Tinian: A Personal Legacy
by Earl Johnson ’38
I have an eerie feeling standing alone on the abandoned runway of North Field, Tinian. Wind whistles gently through pine trees that stand like the island’s sentinels in the darkness. A few hundred yards away, the Pacific surf pounds softly against the rocky shoreline.
My luminous watch tells me it is 2:45 a.m. The date is August 6, 1976. Fifteen hundred miles to the north, past Iwo Jima, lies Japan.
Exactly 31 years ago at this very spot, Col. Paul W. Tibbetts Jr. advanced the throttles on his B-29, the Enola Gay, and started his takeoff. In his bomb bay was “Little Boy,” an atomic bomb. His target: Hiroshima.
I knew those men of the 509th Group, worked with many of them here.
I stand in silence on the deserted runway, thinking back upon the historic impact of that flight, the many times I flew my own B-29 missions from here.
driving away from the airfield down Broadway, the island’s main north-south road, I remember my first trip to Tinian. It was January 1945. Thousands of men—Army, Navy, Marines, and Airmen—were being brought to this island. Two huge airstrips were under construction then. From these fields and other installations on Guam and Saipan, hundreds of B-29s pounded Japan almost daily.
Then the atomic bombs were dropped. The war was over.
I had another memorable takeoff from Tinian soon after that, piloting one of three B-29s sent on a mission around the world to Washington, DC, with refueling stops in India and Germany.
After the war the airfield was abandoned.
A leper colony was established on the island. With little native population and only a handful of military personnel left, the leper colony blended in easily.
A child from that colony was the most memorable moment during my next trip to Tinian in 1949. A Navy doctor greeted me at an old airstrip, then in use.
“I heard you flying around and thought you might land,” he said, introducing himself as the head of the colony.
“We have some Air Force people here doing some bomb disposal work, and my general sent me up from Guam to take a look,” I told him. “I was here during the war.”
In the doctor’s Jeep we toured the many miles of excellent highway. I saw no one. There were rows upon rows of empty Quonset huts, scores of abandoned campsites and lots of idle equipment. That’s all.
“We have about 75 patients in the leper colony. Then 250 people moved here a few months ago from the island of Yap. Other than your people blowing up old bombs, that’s it," he answered with a tone of finality.
Taken aback by his response, I could not help but think this pleasant island should be teeming with activity, building a new life for itself now that the war was over. It was still standing after suffering the devastation of war— it deserved a better legacy.
Later that day as I was about to taxi onto the runway, the doctor came speeding up in his Jeep. Motioning me to stop, he yelled over the noise, “Can you take a newborn baby to the hospital on Saipan?”
I thought about it a moment then nodded, adding an emphatic, “Hell, yes!”
“Hold it right there—I'll be back!” he told me as he roared off in the direction of the leper colony. Moments later he returned with a cardboard box on the front seat next to him containing a wet, fly-covered baby boy, obviously only minutes old.
“He’ll have a better chance to survive if we get him away from the colony,” he said. “Just call the Navy hospital once you get there. They will pick him up in an ambulance.”
“Don’t I need to sign some papers?” I asked. It seemed like there should be some sort of official notice.
“No,” he replied. “It's not necessary. But getting there in a hurry is.”
I started taxiing at once. Ten minutes later I landed on Saipan. With a sigh of relief, I delivered the infant to a nurse and corpsman upon the ambulance’s arrival.
driving along broadway that afternoon I’m thinking about that baby boy I delivered to Saipan 27 years ago. I’d often wondered what had happened to him, and before this trip, I’d thought about trying to locate him, even though I realized there’s little chance of so doing. I doubt he had even lived.
So I ask in Tinian’s City Hall if anyone remembers a baby boy being born at the leper colony in June 1949. I produce the newspaper article from Saipan that tells the story of his being flown there and includes his photo. It is dated June 9th. The date of the boy’s birth must have been a week or ten days earlier.
The next morning I’m introduced to an islander named Juan Barcinas.
“My nephew, Jesus Sablan Barcinas, was born at the leper colony in 1949 and was taken to the hospital on Saipan,” he says.
“What was his birthdate?” I ask.
“I think it was October or November 1949,” he says.
This was not the boy. The date had to be close to June 9.
“Where is he now, Mr. Barcinas?” I ask, more curious than expecting anything to come of my search.
“He works at the Royal Taga Hotel on Saipan,” the man says. “He’s married to a Japanese girl and they have two small children.”
I make a mental note, knowing I’ll be going to Saipan in about three days. I’ll look up the young man just in case his uncle was wrong about the birthdate.
three days later I board a DC-3—the same type of plane I’d piloted delivering that little boy— for the flight to Saipan.
Apparently, word of my search and pending arrival has made the rounds of the Tinian grapevine. A young man walks up to me and asks my name.
"I was born on Tinian, delivered by a Navy doctor at the leper colony dispensary,” he says. “You must be the one who brought me to Saipan in the box.”
He looks me over for a moment, perhaps hoping to remember my face or some remnant of that day. I don’t know what to say.
He pulls a newspaper clipping out of his pocket. He says that when his mother was dying, she gave this to him. She said it would be important some day.
It’s the same article and photograph that I am carrying.
Tears form in his eyes, and mine aren’t exactly dry.
Excerpted and edited from “Tinian,” an article written by Maj. Gen. Earl L. "Punk" Johnson in 1976 and originally considered by National Geographic (Assistant Editor Andrew Brown called it “a near miss.”). The manuscript was among several stories passed along to us after General Johnson’s death in 2010.
Read more about General Johnson and his day driving Charles Lindbergh around another Pacific Island at WM Online.