{"id":14,"slug":"suicide-cliff-saipan-northern-mariana-islands","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Suicide Cliff is Banzai's companion file — the second Saipan height where Japanese civilians and soldiers died by suicide in July 1944, in the battle's final days. The file's documented register is the same war, different ground: hundreds dead on the cliff's rocks, the Pacific's most documented mass suicide.","The two cliffs are the island's paired memorials — Banzai and Suicide, the names themselves the record of what happened at each."]},{"heading":"The second height","paragraphs":["Visitor accounts describe the solemn, haunted atmosphere — the file's register matching Banzai's: a documented mass-death site where the reports are the war's residue. The cliff's name is the history — the site where the civilians and soldiers chose the fall over capture.","The file keeps the same care the site demands — a cliff named for its deaths, the reported atmosphere being the memory's own presence at the edge."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Suicide Cliff is the archive's second Saipan file — the paired height where the war's final days produced the documented dead. The name is the record; the reported sorrow is the register; the cliff keeps what the battle's end made of it.","Two cliffs on one island, each holding the war's civilian dead — the file's suggestion being that Saipan's heights are the Pacific war's most documented mourning."]}],"name":"Suicide Cliff","aliases":[],"type":"CLIFF","type_label":"Cliff","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","WWII","HAUNTED"],"groups":["dark-history","nature"],"desc":"Marpi cliff associated with wartime deaths.","full_desc":"Suicide Cliff is a cliff in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands. Marpi cliff associated with wartime deaths. HauntHunt files it with dark history, hauntings and World War II. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend and 2 documented facts — documented record and retelling kept side by side. The site is open to visitors. The dossier keeps the place and the story in the same record — which is what the archive is for.","address":null,"city":"Saipan","county":null,"state":"Northern Mariana Islands","postal":null,"region":"Pacific","lat":15.1833,"lon":145.75,"coord_kind":"MANUAL","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Discovery pass; historical, geographic, and access enrichment remain queued. Confidence describes source provenance, not supernatural reality.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":64.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":4054,"type":"HAUNTING","description":"As at Banzai Cliff, visitor accounts describe a solemn, haunted atmosphere at the documented mass-death site. Reports in the file date to 20th century. A natural place in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands doesn't need walls to hold a legend; it has geography. It survives as local folklore, which is to say it survives because people keep telling it. It's the kind of claim that outlives debunkings — too many witnesses, too few explanations.","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","evidence_label":"Local folklore","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":"20th century","approx_date":null,"confidence":0.3,"conflict_notes":"Documented mass-death site; lore treated as memorial sentiment.","source":{"name":"Suicide Cliff","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Cliff","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"MVA identifies this cliff with Japanese civilians and soldiers who died by suicide during the battle. Suicide Cliff's documented past — geological and human — is the verified layer beneath the legends. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The detail is preserved in 'Historic Sites'. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Historic Sites","url":"https://mva.mymarianas.com/historic-sites/","publisher":"Marianas Visitors Authority","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}},{"description":"In July 1944, hundreds died at Suicide Cliff in the battle’s final days. The documented date is 1944-07-01. The site's documented natural and human history is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The detail is preserved in 'Battle of Saipan'. It is the kind of fact the rest of the dossier leans on.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1944-07-01","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Battle of Saipan","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"As at Banzai Cliff, visitor accounts describe a solemn, haunted atmosphere at the documented mass-death site. Reports in the file date to 20th century. Open country keeps its stories differently — Suicide Cliff in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands files its reports in weather and distance. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. The report is preserved in sources like 'Suicide Cliff'. The tale is the site's other archive — oral, embroidered, and outlasting the documents.","earliest":"20th century","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","source":{"name":"Suicide Cliff","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Cliff","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[],"events":[{"name":"Suicide Cliff deaths","type":"MASS_SUICIDE","date_start":"1944-07-01","date_end":null,"description":"At the northern tip of Saipan, Suicide Cliff saw the same July 1944 horror as Banzai Cliff — hundreds of deaths in the battle's final days, many of them families who died together. The two sites, minutes apart, mark where wartime propaganda cost more civilian lives than combat did; the clifftop memorial honors all the dead of the battle.","evidence":"MASS_SUICIDE","source":{"name":"Suicide Cliff","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Cliff","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Historic Sites","url":"https://mva.mymarianas.com/historic-sites/","publisher":"Marianas Visitors Authority","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},{"name":"Battle of Saipan","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},{"name":"Suicide Cliff","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Cliff","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"Marpi cliff associated with wartime deaths.","incoming_value":"The inland cliff where hundreds more died in the same week.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"full_description","existing_value":"Suicide Cliff is a cliff in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands. Marpi cliff associated with wartime deaths. MVA identifies this cliff with Japanese civilians and soldiers who died by suicide during the battle.","incoming_value":"Suicide Cliff is the northern Saipan precipice where hundreds of Japanese died in the same July 1944 days as Banzai Cliff—another documented mass-death site of the battle’s end.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"current_status","existing_value":"HISTORIC_SITE","incoming_value":"ACTIVE","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"Discovery pass; historical, geographic, and access enrichment remain queued. Confidence describes source provenance, not supernatural reality.","incoming_value":"Lore enrichment wave 2; VERIFY task auto-queued.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":{"title":"Suicide Cliff","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Cliff","desc":"Cliff on Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands","extract":"Suicide Cliff is a cliff above Marpi Point Field near the northern tip of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, which achieved historic significance late in World War II.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/SUICIDE_CLIFF.jpg/330px-SUICIDE_CLIFF.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":108,"lat":15.27722222,"lon":145.80972222},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":2,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":3}}