MICHAEL A. WHITE

I'm a collector -- mostly philately. My main interests are USA unused; pre-independence Pacific islands; and Trans-Pacific flights, especially the pre-WWII Pan Am Clipper routes (FAM-14) and the island-hopper through Micronesia (FAM-46). I've also got a basketball topical, and I collect Long Beach Island (NJ) picture postcards and postal history. I occasionally auction some duplicates and other collectibles, too. I'm a member of APS, AFDCS, AAMS, GPS (and GCCG), USPPS, ISJP, F&CPS, SPI, NJPHS, SAS/O, and HPS. (Mom always wanted me to be a man of letters!)

In real life, I'm a lawyer; you can check out my Firm at the link below. I do business and commercial law.

I live in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands (see below). I was born and raised in Philadelphia, but I've lived here since 1970. I came here as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and just stayed. I'm married, and have five children and five (soon to be six!) grandchildren. I love, in no particular order, my family, my profession, and basketball.

You can contact me at:

P. O. Box 5222

Saipan, MP 96950

My e-mail address is mwhite@saipan.com. (This used to be my eBay handle, but I was getting too many spoof messages, and didn't want to encourage hackers, so I changed it.)

So Where Is Saipan?
Saipan is the principal island in the Northern Mariana Islands. We're a US territory, just north of Guam -- about 3800 miles west of Hawaii and 1500 miles east of the Philippines. About 50,000 people live here. Guam is geographically a part of the Marianas, but politically separate.

The Marianas were originally colonized by Spain. When the Spanish lost their little war in 1898, they ceded Guam to the USA, which wanted it for a coaling station. Guam has been a US territory ever since.

But the US didn't need the rest of the islands to the north, so Spain sold them to Germany in 1899. Japan, which already dominated trade in the region, declared war on Germany in August of 1914, and quickly moved into the Northern Marianas. After Germany lost the war, Japan was awarded a League of Nations mandate, which included not only the Northern Marianas but the Carolines and Marshalls as well.

As war again loomed, Japan began to fortify the islands in violation of the terms of the mandate. The islands of Micronesia were the scene of some of the fiercest battles of WWII, as the US island-hopped across the Pacific: Kwajalein, Peleliu, and Saipan. The Japanese put up quite a fight here, realizing that the loss of Saipan put the home islands well within the range of US bombers. In fact, the B-29s that dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki took off from Tinian, a smaller island just three miles across the channel from Saipan (and the last stop of the USS Indianapolis, which delivered the weapons, before it was sunk by a Japanese torpedo in the Philippine Sea).

After the war, the islands were governed by the USA, as a United Nations trusteeship. The people of the Northern Marianas voted to become a permanent part of the USA, and became a US Commonwealth (somewhat like Puerto Rico) in 1979.

We've got a saying here: the Spanish came for God; the Germans came for gold; the Japanese came for glory; but the Americans came for good!

We're US citizens, but like others who live outside the 50 states, we can't vote for President. Our government is just like a state government, with a popularly-elected Governor and bicameral legislature and an independent judiciary. We're part of the US court system, with our own District Court (part of the 9th Circuit). The Internal Revenue Code applies here, but as a territorial income tax; we pay our money to the local government instead of to Washington (but it seems like it goes down the same bottomless pit).

Everyone speaks English, except the very old people (who were of course taught Japanese). The local people also speak one or both of the native languages, Chamorro and Carolinian. Chamorro has a lot of Spanish vocabulary, but the grammar is completely different.

Our economy is based on tourism, mostly from Japan and Korea; we're the closest US soil to those countries, just three hours and change south of Tokyo, and we're really too far from the US to attract a significant number of tourists from there.

We're a part of the US Postal Service system. It costs the same 45c to mail a letter as it does anywhere else in the country.

A lot of people ask me what our postal code, "MP", stands for. When we were part of the former Trust Territory, our postal code was "TT", which made a lot of sense. When we became a US Commonwealth, the USPS gave us "CM", for Commonwealth of the Marianas. And then, for some reason, they decided that wasn't good enough, and wanted to change it. We asked them for "MA", which stands for "MAriana Islands", but that was taken. So we asked for "MI", again for "Mariana Islands", but the people in Michigan didn't want to give that up. So the USPS gave us "MP"; they never told us what it meant, but I figure it must stand for "Middle of the Pacific".

And oh, by the way, the weather. It never goes below 72 or over 88 degrees F. We get 360 days of sunshine a year, with frequent but usually brief tropical showers to cool things off. Life is good.

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