A RECENTLY published study focused on the social impact the U.S. Coast Guard Long Range Aerial Navigation, or LORAN, station and its servicemen had on the local community in San Antonio.
Archaeological and archival investigations indicate that the Cold War facility in Afetna Point was built a few months after the American invasion of Saipan in June 1944 during World War II.
Based on the oral histories gathered from indigenous Chamorro elders in San Antonio, the station and the U.S. Coast Guard servicemembers played a complex and vital role in the social and economic life of the local community during the Cold War.
The study conducted by senior archaeologist Dr. Boyd Dixon states that the social impact of the USCG LORAN Station on local residents during the Cold War era was largely beneficial in the financial sense, during a time of limited resources and job opportunities on Saipan.
The station was constructed in November 1944. Enemy soldiers and resident civilians were placed in stockades until 1946.
The USCG later sponsored public activities, such as outdoor movies and softball games.
Young local boys were hired to work on the weekends as caddies for USCG officers playing golf.
Marriages between local girls and USCG servicemembers did not appear to have been discouraged.
The study notes that the release of Chamorro and Carolinian residents from the stockades in 1946 saw an expansion of San Antonio on Saipan.
Residents occupied former Navy warehouses at the nearby Kobler Field, and other military construction projects on what was later known as Capital Hill.
They then built homes, schools and churches in residential areas around small-scale commercial businesses on Beach Road.
When the USCG LORAN station was closed in 1978, a much larger array of antennas was erected by the Voice of America on Agingan point, broadcasting news and views to China.
Beginning in the late 1980s, properties immediately adjacent to Afetna Point “became the locus of growing garment industries and hotels,” which included Pacific Islands Club-Saipan.
“Post-Cold War boxing ring and fruit stands on Beach Road suggest that the former USCG property remained a locus for local San Antonio community events and island residents during an era before tourism became the dominant industry on Saipan,” Dixon said in his study.
“Cold War conflict archaeological sites such as the Afetna LORAN station that played a relatively positive role in local communities during late twentieth century history of Saipan are increasingly hard to identify today, as is the rapidly fading memory of these places and people who worked there or lived in nearby surroundings.
“In many cases like the former USCG buildings, the structures and antennas no longer stand intact, and the development of modern tourism and CNMI government construction have altered many historic structures and the landscapes of their elders’ stories. This loss to Chamorro and Carolinian family histories and their intangible heritage is equally difficult to measure, but the gathering of oral histories suggests that these collective memories remain important to those who shared their lives with USCG servicemen during the Cold War era,” he said.
With over 40 years of archaeological experience in North America, Latin America, Western Europe, and the Pacific Basin, Dixon is the senior archaeologist for the Cardno GS and SEARCH offices on Guam.
His study, titled “Cold War conflicts and the USCG Afetna Point LORAN station in Saipan, CNMI,” was published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology.
