Word: saipan
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Office is behind them. Reflecting Carter's concern, his son Jeff and daughter-in-law Annette visited the islands last week. They attended the inauguration of Peter Tali Coleman, first native-elected Governor of American Samoa, then flew to Saipan, the trust territory capital, where Carlos Camacho will be sworn in this week as the first native-elected Governor of the Northern Marianas...
...Saipan, more than 400 years of foreign stewardship-by the U.S., Japan, Germany and Spain-have left their ecological mark. Giant African snails brought in by the Japanese as wartime survival food now ooze all over the island. America's legacy is tangantangan, a spindly ground cover planted after the war to prevent erosion. Saipan's soil was saved, but, alas, it seldom is visible since the tangantangan has voraciously rooted throughout the island...
About the only things on Saipan as intractable as tangantangan are some of the symbols of modern U.S. civilization. Large supermarkets offer a wide variety of frozen goods. Many homes are air conditioned; so are most of the cars that whiz at alarming rates along the asphalt roads. Cinder block typhoon houses are neatly arranged, as is the golf course, which could be in the U.S. were it not for the crudely lettered sign outside the clubhouse door reading DO NOT GET ON THIS ROOF...
...Pacific islands, none have adopted the American system of government as Saipan has. Bureaucrats constitute 50% of the work force. The new commonwealth government has budgeted $700,000 for a bicameral legislature to serve a population of only...
...Marianas, to which Saipan belongs, have 12% of the trust territory's population, but receive 32% of the territorial income. The Marianas also eagerly accept all kinds of federal aid, including free medical care and bulk food grants of commodities like wheat. "It's sort of a welfare state," says silvery Erwin Can-ham, the Marianas' resident commissioner and a former editor of the Christian Science Monitor, who will return to the U.S. later this month. "If I tried to eliminate the free surplus commodities, I'd have a lynch mob down here...