Pågan: the tropical paradise the US wants to turn into a war zone
Former residents and
environmental campaigners to launch a lawsuit against Pentagon’s plans to use
the Marianas islands for bombing practice - by Justin McCurry and
Daniel Lin
Even here, in a region
bursting with natural beauty, it is hard to imagine a more idyllic scene than
Green Beach on Pågan island. Azure waters roll ashore before disappearing into
the volcanic sand on a perfectly shaped horseshoe beach; on the horizon, cliffs
plunge into darker open water that stretches, unhindered, more than 1,600 miles
to the north-east coast of the Philippines.
Aerial view of Mount Pågan and the
surrounding areas that have
been designated as ‘impact areas’ by the military.
Photograph: Dan Lin
But in just a few
years, Pågan’s tranquility could be shattered by the sound of heavy artillery,
ending any hopes the displaced people of this 10-mile-long speck in the western
Pacific have of returning to their ancestral home, more than three decades
after a volcanic eruption forced all 300 residents to flee. According to plans
outlined by the US Department of Defence, as many as 5,000 marines will
descend on the island to conduct war games as part of the Obama
administration’s pivot towards the Asia-Pacific.
The exercises will not
only make human settlement impossible; campaigners say it will lead to the
destruction of ancient cultural relics and threaten wildlife, including
indigenous endangered animals such as fruit bats and tree snails.
The marines will be
among more than 8,000 who are due to be relocated to Guam and Hawaii from
Okinawa as part of a controversial agreement between Washington and Tokyo to reduce
the US military footprint on the southern Japanese island. Faced with the
near-certain destruction of their homeland – part of the US Commonwealth of the
Northern Marianas – dozens of former residents have joined forces with
environmental campaigners to launch a lawsuit they hope will expose the folly
of the Pentagon’s plans to transform Pågan and Tinian, an inhabited island 200
miles to the south, into simulated theatres of war.
The whole of Pågan
would be turned into a simulated war zone to enable troops from the US, and
regional allies Japan, South Korea and Australia, to prepare for
possible confrontations sparked by China’s
military buildup in the South China Sea and its claims to
Japanese-administered islands in the East China Sea.
Gus Castro lived on
Pågan between the ages of one and five, when he and hundreds of other residents
were forced to flee after the catastrophic volcanic eruption of 1981. He spent much of his
life growing up on Saipan before returning to Pågan in 2000 to perform work as
a local guide and camp manager for US military contractors that had been sent
to build volcano sensors, a communications tower and other facilities. Other
former residents lived alongside him on the island intermittently, supported by
supplies approved by the mayor of the Northern Islands.
“When I’m living on
Saipan, I eat unhealthy food, I drink alcohol and I smoke,” says Castro, a
youthful-looking man in his early 40s who this summer joined a photographer,
other former residents and campaigners on a visit to Pågan. “In all the years
I’ve spent on Pågan, I’ve never been sick once.”.. read more (and see photos):
