A WOMAN from Minnesota and her brother from North Carolina traveled to Saipan in the hope of retracing their father’s time on the island, where he and other U.S. Marines landed on Red Beach, located along Beach Road, on the morning of June 15, 1944.
Since Patti W. Robinson arrived on Thursday, June 12, 2025, with her husband, Len Robinson, and her brother, Bill Wherritt, they’ve been touring the entire island — visiting nearly every place their late father, Pvt. First Class Robert C. Wherritt, might have walked through 79 years ago.
PFC Wheritt saw action on Tarawa, Kiribati before he set foot in Saipan as part of the U.S. Marine Corps 2nd Battalion, 6th Regiment, 2nd Marine Division.
Among the 8,000 U.S. troops storming Saipan’s shores, he endured intense bombardment from Japanese artillery, mortars, and machine guns.
Pfc. Wherrit, who would later be promoted to sergeant, was a Purple Heart and Bronze Star recipient.
“My father suffered severely,” Robinson said. Such suffering included post-war stress, but “he didn’t talk about it.”
Because her father never spoke about his wartime experience before his passing in 2008 at the age of 82, Robinson said she had to piece together information and photographs she gathered from the National Archives and Pentagon records until she was finally able to reconstruct the full scope of his operational journey.
“We’re losing a lot of history,” Robinson said. “So I had to research everything — every step my father took.”
With the help of a pastor — introduced to her by a Saipan resident whom she met through Facebook — Robinson said she and her brother were able to retrace the steps their father once took. “It’s been surreal,” she said.
Trying to imagine the past through her father’s eyes, Robinson said, “has been incredibly emotional. It has peeled away a lot of layers — but it has also been incredible.”
Prior to visiting the island, Robinson wrote a story about her father. In doing so, she said, “I envisioned Saipan, I envisioned the beaches, the mountain, Garapan, everywhere that he walked, the ocean coming in because I knew the ship he was on.” It gave her an “incredible understanding” of who her father was as a man after the war.
On Sunday, Robinson, her husband and her brother were invited by local veteran Fabian Indalecio to his own museum at his residence in San Antonio.
Over the years, Indalecio has collected World War II relics, which include rusty helmets, carbine cartridges and ammunition.
Robinson said these helped them visualize what her father had gone through on Saipan.
“Now I understand what he carried, his weapons, everything that he did, I was able to understand, as I can see and I can touch them. It’s as if I went back to his time,” Robinson said.
She is excited to go back home and share with her family and friends all the things she learned on Saipan about her father.
Bill Wheritt, Patti Wheritt Robinson and her husband, Len Robinson with NMI veteran Fabian Indalecio at his WWII museum in San Antonio on Sunday.
Photo by Emmanuel T. Erediano
Some of the World War II relics in Fabian Indalecio’s collection.
