The Pittsburgh Press (March 13, 1945)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
IN THE MARIANAS ISLANDS (delayed) – One thing that might help you visualize what life is like out here, is to realize that even a little island is lots bigger than you think.
There are many, many thousands of Americans scattered in camps and at airfields and in training centers and harbors over the three islands which we occupy here.
Rarely does a man know many people outside his own special unit. Even though the islands are small by our standards, they’re big enough that the individual doesn’t encompass them by any means. It would be as impossible for one man to see or know everything on one of these islands as it would to know everybody in Indianapolis.
You could live and work in your section, and never visit another section for weeks or months at a time. And that’s exactly what does happen.
For one thing, transportation is short. We are still building furiously here, such fast and fantastic building as you never dreamed of. Everything that runs is being used and there’s little left over just to run around in for fun.
No place to go
And anyhow, there’s no place to go. What towns there were nave been destroyed. There is nothing even resembling a town or city on these islands now. The natives have been set up in improvised camps, but they offer no “city life” attractions.
As we drove around one of the islands on my first day here, we went through one of the Marianas towns that had been destroyed by bombing and shelling. It had been a good-sized place, quite modern too in a tropical way. It had a city plaza and municipal buildings and paved streets, and many of the buildings were of stone or mortar.
In destruction, it looked exactly as destroyed cities all over Europe look. The same jagged half-standing wells, the stacks of rubble, the empty house you could see through the roofless homes, the deep craters in the gardens.
There was just one difference. Out here tropical vegetation is lush. And nature thrusts up her greenery so swiftly through rubble and destruction that the rums now are festooned with vines and green leaves, and it gives them a look of being very old and time-worn ruins, instead of fresh modern ones, which they are.
Get ‘island complex’
An American soldier in Europe, even though the towns may be “off limits” to him or destroyed completely, still has a sense of being near a civilization that, is like his own.
But out here there is nothing like that. You are on an island, the natives are strange people. There’s no city and no place to go. If you had a three-day pass, you’d probably spend it lying on your cot.
Eventually, boredom and the “island complex” start to take hold.
For that reason, the diversions supplied by the Army are even more important out here than in Europe. Before I left America, I heard that one island out here had more than 200 outdoor movies on it. I thought whoever told that must be crazy, for in Europe the average soldier didn’t get a chance to see a movie very often.
233 movies on islands
But the guy wasn’t crazy. These three Marianas Islands have a total of 233 outdoor movies on them. And they show every night. Even if it isn’t a good movie, it kills the time between supper and bedtime.
The theaters are usually on the slope of a hill, forming a natural amphitheater. The men sit on the ground, or bring their own boxes, or in some of them the ends of metal bomb crates are used for chairs.
There is lots of other stuff provided besides movies, too. On one island there are 65 theater stages, where soldiers themselves put on “live” shows, or where USO troupes can perform. Forty pianos have been scattered around at these places.
In Europe it was a lucky bunch of soldiers who got their hands on a radio. Over here in these small islands, the Army has distributed 3,500 radios, and they have a regular station broadcasting all the time, with music, news, shows and everything.
Big sports program
The sports program is big. On one island there are 95 softball diamonds, 35 regular diamonds, 225 volleyball courts and 30 basketball courts. Also, there are 35 boxing arenas. Boxing is very popular. They’ve had as high as 16,000 men watching a boxing match.
In addition to all this program, which is deliberate and supervised, the boys do a lot to amuse themselves. The American is adept at fixing up any old place in the world to look like home, with little picket fences and all kinds of Rube Goldberg contraptions inside to make it more livable. All this uses up time.
Just as an example, the Coral Sea bottom inside the reef around these islands abounds with fantastic miniature marine life, weird and colorful. Soldiers make glass-bottomed boxes for themselves, and wade out and just look at the beautiful sea bottom.
I’ve seen them out there like that for hours, just staring at the sea bottom. At home they wouldn’t have gone to an aquarium if you’d built one in their backyard.
Pleasures are all relative. Joy is proportional. Why don’t I shut up?