How to Make History Come Alive
Get all of your senses involved
The warm, sweet air of Tinian Island filled its lush jungles and open emerald fields, providing a fragrant backdrop to the surrounding ocean’s alternating deep and light hues. The sky above was a bright indigo.
I was a U.S. Marine on a training excercise with some time off. I took that time to explore the jungle.
Tinian — a volcanic speck of an island in the southwest Pacific Ocean — had been once been used as a base for U.S. bombers who’d then flown on to drop the atomic bombs that had ended World War II.
During the war, an airfield had been built by the Seabees (or Navy combat engineers) for the impending attacks on mainland Japan. Just across where the Philippine Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet was the island of Saipan; it was only a few miles away and was visible from Tinian’s shores. The more well-known island of Guam was a little bit farther than that.
Tinian’s old runways were cracked from years of neglect; clumps of grass sprouted out everywhere. Unused runways — with their solid, open, and grown over expanses — harbor a strong sense of history. It’s easy to feel a connection to the past when there’s no difference in how things looked then to how they look now. On Tinian’s runways, only a few cracks and some wandering grass bore…
