Final Thoughts: Searching for scrap in the shadows of World War II

One of their representatives asked the Copperweld management for assistance in locating and vetting ferrous scrap, which they could import to their plant in Nagoya, Japan. I was nominated to work with them. To my amazement, they wanted me to go to the Mariana Islands with one of their representatives to survey and advise on the recovery of scrap available on these islands.

The Mariana Islands – which include Guam, Tinian, and Saipan – were the site of major strategic battles between US Marines and Navy and the Japanese during WWII. Having served in the US Marine Corps 1970-73, I remember being shown films in boot camp about the battles in the Pacific during the war. I couldn’t imagine going there for business, but I was packing my gear for the trip.

I flew to LA to meet my travelling companion from Daido. In the morning, we flew to Honolulu where we had an eight-hour layover before the eight-hour, 3,800-mile flight to Guam. The warm nature of our trip was a testament to how much had changed between the two nations.

We flew into Guam, a US territory that hosts important naval and air bases, and met a man named Mickey Cox. I had spoken to him prior to leaving the US. When I asked how I would recognize him when I arrived, he said he had red hair, was 6’3”, and weighed 290 pounds – and so was the most recognizable man on the island.  He was right.  Mickey was a former pro football player for the Oakland Raiders. As I was writing this article, I found out Mickey passed away several years ago. RIP.

After a good night’s sleep, we were introduced to a Navy veteran, who stayed in Guam after the war and ran a salvage business. We inspected his yard of old cars and worn-out industrial equipment. All the potential scrap needed preparation and was not worth the expense and economic value given the logistical costs of shipment to Japan.

Keep in mind, the average mill price of #1 HMS in August 1989 was $104 per gross ton (gt). This material would barely qualify as a #1 grade. So, any sizable expense would render isolated materials like this unrecoverable. However, 15 years later, when scrap prices increased to over $400/gt, a friend of mine successfully removed and shipped most of this material off of Guam. Gee, I wonder where he got the idea??!! I never even received a finder’s fee.

We flew to Saipan the next day where Mickey operated a small salvage facility where islanders would bring in scrap materials over the scale at the yard – including, sometimes, unexploded bombs. In 1944, Saipan was the site of an amphibious landing and battle that claimed more than 3,000 American lives and 10,000 wounded. The victory enabled the US Air Corps to build an airbase to bomb the Japanese islands. Saipan is the main island in the Northern Marianas. Like Guam (and Puerto Rico) it is a commonwealth territory of the US, not a state.

In touring the island, we did not discover very much actual scrap other than old cars, consumer scrap, and old ordinance. I was told by a scrapyard manager back in Cleveland, who was in Saipan during the war as a Naval Seabee, that any reclaimable scrap would be old Japanese aircraft. He told me that, after the island was secured, damaged planes and other equipment were bulldozed off an adjacent cliff and into a chasm.

When I asked my guides about this, they said, “It’s off limits.” I later found out that hundreds of Japanese survivors had jumped off the same cliff rather than be captured by American forces. So, it was considered a sacred place.

On the reefs, surrounding the beach were the Marines landed, there were tank gun turrets embedded in the coral and protruding above the surf. The Daido rep said perhaps they could be recovered for scrap. At that point I very undiplomatically told him, “Over my dead body!” He dropped the subject after that.  

The next stop was the nearby island of Tinian, which was four miles across a strait from Saipan. We had to fly in a four-passenger plane since the currents are too strong for small boats. The pilot asked our weights. Mickey told him 310. I nudged him, reminding him told me he weighed 290. He said with a grin, “You don’t lie to these guys!”

We landed on the actual runway from where the Enola Gay took off to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Prior to this, the US launched countless B-29 bombers to raid Japan, which was 1,500 miles to the north. Many ran out of fuel to return to base and had to ditch into the waters off the island. I realized then just how serious the war effort was. We were set on beating Japan, no matter what it cost us. The pilots knew they might not have enough fuel to make it home, and they flew anyway.   

The runway on Tinian was now deserted and slowly being reclaimed by the ocean. Very few people inhabit Tinian. Mickey wanted to show me a ship they thought they could dismantle for scrap. It was raining and the roads were overgrown with vegetation. The vessel had crashed into a reef several hundred yards offshore. To salvage this, the ship would have to be dragged off the reef where it could be secured and dismantled. It was an impossible task. Even if this was possible, the amount of usable scrap would not justify the expense. 

So, we headed back to Saipan for the night and our return trip back to the States via Guam. That evening, I snuck out to explore the nightlife of the downtown Saipan. I met young people from the Philippines who worked on the island for manufacturers of sportswear and shoes.

Back in the US, I lamented the sacrifice we made to take all those Pacific islands one by one and thousands of miles apart. All of our men and equipment had to be aboard ships and our supply lines had to defend far-off our shores in order to have a chance. What a feat! It’s my hope that none of these monuments in the Pacific will ever be relegated to the scrap heap of humanity. There is plenty of scrap in the world, whether high and low residual, without disturbing this.