The Lost Buddha of Saipan (サイパン島を失った仏像) Part 2

While waiting for a reply to my e-mails, I began to dig into the history of the Japanese population on Saipan.

Saipan is part of the Marianas Islands discovered by Magellan in 1521. During the Spanish-American War, the United States had seized Guam, the largest and most southerly of this island chain. In 1899 Spain sold all its holding in the Carolinas, Marshalls and Marianas to Germany. During Word War 1, with the support of Britian, Japan occupied all of these islands. Later the League of Nations gave Japan mandate over these territories. Guam remained as an important American naval base.


Japan administered its new mandate for it's economic benefit. Despite efforts to assimilate the native Chamorros and Carolinians into Japanese culture they were often treated as second-class citizens. Nevertheless, the economy and standard of living in the islands definitely improved during the Japanese administration. On Saipan Japanese firms established a thriving sugar industry. The city of Garapan on Saipan became the bustling capitol of the Northern Marianas, with prosperous shops and houses owned by a growing population of Japanese, Okinawans and Koreans.

First introduced in Spanish colonial times, the Catholic Church continued to thrive and was tolerated and even encouraged by Japanese officials. In 1919 the East Honganji Temple of the True Pure Land Buddhist sect ( Jodo Shinshu - 浄土真宗, ) established itself on Saipan. Shintoism and the "new religion" of Tenrikyo (天理教) were also introduced to the islands. Some claim that there was more and more pressure exerted on the islanders to participate in the Shinto religion as part of an effort to assimilate the Camorros and Carolinians into the Empire. For the most part they remained staunchly Catholic.

In 1935 at the request of about 130 Japanese emigrants a large number of Buddha statues were transported from Japan to Saipan. These eighty-eight stone Buddhas and a statue of Kobo Daishi (744-835), founder of the Shingon sect, were placed on the path up Mt. Tapotchau. For the emigrants, who came mostly from Shikoku, this reminded them of the 88 sacred temples of the famed Shikoku Pilgrimage. Thus the "88 sacred places of Saipan" became a warm reminder of home. But in 1944 Mt. Tapotchau became the vital "high ground" as American troops battled the Japanese garrison. Not surprisingly most of these statues turned up missing after the war. It was not until 2005 that former emigrants put out a request to search for many of these statues. As a result of this request nine statues turned up in private homes and museums. (See the Yomiuri Shimbun for June 25, 2005 for an article on this).

However, these were not related to the Buddha statue I had been searching for. I would have to do more searching. But I had discovered that Buddhism was an important part of the life of the Japanese colonists before the war.