This is a 1940s photo of the bakery in Chalan Kanoa during the U.S. Naval administration after the Second World War. From being paid $20 a month to bake bread for the people of Saipan including U.S. soldiers during the Liberation of Saipan in 1944, the U.S. Navy realized Tun Herman Pan was a talented baker, and as such, built him a custom-made brick oven for his trade. Three months after Camp Susupe closed, the couple, Herman Jose and Maria Juliana, opened Herman’s Bakery on October 26, 1944 – 80 years ago today.
Just three months after Camp Susupe closed permanently, the couple, Herman Jose and Maria Juliana Deleon Guerrero, opened Herman’s Bakery on October 26, 1944. This event marked a significant milestone as Herman’s became the first locally owned bakery in Micronesia during the post-war reconstruction phase. They set out on a historic journey as pioneers in Micronesia: it evolved from a bakery to becoming Micronesia’s first privately-owned business after the war.
Herman’s Bakery was located in Susupe, at the back of the current United States Postal Service (Post Office) in Chalan Kanoa-Susupe area. Chamorro families moved into Japanese barracks in Chalan Kanoa, and families lived in close proximity, relocating as close to one another possible.3
Herman’s became an enigmatic symbol of recovery and resilience from the Battle of Saipan for the residents of Saipan and the whole of Micronesia which remains to this day, 80 years later.
Tun Herman’s decision to open his bakery business was to support the need for services in Saipan— he also extended support for the community’s resilience, way of life, and ultimately the post-war reconstruction efforts. According to Jesus Pan, “My father received the baking equipment and supplies he had been using inside the stockade when the U.S. military freed our people and continued baking bread for his fellow islanders.” He recalls hearing stories from the elders that “after the residents of Camp Susupe and Camp Chalan Kanoa were released from the stockade, they became my father’s first customers.”
Tun Herman provided the daily bread for an entire island, so that despite the ravages of war, no one went hungry.4
The truck his father used for the bakery was a used military truck that Tun Herman found in the jungles of Saipan following the war. “My father found two American-made vehicles: a jeep and a truck and had somebody repair what they could. Basically, one was running, and he used the other one for parts,” Jesus recalls from his father’s stories. “The truck was used to carry lumber to be used for the oven in baking bread.”
Herman’s had the brick wood-fired oven provided by the U.S. military, and their method, explained Jesus, was “to burn the wood on the other side until the bricks reached the needed temperature for baking. Bricks absorb the heat and radiate it back to the cavity of the wood-fired oven. What makes the oven produce the bread, my uncles told me, is that we have to burn the wood so hot,” he said.
Tun Herman’s unifying role was also because he had his brothers next to him: Juan ‘Tun Juan’ Delos Reyes Deleon Guerrero, the oldest, and Jose “Pepi” Delo Reyes Deleon Guerrero, the youngest. The siblings joined Maria “Tan Marikita” in working alongside each other to grow the bakery for the rest of their lives. Herman had also built a warehouse at the back of their house in Susupe, and during breaktime, workers would join Tun Herman and Tan Marikita’s family “to eat together”.
