Saipan

Saipan is the largest island and seat of government of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the western Pacific. Under Japanese rule from 1914 it was developed for sugar cane with many settlers from Japan and Okinawa. In June and July 1944 US forces captured it in one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War, in which thousands of Japanese civilians died, many by suicide, and it became a base for bombing Japan.