwise it’s hard to imagine a more halfhearted effort than the Tribune presents in “I saw Amelia Earhart,” by reporter Erwin Encinares. This mediocrity wasn’t even on the Tribune‘s front page, but was buried somewhere back in the paper. I had to actually search for it in the online edition because it wasn’t even listed on the first page of the local news items, which themselves were buried.
“Two persons reportedly saw on two separate occasions the lost aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart on Saipan, the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean,” Encinares wrote in his uninspired lead, which went downhill from there. In addition to turning off virtually anyone who might have been remotely interested, Encinares got Josephine’s current age, 92, wrong (93), as well as her age when she saw Amelia, 11, not 12 as he wrote.
The Saipan Tribune should have opted out of this event rather than undermining it with this poorly written story that, in fact, signaled its readers that the occasion of the return of the most important of the Saipan eyewitness is all but meaningless to them. Moreover, the story contained nothing about the planned Earhart Memorial Monument.
Josephine Blanco Akiyama hugs her nephew, Harry Blanco, as John Blanco, another of Josephine’s nephews, looks on. (Photo by Erwin Encinares, Saipan Tribune.)
To read the Saipan Tribune story, which has garnered no “Likes” and one comment — a correction of another factual error in the story — since its publication on Oct. 11, please click here.
TV is always more effective in our video-centric media culture, and the Saipan KSPN2 News (Saipan’s Destination Channel) story was far better than the Saipan Tribune’s lame effort, though its report on the Oct. 9 event didn’t air until Oct. 15. The three-minute, 40-second segment featured Ashley McDowell interviewing Josephine at the dinner, with cutaways to file footage of Amelia and still shots of Josephine and Dr. Casimir Sheft. McDowell’s visit to Tanapag Harbor, where Josephine saw the fliers in 1937, was a nice touch.
Otherwise, McDowell’s decision to display, or more accurately, flash the July 1, 1960 front page of the San Mateo Times, with its 100-point banner headline proclaiming, “Amelia Earhart Mystery is Solved,” which readers have seen many times on this blog, highlighted a mostly flat, disappointing report, much too low-key and uninspired than this rare occasion demanded. Having the famous Josephine Blanco Akiyama live and lucid at 92 was a miracle in itself, but you’d never know it by watching this video.
The segment ended with McDowell voicing no real conclusion or telling point, and again, nothing was said about the proposed Amelia Earhart Memorial Monument. On a scale of 1 to 10, this was a 5 at best, and it likely didn’t change any minds among the uninformed masses on Saipan. It’s also fair to ask whether the ugly local politics surrounding the memorial initiative — overwhelmingly against it from the beginning — exerted an insidious influence on the tone, content and efficacy of the KSPN2 News report.
On the other hand, some credit is indeed due to KSPN2 News, as Saipan’s Destination Channel is the only TV news station in the world that has produced two important stories recently about Amelia Earhart, Marie Castro and the proposed Earhart Memorial Monument (see “Saipan TV News supports Earhart monument“), while not a single American media outlet has breathed a word of it. Thus, the U.S. establishment’s total and absolute hatred for the truth in the Earhart disappearance remains stronger than ever, and the 81-year travesty shows no signs of abating.
To watch the Saipan KSPN2 News video of the story, please click here.
Marie Castro sent me the below prayer that she wrote for the special occasion of Josephine’s visit, lovingly prepared to close the evening’s events of Oct. 9. “I told Allen [Marie’s nephew] to play the recorded music, ‘Amazing Grace’ in the background while I read the prayer,“ Marie wrote. “I hope the people will be inspired and believe this significant event of 1937.”
Thank you for your amazing grace which is enabling Mrs. Josephine Blanco Akiyama, the last living person to witness the presence of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan here on Saipan in 1937 to be with us here tonight with the Amelia Earhart Memorial Monument group.
81 years is a long, definitely overdue, time for Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan to be given the recognition they deserve as human beings who unfortunately met their death on Saipan soil.
Tonight, as we acknowledge their presence here on our island, we ask that you guide our efforts to honor the memory of these two great American aviators with a memorial to be built in their honor.
This is our prayer, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
God Bless us.
Saipan TV News supports Earhart monument
In an overdue but much-needed and appreciated development, on Oct. 1, Saipan’s KSPN2 News presented the first-ever TV news interview with Marie S.C. Castro, 85, whose strident advocacy for the proposed Amelia Earhart Memorial Monument on Saipan has been the subject of several posts on this blog since the plan was announced in the Feb. 7 Marianas Variety story, “Group to build Amelia Earhart monument on Saipan.”
“Every human being that dies,” Marie told reporter Ashley McDowell, “we have to give the honor they deserve as human beings. And I was thinking that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were never given anything to honor them or to acknowledge them here on Saipan.”
Thanks to the technical skills of longtime Oakland, Calif., supporter David Kaspiak, you can watch the three minute, 30-second KSPN2 News piece by clicking here: 
KSPN2 News.mp4.
Marie S.C. Castro, standing, the prime mover behind the initiative to build a memorial monument to Amelia Earhart on Saipan, shares her extensive knowledge of the truth about Amelia’s disappearance with a few interested citizens at Saipan’s Joeten-Kiyu Library on Sept. 14. Photo by Junhan B. Todiño. To see the Marianas Variety story, please click here.
McDowell finished the segment by announcing that “Josephine Blanco [Akiyama], who says she saw Amelia Earhart and the navigator Fred Noonan at Tanapag harbor here in Saipan when she was just 11 years old” would be coming to Saipan Oct. 7, and promised a report. Co-anchor Adrianna Cotero added the final touch by enthusiastically telling McDowell, “What a great idea to have a monument here on Saipan!”
Among the several fine stories published here and in the Marianas Variety on the proposed Earhart Memorial Monument, was “Marie Castro: An iron link to Saipan’s forgotten past,” which appeared in the March 28 Marianas Variety, with a longer version here on April 2,“Marie Castro: Iron link to Saipan’s forgotten history,” in praise of this brave woman whose vision birthed the bold but highly unpopular initiative to build an Earhart memorial on Saipan. But these print-based efforts have done little to improve the ugly politics that surround this movement, which, according to one informed source, are running 99-1 against its success.
Undeniably, TV’s power to persuade and change minds is far greater than newspapers or radio, and this interview is a badly needed boost. In attempting to convert even small numbers of the historically ignorant and propagandized on Saipan, only via TV can the truth break through the stone wall of massive resistance.
Saipan TV: The Visitors Channel (SaipanTV.com) is clearly not connected with any of the American alphabet networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC or Fox, actually the worst of them all for its blatant hypocrisy — or any other U.S. establishment news source, or this interview with Marie Castro would never have been contemplated, much less have seen air. Unsurprisingly, nobody in the United States has touched the story of the proposed Earhart monument on Saipan, which should remind everyone how much the Earhart truth continues to be hated, ignored and denied by our establishment and its media toadies. 
The news of Josephine Blanco Akiyama’s imminent visit to Saipan was likely an important factor in the decision by the independent station’s management to do the interview with Marie Castro shortly before the most famous of all the Saipan Earhart eyewitnesses returned to her birthplace.
Please consider contributing to the proposed Amelia Earhart Memorial Monument. This is a most deserving and worthy cause that has, sadly, been largely ignored. You can make your tax-deductible check payable to: Amelia Earhart Memorial Monument, Inc., and send to AEMMI, c/o Marie S. Castro, P.O. Box 500213, Saipan MP 96950. The monument’s success is 100 percent dependent on private donations, and everyone who gives will receive a letter of appreciation from the Earhart Memorial Committee. Thank you for whatever you can give.
![This story appeared at the top of page 1 in the July 13, 1937 edition of the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania)-Globe Times. “Vague and unconfirmed rumors that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan have been rescued by a Japanese fishing boat without a radio,” the report began, “and therefore unable to make any report, found no verification here today, but plunged Tokio [sic] into a fever of excitement.” The story was quickly squelched in Japan, and no follow-up was done. (Courtesy Woody Peard.)](https://earharttruth.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/fishing-boat-story-5.png?w=616&h=352 "Fishing boat story 5")
Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last 
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