Embedded Files
07/04/2025—A daughter’s quest to find the mystery about her father’s silence about World War II brought her to an epic trip to Saipan earlier last month.
As the Marianas celebrates Liberation Day today and as the drum beats of war is echoing from conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, Patti Robinson and her husband, Len, and brother, Robert “Bill” C. Wherritt, made the 6,900-mile journey to retrace her father’s footsteps when PFC Robert C. Wherritt was part of the U.S. Marine force that invaded Saipan during World War II.
“On June 15th of 1944, my father was a World War II Marine veteran who landed on Red Beach 2, or between Red Beach 1 and Red Beach 2 for the invasion of Saipan, which is right down here. We are here to travel throughout Saipan to understand what his experience was during World War II. June 16th, he received a bronze star for valor while he was here as well, not far off the beaches,” she told Marianas Press in an interview not far from where his father and the Marianas landed 81 years ago.
Robinson said 11 days after breaching the defense of Japanese military forces in what is now Oleai Beach, her father was wounded but was patched up, moved on, and continued on through the liberation of Saipan.
After the U.S. secured Saipan, Wherritt, who belonged to Fox Company, 2nd Regiment, 6th Marines, 2nd Division, went on to Tinian, and from there was part of the U.S. invasion force in Okinawa.
Prior to taking part in the invasion of Saipan and Tinian, Wherritt was also part of the Marine force that invaded Tarawa in what was then the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati).
Robinson said her coming to Saipan—combing the beaches, exploring its thick jungles, and even trekking up to Mt. Tapochao for a 360-degree view of the island—was sort of a full circle moment not only for her father but her grandfather as well.
“It's been between two and two and a half years ago... What started out as a journey of researching my grandfather's military story, he was in World War I, was also in France. After receiving several bins of information, it was full of World War II letters and such of my dad. I knew that he was a Marine in World War II, but he never spoke of it. He never discussed anything regarding his wartime [years],” she said.
After looking through his father’s discharge papers from the U.S. Marines and seeing where he was during World War II, it was game on for Robinson to retrace her father’s footsteps in the West Pacific.
“I feverishly just began to create a mind map. It started out just taking notes and writing everything down, researching. I was able to contact, just through Google searches and archives, I was sent down just incredible paths and got literally down to his battalion and his regiment so I was able to trace his steps. I decided to create a manuscript, create a story. Since then, it's been over two years.”
What she thought was going to be six months is now running into year 2 and in all probability may take four years to complete.
“After getting into Saipan and recognizing and realizing what this 19-year-old man had done at this time, things just changed for me. I was feverish and learning more about it. I spoke to my husband and he was the one that said we need to go. We need to go to Saipan. I had gotten down to the beaches, the LSTs (landing ship tank) he was involved in, the ships he transferred in, the steps he had taken when he was on Saipan. I knew that it was going to be very different but I wanted to see it now. I wanted to meet the people. I wanted to see those beaches,” she said.
A day before flying back to Twin Cities, Minnesota, the registered nurse and founder of a non-profit that supports veterans and abandoned dogs said what transpired in her Saipan trip hasn’t hit her yet.
“I wanted to stand in that sand and I wanted my husband and my brother to be able to do that too, to emotionally take it in and to look out in that and see what it is now. It's been an incredible emotional journey, surreal. I don't think it's really going to hit me until I get home as to what I have seen and what I've experienced,” she said.
Robinson added that while what her journey represents would never equate to what her father and fellow Marines experienced when they hit the Japanese hard on Red Beach in June of 1944, she now has a better understanding of what her father went through.
“My experience is very different than his but now I have a new perspective of continuing the story of being able to put it on paper, his story, and then what has been left over in history 81 years later and to put that as a side-by-side to kind of bookend the story.”
She also has a better perspective of what World War II now comes to represent and in effect what conflicts around the world now is defined.
“It's a necessary evil sometimes at the time. We're not created to do these atrocities and I truly pray that it doesn't come to that because that's not who we are as humans. Not us average people, that's not what we want,” she said.
Robinson said learning history is important, “So, you don't forget. You don't make the same mistakes again.”
She then thanked Saipan Community Church senior pastor Stephen Dame for making their trip to Saipan possible.
“Without him and his wife, it would have been impossible for my husband and my brother and I to take in the island as it is now, to see what the island was 81 years ago. We would have never found these things. We never would have traveled it. Our experience would have never been as amazing as it is now. So, I am so grateful to Steve. I'm forever grateful. So is my brother and so is my husband. We're incredibly grateful for him.
Story by Mark Rabago
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