50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 423 The Story of 32 Men and 1 Woman
Anatahan Island has been deserted ever since it was bought by the elder Lancaster in the 50s.

Actually, this island is quite famous, especially in China, where there is a movie called "The Truth About Anatahan Island!" which tells the story of what happened on Anatahan Island in the 50s.

The archipelago was first discovered by the Spanish explorer Magellan in the 16th century, and the Spanish later developed it into a dedicated island for making coconut chips.

In the 20th century, the island belonged to Djurgården, but after Djurgården's defeat in World War I, the island returned to Seljuk.

Before World War II, Xiao Rizi established "Nanyang Xingfa Co., Ltd." to continue developing coconut plantations on the island, and some employees were stationed on the island to supervise the local indigenous people in planting coconuts.

As a result, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the small islands retreated rapidly in the Pacific Ocean, leaving 33 small islands on Anatahan Island.

With the defeat of the Allied forces on August 15, 1945, the Allies quickly took control of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Then soldiers from the M Army arrived on the island in speedboats. They used loudspeakers to shout in Japanese: "The islanders have surrendered. People on the island, surrender as soon as possible and come out to board our boat to take you home."

But the Little Days didn't believe it and refused to leave the island. They firmly believed: How could the Big Days Empire have been defeated? They all went into hiding, and only the natives left one after another.

After the American soldiers left, they ran to pick up the cigarette butts the soldiers had thrown away and smoked them.

Although it was a deserted island at the time, people lived there for a long time because of the development of coconut plantations, and there was no shortage of agricultural tools and daily necessities.

The island can grow crops such as sugarcane and taro, and also has wild fruits such as bananas and papayas. In addition, there are carnivorous animals such as lizards, bats, coconut crabs, and fish, so food is not scarce.

This group of people thus hid themselves on the island. As the saying goes, when people are well-fed and warm, they think of lustful desires; on this secluded island, there was only one woman among the 33 people.

So, over the possession of two pistols and a woman, the men began killing each other, resulting in a series of deaths.

Six years later, they surrendered and were rescued, by which time only 19 of the 32 men remained.

Kazuko, the only woman on the island, personally participated in the filming of the play "Anatahan Island" and the movie "This is the Truth About Anatahan Island!", and was later known as the Queen of Anatahan.

After learning the island's name, Sun Zhiwei specifically sought out the film to watch, and in the end, he could only exclaim, "Wow!"

Unaware of any actions taken by China on Anatahan Island, he did not register his identity as the island's owner upon arrival in Saipan, but instead explored the island as a tourist.

Three days later, he rented a yacht and went out to sea alone with his diving equipment.

A few hours later, he sailed his yacht to the only beach on Anatahan Island.

After three days of searching, he found no signs of human activity on the island other than the ruins of a coconut plantation.

He returned to the boat and drove the yacht around the island again before finally confirming that no one from the country had been sent here, or that they had been here but had not started development.

He carefully reviewed the events and finally realized that the government had only said they would use the two islands, not that they would help him develop them. It turned out he had been deluding himself.

It makes sense. Developing a deserted island from scratch would require a tremendous amount of manpower and resources. Our own islands are already deserted; we don't have time to manage this one.

In addition, given the foreign exchange shortages in recent years and the easing of Sino-US relations, even if this place has an important geographical location, that's a matter for the future. It's unrealistic to allocate limited foreign exchange to develop this place now.

Well, in the end, I still have to do it myself. In the past few days since arriving on the island, he has learned about its overall layout. It is a volcanic island with lush vegetation and two large freshwater lakes, but the terrain is not very flat.

It's probably not feasible to grow crops here; growing coconuts, as was the case historically, would be the most cost-effective option.

However, fully developing this place would be quite costly, since all sorts of supplies would have to be transported from outside.

After careful consideration, I realized that if this were to become a secret base, I would definitely need to leave people to guard it.

If it's just the people at the base, it's too easy to be exposed. We must increase the number of transient people. The more transient people there are, the safer it will be. It's like the darkest place is under the lamp.

So he needed to develop Anatahan Island into a tourist destination. After determining the general direction, he set sail back to Saipan.

There are many ways to develop an island.

One approach is similar to infrastructure development in China: allocating manpower and resources, with everyone working together to work hard for 100 days, and a small island can be developed.

But this is a country for people from the US, and we don't have those conditions, so we can only resort to the capitalists' methods.

Capitalists have different development methods. Some capitalists focus on cost, so they naturally do whatever is cheapest.

Hiring more local natives and using locally sourced wood to build houses will naturally save money.

Another type of capitalist focuses on efficiency. As long as you pay enough, they'll send American soldiers to work as laborers. All they need is to pay them promptly.

Sun Zhiwei, this newly minted billionaire, is the second type of capitalist.

Anyway, his money comes from thin air, so he can spend it as much as he wants without fear. Everything will be paid for by the people of the United States. If he runs out of money, he can just go and plunder from the people of the United States.

Upon returning to Saipan, Sun Zhiwei went to the city hall and presented his proof of island ownership.

Upon learning that the island owner was a billionaire, the city hall immediately gave him a warm welcome.

When they learned that he was also going to fund the development of Anatahan Island, they almost treated him like an ancestor.

Their tiny Northern Mariana Islands are far from the mainland, lacking both resources and population; their only source of foreign exchange is tourism.

It's still the Cold War era, so there aren't that many tourists from all over the world coming to visit. Their annual GDP isn't even as high as the profits of Sun Zhiwei's private businesses.

On top of that, there's the US military base, which occupies large tracts of land on Saipan and Tinian, making things difficult for them too.

Many people may have heard of Saipan, but many do not know about Tinian.

There is an airport on Tinian Island, from which "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" departed. There is also an atomic bomb loading site on the island.

Several military bases have been built on such a small archipelago. What can they do if they don't align themselves with the United States?
(End of this chapter)