Ballardian

Military church, Tinian, © Dan Norton 2006

Thanks to Iain X from the JGB Mailing List for this link, a series of photos taken by a ’seabee’ stationed on the North Pacific, Micronesian island of Tinian during WWII. As the site’s author, Dan Norton, says, “These photos were developed by my grandfather in his clandestine photo lab he ran while stationed on the island of Tinian.” Many thanks to Dan for allowing me to publish some of them here.

Grandpa Norton’s photos — of mass military graveyards; bombers submerged in sand; the flash of war in a tropical setting — will resonate with anyone familiar with J G Ballard’s war stories. I travelled around Micronesia (Yap, Palau, Pohnpei, Guam, Tinian, Rota, Saipan) last year and was floored by Tinian, this serene place, and its role as the launching pad for the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Atomic Bomb Pits, Tinian, 2005 (Simon Sellars)

On Tinian I was caught off guard in lots of ways. When I went for a skinny deep at a northern beach, I felt safe as I’d not sighted another human being for hours. But the universe conspired; as soon as I emerged naked from the water, a busload of Japanese tourists unloaded right next to my car. Where my clothes were. Women giggled; men looked away. Walking over to my clothes, I waved and tried to act natural. The bus driver, a local, looked me up and down.

‘Hey Little Boy,’ he scoffed. ‘You looking for Fat Man?’

But I was. How did he know? Oh, I see. Very funny. He gave me directions, I got dressed and hightailed it to North Field, Tinian’s abandoned US airbase.

Like Melville in Ballard’s ‘My Dream of Flying to Wake Island’, I took photos of all the abandoned runways and bases; the shot above is of the pits where the the Little Boy and Fat Man atomic bombs were loaded into the B29s that destroyed Japan. They’re now covered with plexiglass, to deter souvenir hunters I presume; a man was recently charged with stealing bits of North Field and selling them on the Internet. Or maybe it’s a deterrent to vandals… I took hundreds of shots of the remains of Japanese Zeroes, tanks and anti-aircraft guns in the Micronesian jungle, and I tried to visualise what the islands were like during WWII — Tinian was the world’s busiest air base back then, traffic generated entirely by American war planes. It’s a tiny, tiny place — peaceful and lush — so it’s very hard to imagine.

Dan’s photos fill in some of the gaps. As does Ballard…

“The B-29s which bombed the airfield beside Lunghua Camp, near Shanghai, where I was interned during the second World War, had reportedly flown from Guam. Pacific Islands, with their silent airstrips among the palm trees, Wake Island above all, have a potent magic for me. The runways that cross these little atolls, now mostly abandoned, seem to represent extreme states of nostalgia and possibility, doorways into another continuum.

It was from the island of Tinian, in the Marianas, that the atom bombs were launched against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended the war unexpectedly and almost certainly saved the lives of myself and my fellow internees in Shanghai, where the huge Japanese armies had intended to make a last stand against the unexpected American landings”.

– from Ballard’s annotations, JG Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition, RE/Search, 1990, p. 33.

Tinian, WWII, © Dan Norton

Abandoned Japanese Zero, Yap, 2005 (Simon Sellars)

In Micronesia I tapped into other Ballardian currents, especially in Saipan, an island continually lumped in with Guam as a no-culture, overdeveloped resort park for rich Japanese and Americans. It’s said that during WWII, the occupying Japanese forces wiped out the Saipanese villages and the local Chamorro culture and replaced them with facsimile Japanese towns, bars, restaurants. Landing in Saipan today, you’d be forgiven for wondering if they were ever kicked out. Hotel signage and pamphlets are often solely written in Japanese; there’s an abundance of Japanese restaurants and sushi houses; and many of the locals speak at least a smattering of the language.

Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, Banzai Cliff, Saipan, 2005, (Simon Sellars)

In the north, possibly Saipan’s most beautiful region, filled with rolling hills and lush beaches, there are numerous monuments, statues and homages to the war-dead Japanese. There’s a happy-go-lucky atmosphere at these monuments. Busloads of Japanese tourists make the circuit from cannon to cliff, from the early morning to the late afternoon, laughing and joking, taking snaps and enjoying picnics.

At Banzai Cliff I witnessed something extraordinary, the afterimage of which has remained with me ever since. Some background: it was at this cliff where, during the war, hundreds of Japanese families committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the Americans. The youngest child would be the first to go, pushed over the edge by the next youngest, and so on, until the mother pushed the last child over. Finally, the father pushed the mother over before he too made a running jump. This story sums up the futility of the Japanese war effort, especially considering the return of the Japanese these days, in greater numbers and as valued customers. Looking over the cliff, I was caught up in mad visions of the raging water swirling below, imagining I was one of those poor children, beginning to understand that I was looking at death.

Banzai Cliff (northern Saipan), 2005 (Simon Sellars)

I heard some giggling: a young Japanese girl dressed in fashionable camouflage pants and cap was posing by one of the monuments, having her photograph taken. OK, that’s what Japanese tourists do; but then she began to pout sexily, twirl her hair seductively, and tilt her head at a come-hither angle. When she slipped her top down to reveal a nipple, the penny dropped. She was either modelling the latest in camo gear and had picked a suitably war-drenched region to pose against, or it was some kind of soft-porn shoot…with a war theme.

I found this odd couple ahead of me at two other monuments — this young, desirable girl and her photographer, an older guy in his forties, dressed like the hip movie director in Lost In Translation, with his baggy pants, blow-waved hair, John-Lennon sunglasses and red baseball cap. At an old WWII Japanese cannon near Banzai Cliff, I watched her mount the weapon then dismount, pouting and pretending to lick the barrel. She was incredibly un-self-conscious, and at one point looked me directly in the eye with a dazzling smile. I was beginning to understand where these pictures would end up; maybe I’ll do a Google search in a few months time (something like ‘saipan banzai nipple gun barrel’) and all will be revealed.

Hotel Nikko (northern Saipan), 2006 (Simon Sellars)

On the way to Banzai Cliff is the Hotel Nikko Saipan, especially notable for its futuristic design: the architects must have modelled the Nikko on the domed city from the ’70s sci-fi film Logan’s Run. Clearly this luxury hotel was meant to herald in a tourist-driven utopia that would transform Saipan. There’s no doubt that Saipan is very popular with the Japanese, but not nearly as much since the bottom fell out of the Asian economy a few years back. The local Chamorros seem to have traded in their cultural heritage for a stake in this consumer-driven utopia, only for the gamble to backfire. Even more so than Guam, there’s a fully devolved Chamorro culture in Saipan, replaced by the rusted hulks of abandoned shopping centres.

Across the road from the Nikko is one of these burnt-out shells, the La Fiesta shopping centre. The Lonely Planet guidebook touted this as a major hub, but things have obviously changed in the five years since the book was written. The La Fiesta was like San Francisco at the start of another ’70s sci-fi flick, The Omega Man: there were cars and other technological signs of civilisation, but no indication whatsoever of human life. I wandered around for a good ten minutes, staring at abandoned Japanese restaurants and computer-less Internet cafes filled with wires and cables, before I saw another person. A man – stepping from the shadows, well-dressed and genial. He smiled and winked at me, then disappeared into an office. I was spooked. An apparition? But there were other people, busily typing away at their desks. I discovered another office, with more actual people, but the whole centre was infused with a dank melancholy. I couldn’t help but think that these office workers — like the last survivors of a nuclear war, holed up underground and trying to restart civilisation on a scorched Earth — were clinging to Saipan’s dreams of a tourist utopia, desperately trying to kick-start the economy all by themselves…

La Fiesta Shopping Centre (northern Saipan), 2006, (Simon Sellars)

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“These illustrations of the Pacific atoll, with its vast concrete runways, he had collected over the previous months. Melville’s real interest had been in the island itself, a World War II airbase and now refuelling point for trans-Pacific passenger jets. The combination of scuffed sand and concrete, metal shacks rusting by the runways, the total psychological reduction of this man-made landscape, seized his mind in a powerful but ambiguous way.
…
Melville prowled along the mantelpiece of the beach-house, slapping the line of photographs. ‘Look at those runways, everything is there. A big airport like the Wake field is a zone of tremendous possibility — a place of beginnings, by the way, not ends’.
…
He resolved to make his world-wide journey, externally to Wake Island, and internally across the planets of his mind”.

– J.G. Ballard, ‘My Dream of Flying to Wake Island’, 1974.

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Distressed B29, Tinian, © Dan Norton 2006