{"id":51,"slug":"suicide-cliff-tinian-tinian-northern-mariana-islands","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The cliff at Tinian's north end — the height Japanese survivors and American records now file under one blunt name — marks the closing days of the battle for the island in the summer of 1944. U.S. Marines of the 2nd and 4th Divisions landed on July 24, 1944, and the island was declared secured on August 1; by August 10 roughly 13,000 Japanese and Okinawan civilians were interned, but as many as 4,000 were dead — in combat, killed by Japanese troops, or by suicide, much of it driven by wartime propaganda describing American capture as torture.","At the coastal cliffs of northern Tinian, as at Suicide and Banzai Cliffs on neighboring Saipan weeks earlier, civilians and soldiers went over the edge rather than surrender. Survivor testimony has kept the memory specific — a Fukushima man interviewed eight decades later still describes watching his father kill his two younger sisters in Tinian's mass suicide."]},{"heading":"A memorial with a contested date","paragraphs":["Today the site is a marked overlook and memorial stop on Tinian's wartime circuit, visited for the view and the commemoration plaques maintained largely through Japanese remembrance.","The file carries an explicit caution the story keeps: the visitors authority's own page dates the deaths to July 30–August 1, 1945 — a year after its own capture chronology — so the dossier withholds the precise event dates pending official military-history review. What is not in dispute is the battle window itself, fixed by the National Park Service's record, or what the cliff is for. No haunting claim attaches."]}],"name":"Suicide Cliff, Tinian","aliases":[],"type":"CLIFF","type_label":"Cliff","cats":["DARK_HISTORY"],"groups":["dark-history","nature"],"desc":"Cliff memorial for wartime deaths on Tinian.","full_desc":"A cliff in Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, Suicide Cliff, Tinian is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Cliff memorial for wartime deaths on Tinian. The archive files it under dark history. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.","address":null,"city":"Tinian","county":null,"state":"Northern Mariana Islands","postal":null,"region":"Pacific","lat":15,"lon":145.6333,"coord_kind":"MANUAL","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"UNKNOWN","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":"MVA gives July 30–August 1, 1945, inconsistent with its own 1944 capture chronology. Event dates withheld pending official military history review.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":49.3,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"MVA describes Japanese civilians and combatants dying by suicide as American forces approached. The landscape's recorded history gives the file real substance underneath the lore. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. 'Tinian' documents the entry. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Tinian","url":"https://mva.mymarianas.com/tinian/","publisher":"Marianas Visitors Authority","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"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":"Tinian","url":"https://mva.mymarianas.com/tinian/","publisher":"Marianas Visitors Authority","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}