Garapan, Saipan

Garapan was a minor settlement during the Spanish colonial period of Saipan, and a location to which the Chamorros forcibly relocated from other islands in the Northern Marianas were housed before being transferred to Guam.

Between the years 1865 and 1869, the Hispanicized descendants of the Chamorros that were forcibly relocated to Guam started a settlement in this area, although apart from the Refaluwasch (Carolinian) community.

Under the Nan’yō Kōhatsu Kabushiki Kaisha development company the town grew rapidly with a school, hospital, courthouse, bank, newspaper offices, cinema, and numerous public buildings constructed.

By the mid-1930s, Garapan had a population of approximately 14,000, mostly Japanese and ethnic Koreans, Taiwanese and Okinawans, and was nicknamed "Tokyo of the South Seas".

The survivors were forcibly repatriated to the Japanese home islands after the surrender of Japan and the ruins of Garapan remained unpopulated until the late 1960s and 1970s, when the area was redeveloped into large resort hotels and condominiums for the tourist industry.