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Uncle Dave honored by Marine Corps in Guam
David M. Sablan, fondly known as Uncle Dave on Saipan, served as guest of honor during the Marine Corps Activity Guam’s 239th Birthday Ball Celebration of the U.S. Marine Corps held earlier this month at the Hyatt Regency Guam.
From left, David Sablan, Rear Adm. Bette Bolivar, commander, Joint Region Marianas, and Rita C. Sablan. (Contributed Photo)
“We looked long and hard to find somebody that would be a good guest of honor and convey a good message to the people. When I met Dave about a year ago and heard his story I thought he would be the perfect guest for the Birthday Ball and to impart not only the impact of the Marines on his life but his impact on the community in the Commonwealth and in Guam. It’s just a nice story,” said Zimmerman during an interview earlier this week on Saipan.
Sablan, who is a corporate consultant of Tan Holdings, said the honor brought him to tears, as there were a lot of men and women in uniform who stood up and applauded him after he finished his impromptu speech.
“I was pleasantly surprised. The people who attended were pretty high-ranking people in the military. Rear Adm. Babeth “Beth” Bolivar was there and the general from the Air Force, Brig. Gen. Andrew J. Toth, was also there.”
Bolivar is the commander of Joint Region Marianas, while Toth is the base commander of Andersen Air Force Base.
In all, around 200 people attended the Birthday Ball and 75 were military.
“It was very moving. Normally at a Birthday Ball, the crowd gets a little rambunctious, as they want to have their chow. But that evening, when he was telling his story, you could hear a pin drop and I had numerous people come to me afterwards and say to me that the way he told the story made them feel they were with him that day,” said Zimmerman.
Sablan’s speech pretty much condensed the story A Baby Cried that was featured in the Leatherneck magazine in its November 1979 issue.
“Three weeks after being in the cave, three young local men went down before sunrise to get some sugarcane, only to find out that they would run into a Japanese military. So they hid in the sugarcane fields until the Japanese military completely disappeared. Then they rushed back to the cave but by then the sun was up already. So what happened was the U.S. Navy ships offshore saw people crawling on the bare hill because it was burned down and they started shooting. The ships started to shoot at the general location where the three boys were spotted.”
Later, the U.S. military sent three Marines—John Sullivan, Gene Engel, and George Prevost—to check on the hill.
“When they went up there, they looked around and they couldn’t locate the boys and they couldn’t see anybody other than the crucifix at the side of the hill. We heard voices back and forth from the three Marines. After some 10 minutes or so the baby cried inside the cave. Immediately they knew that was the general direction where the noise was coming from. So the three Marines spread, one went up to the top of the cave, the other one went up to the right side of the cave, and Mr. Sullivan, the third person, had his hand grenade ready to throw in.”
Sablan said that Sullivan then yelled out in broken Japanese: “Without worry come out.”
Sablan said his father, Elias (who later became the first mayor of Saipan), and his oldest brother immediately jumped out and held their hands up and his father said, “I surrender.”
“One of the Marines said ‘Oh you speak English’ and my Dad said ‘A little bit.’ The Marine said, ‘By any chance your name Elias P. Sablan?’ My Dad said ‘yes’ and the Marine said, ‘We’ve been looking for you because we needed people to help us interrogate the prisoners of war.’”
After that, Sablan said, his family got to spend the next three or four days at the prisoners of war camp, while his father worked with the military interrogators.
After his father helped with the interrogations, he and his family were finally moved to Camp Susupe where the present Marianas Business Plaza (Nauru Building) is now located.
“Then four days later Kilili (Gregorio San Nicolas Sablan) was discovered. You should’ve seen the camp when Kilili came. He’s the second guy who spoke English on Saipan and the grandfather of our congressman [Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan] and he was speaking in English and he said ‘I know we’re going to win this war.’ You just couldn’t begin to imagine the proud action of the people in the camp.”
At the time these incidents happened, Sablan was just 12 years old.
Sablan said the three Marines and the local survivors from the cave—all 35 of them—would forever be intertwined because of what happened that fateful day in the latter stages of the War in the Pacific.
He himself would reunite with Sullivan, Engel, and Prevost over the years and have remained lifelong friends until their deaths recently. Despite that, Sablan said he still keeps in touch with the Marines’ children.
Toward the end of his speech Sablan said, “The three Marines that got us out of the cave during the war that liberated us from the hills are with me tonight in spirit. It is their effort that I’m recognized tonight as your guest of honor.”
