Explore the History
of the Pacific

The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), is an unincorporated territory and commonwealth of the United States consisting of 14 islands in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The CNMI includes the fourteen northernmost islands in the Marianas Islands and can be characterized as the entire island chain, less Guam. The capital of CNMI is on Saipan, the largest island, which along with Tinian and Rota are separate municipalities. The northern eleven islands comprise their own municipality, that of the Northern Islands, most of which are uninhabited. 

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The Marianas Islands were settled from remote Oceania. They were later colonized by the Spanish. Following the Spanish-American War, the Northern Marianas Islands were sold to Germany and Guam was sundered from the other islands in the group. The islands were then lost by the Germans to the Japanese in the First World War, and captured by the United States in the Second World War. Saipan has many monuments and memorials to those who died in the Pacific War. The U.S. Army Air Corps B-29 aircraft that dropped the nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 launched from Tinian.