North Field Today
Seeing no official use after 1947, North Field was abandoned, and it has been disused since the war, other than for occasional exercises by the United States Marine Corps.
Immediately after the war, the natives didn't have to farm or do work of any kind for the first two years because the military left entire warehouses full of everything imaginable from food, brand new uniforms, and even ice cream makers. Anybody who wanted a vehicle could just go pick one up and drive it until it fell apart, than go get another one. Some abandoned B-29 hulks were left at the airfield after the war, but were melted down for scrap in the 1950s.
The airfield has been steadily reclaimed by the Tinian jungle, being abandoned and overgrown. It is easily accessible by traveling a few miles north of San Jose on the main north-south road, "Broadway". The crushed coral runways are grayish and weathered-looking, but Runways Able and Baker and some of the taxiways remain drivable in an ordinary car, with only some weedy growth crawling out onto it here and there.
Other than the runways, remains of former Japanese buildings and the preserved pits used to load the atomic bombs into their aircraft, nothing is left of the old facilities. The forest has grown right up to the edges of the runways and taxiways.
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Runway Able
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No. 1 Atomic Bomb (Little Boy) loading pit
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