Creative Capsule Reflections — Making War Feel Good, Island Style
How do you prepare communities for war and make them feel good about it?
Isa Arriola is a Creative Capsule Resident developing a community guide on militarized language in her home in the Northern Mariana Islands. Join her for the Creative Capsule Residency Showcase April 22, 2024 at noon Eastern. Register Here.
As I am writing on my home island of Saipan, the war maneuver dubbed “Cope North” 2024 is happening over our heads. Cope North is an annual war game that includes the participation of multiple nations’ militaries including the US, Japan, Canada, France, Australia, and South Korea. It is sponsored by the US Pacific Air Forces and is conducted out of Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. Thousands of military personnel come to the Marianas to participate in these war games. In preparation for Cope North, the various militaries sent three jets up at a time from the airport near my home. I could see them taking off from my village, so I took a video against the backdrop of the tranquil blue sky.
Description: A fighter jet flies over Saipan during “Cope North 2024.” Dan Dan Village, Saipan.
This isn’t the first war maneuver to happen on our islands. In WWII, the islands served as a critical node for United States military operations and were chosen as the launching pad for the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, in the last decade our islands have seen a steady increase of military maneuvers, testing, and bomb-dropping as a result of the geopolitical tensions between the United States and China. This year, the United States Air Force has brought together over 6,500 military personnel from the Marianas, the United States, Australia, Korea, Japan and France for Cope North. This is how the United States Air Force describes what they’re doing:
Field training exercise (FTX)
Airborne integration for large-force employment
Agile combat employment (ACE)
I share these words and phrases to highlight the importance of military jargon for describing what is happening around us, but without really being able to grasp the immensity of the violence occurring amidst these technicalities. It’s so much more difficult to resist something that sounds like you aren’t part of the conversation.
At the beach, I took my kids and nieces to look at all the shells the high tide left behind as the beach shifts at American Memorial Park. The piercing signature turquoise waters were glimmering like a billion diamonds that day and the wind was gusting against our faces. I looked up for just a brief moment after hearing what sounded like a plane only to find that a massive military jet was flying right in front of our eyes, very low, before taking a turn and becoming invisible, but not before leaving a trail of black smoke behind it. Even though I know that Cope North is happening, and even though I write almost daily about militarization, the sight and sound of these jets always carry a jarring intensity that I can’t describe. The sound of jets makes my heart pump and my hair stand, I always feel so unsafe: “Whoa” say the kids, then they go back to looking for shells.
That day, I found this shell (above) that also gave me goosebumps, but an entirely different feeling came over me. I felt like my ancestors were sending me a reminder of what was important, “Munga maleffa håyi hao! (Don’t forget who you are!) Who you are is written in the land, it’s been there, it will never change.” The image that strikes me in this natural shell pattern is that of a fish, reminding me of the ancient Chamorro patterns that were drawn thousands of years ago in the Marianas archipelago in caves.
Source: https://www.guampedia.com/chamorro-cave-art/
As I’m working through my Creative Capsule Residency project, where I am developing a community guide to militarized language, parallel words about war that we see used to justify more militarization here are being used in Palestine to justify genocide at the hands of the Israeli Government.
Self-defense
Defense
National security
Democracy
At the end of February, Cope North drew to a close, but before everyone packed up and went home, the United States Air Forces invited the public, especially the schoolchildren on the island, to come and “pet a jet.” The notices went out to elementary schools on island. As a parent and an activist, I received the notice in two very different contexts on my phone: through a group chat for community organizers and in my children’s school app where parents routinely receive school updates and messages. I instantly felt sick when I saw the notice, so I went to take photos of the event.
I stood outside the gates of the Francisco C. Ada International Airport and watched as literally hundreds of people brought their children to wait in line for a chance to take photos of the jets, tour them inside, and talk to the military personnel partaking in Cope North — to literally touch the machines preparing our islands for war, for violence. “Pet a jet” is so benign, it’s benevolent, it’s a chance to bond with this machine. “That’s one way to make war seem more fun, even happy,” I thought to myself. About an hour after I snapped my photos, a fellow activist showed up to the event (below) protesting both the active genocide in Palestine and the current militarization of the Marianas. His sign read, “no war exercise during genocide!”
A few days later, the local newspaper covered the success of the event, calling it a “sneak peak” of the United States Air Force’s K-135 aircraft.
War preparation takes community buy-in that speaks to the affective dimensions of militarization that are often difficult to describe. Being able to control the words we use to talk about war and militarization are key to shifting the feel-good narratives that we so often see in our community in order to speak more truthfully about the way our lives are being shaped by war in the now.