Gregorio Sablan: “In 1914, a young Chamorro by the name of Jose Diaz Torres began his training in medicine at a small hospital opened by…”

“In 1914, a young Chamorro by the name of Jose Diaz Torres began his training in medicine at a small hospital opened by the German colonial administration on the island of Saipan. Chamorro people had their own healing and medicinal traditions from ancient times, but Spanish colonizers introduced the indigenous people to Western medicine, and the Germans continued this practice upon taking control of the Northern Mariana Islands at the end of the 19th century. The Germans had a commitment to training local people, and Jose Torres, or Dr. Torres as he came to be called, thus became the islands' first local doctor. When Japan supplanted Germany, Dr. Torres continued his practice in a hospital the Japanese constructed. There too, the careers of Saipan's first Chamorro dentists, Dr. Manuel Manibusan Aldan and Dr. Juan Charfauros Reyes, began. Victory over the Japanese in World War II brought the United States to control of the Northern Mariana Islands. After the war, the islands were administered under a United Nations trusteeship arrangement that required the United States to improve the standard of living. This responsibility was carried out by the U.S. Department of the Navy during the 1950s. The Navy built temporary hospitals on Saipan for the treatment of both military and civilian personnel.”