Rota (island)

Rota (Chamorro: Luta), also known as the "Friendly Island", is the southernmost island of the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and the second southernmost of the Marianas Archipelago. In early Spanish records it is called "Zarpana"; the name Rota may have come from the Spaniards possibly naming the island after the municipality of Rota, Spain. It lies approximately north-northeast of the United States territory of Guam. Sinapalo village is the largest and most populated, followed by Songsong village (Songsong). Rota also functions as one of the four municipalities of the CNMI. In 1521, the first European to see Rota was the lookout on Ferdinand Magellan's ship Victoria, Lope Navarro. However, Magellan's armada of three ships did not stop until they reached Guam, so the first European to arrive in Rota (in 1524), was the Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, who annexed it together with the rest of the Mariana Islands on behalf of the Spanish Empire. As with the other islands of the northern Marianas, Rota was sold to the German Empire under the German–Spanish Treaty of 1899. In World War I, the islands were occupied by the Japanese Empire. In 1919, the League of Nations formally recognized Japanese control under the South Seas Mandate. However, development of Rota lagged behind that of neighboring Tinian and Saipan, with only 1000 Japanese residents arriving by the end of December 1935, most of them employed in raising sugar cane and in sugar refining. The refinery was not economical, and it was closed three years later. The Japanese garrison during World War II consisted of 1,031 Imperial Japanese Army men of the 10th Independent Mixed Brigade, under the command of Major Shigeo Imagawa, and about 600 Imperial Japanese Navy men. During the final stages of the war, Rota was occasionally bombed by aircraft of the U.S. Navy in an attempt to silence its radio transmitter that was providing warning to the Japanese home islands upon the take-off of B-29 Superfortress bomber attacks from Tinian, Saipan, and Guam, but the island was never invaded by American troops.