NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Retellings of Guam history focus heavily on the end of the World War II on the island, and de-emphasize the start of the war. It is like this for some obvious and some less-obvious reasons. As I've written about before, where you place the narrative locus for these 32 months of Chamoru history will heavily affect what type of lessons or ideas emerge. If you focus on the end, the triumphant American return, where the Japanese are defeated and Chamorus are liberated from tyranny, the lessons seem pretty clear. American power and benevolence and propensity for liberation and democracy spreading. Chamorus become attached to the US and its history through that ending, as an object of their grandeur or their exceptional excellence and virtue.

But if we switch the story's focus to the beginning things get much more complicated. We see at the beginning of war, an island where Chamorus trust the US to tell them the truth, to keep them safe, but they also understand in an important way…

I first wrote an article "Happy US Imperialism Day Guam!" about 16 years ago. It was published in Minagahet Zine and later on this blog when I began it soon after. The writing of this article originally was a very formative experience. Part of it eventually became my Masters Thesis in Micronesian Studies. But I also wrote it at a time when I was first trying to find a way to become more public about my critiques and writing letters to the editor of the Pacific Daily News and creating websites/blogs were some of the obvious choices.

This article was written when the second Iraq War was only eight months old and the War in Afghanistan was over two years old. It was written at a time when I was feeling frustrated over the deaths of the first few Chamorros in Iraq, Christopher Rivera Wesley being the first. As I said, it was also written at a time when I was first working on developing a critical consciousness and a public voice in terms of writing and philosophy. I had been i…

Last year, Our Islands are Sacred and other local activist groups penned a joint letter to Governor of Guam Eddie Calvo, challenging his support for the US military buildup to Guam. In response to the letter, which made a significant splash on social media, the Governor met with some of the authors of the letter to discuss their concerns. Central to rhetoric invoked in the letter focused on how the Governor had made several statements to the media that he was excited about the military buildup and what it might mean to Guam economically. As the military buildup, even in its reduced form, will most likely negatively Guam's environment, economy, security and cultural properties, the writers of the letter were incredulous that Governor Calvo would speak of the buildup with such excitement when so many negative aspects were involved.

One of the suggestions that they made to Governor Calvo was that he invite the Governor of Okinawa to visit Guam with his staff and have a conversation…

--> The island of Pagan, in the northern Marianas has made international news as it might soon become yet another beautiful island to be destroyed by the US military for its testing and training purposes. Although now I regularly hear news about Pagan, in years past I scarcely heard about it in a Chamorro context, but rather always in either a strict environmental context or in a Japanese historical context. Environmentalists are the first line of defense in some ways against militarization, although history has shown they often have trouble working cooperatively with the locals and natives who claim those lands. For them Pagan is an ecological paradise and needs to be protected. I would hear random tidbits about Pagan in this regard, as being a place with exciting species (including snails) that should be researched and explored. 
I also heard about it in the context of Japanese, as settlers lived there during the Japanese colonial period in the CNMI. In fact in historical terms,…

I am always intrigued at the way American critiques of Japan often time focus on the way that Japanese conservatives are always seeking to erase of minimize sexual slavery during World War II. The women that were forced into sexual slavery across the empire Japan was seeking to create have a tragically complex ideological function. They are on the one hand discursive means through which the nations formerly colonized by Japan reassert their national power. The bodies of those violated women become the means through which a very masculine national honor can be regained. For the Japanese themselves, they are part of their former colonial past that they struggle to both erase but also deal with. For the conservative part of Japan they are something that is tied to the masculinity of the nation. Part of the way the nation was once allowed to act. Part of the way that, for those conservative sectors, it should not have to apologize for. They do not want to erase the sins of the past, but …

I ma'pos na biahi na hu bisita iya Okinawa, tinatiyi yu' ni' pakyo' dangkolu. Matto guihi para un konferensia, lao ma cancel i dinana' put i pakyo'. Gi ayu na hinanao sumaga' yu' gi un kuatton hotet para tres dihas, ya taya' bida-hu. Ti manali'e' ham yan i meggai na atungo'-hu siha guihi. Para kuatro na sakkan hu bisisita iya Okinawa. Kumuentos yu' meggai biahi gi diferentes na klasin dinana' academic pat activist. Hu bisita i diferentes na lugat, taiguihi Henoko pat Takae, nai guaha protest pa'go put taimanu trinatrata i tano' ni' militat Amerikanu. 

Guaha otro konferensia guihi gi otro na mes. Malago' yu' na bei hanaogue, lao kalang mappot. Ayu Mes Chamoru, fihu i mas mitinane' na mes para Guahu.  I kinalamten para Independensia guini giya Guahan esta gof machalapon. Guaha na biahi gof annok i taotao ni' sumapopotte gui' gi media, sa' meggai gi gurupun-mami yan-niha manoghe gi kanton chalan…

One of the articles I am working on this Fanuchan'an is about language revitalization in Guam and the "beautiful lie" or "gefpago na dinagi" that hinders our ability to protect and revitalize our endangered languages. What I refer to as the beautiful lie stage is the point at which language attitudes that once naturalized the uselessness of a native language have been reversed and that a once maligned language is now celebrated, but that the celebration of the language does not necessarily lead to any revitalization. It can lead to commemoration, promotion, to preservation but the beautiful lie is that while the beauty of the language is now an accepted truth, this does not meant that people will actually use it, teach it or see it as something viable and necessary to keep alive.

I first got to present this idea at an Endangered Island Language Forum last year at Ryukyu University in Okinawa. I have a couple more months until I have to take my presentation and…

October 2, 2014 12:00 am JST Yamaguchi dies at 94 YASUNOBU NOSE, Nikkei senior staff writer
Yoshiko Yamaguchi © Kyodo

TOKYO -- Wartime actress Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who later served 18 years in the upper house of the Japanese Diet, died of heart failure at her home in Tokyo on Sept. 7, her family announced. She was 94.

     She grew up in Japan-occupied Manchuria, which is now northeast China, and debuted under the Chinese screen name of Li Hsianglan (Ri Koran in Japanese) in 1938 as a member of the Manchuria Film Association. She broke out in Japan with the 1940 film "Shina no Yoru" ("China Nights"), starring opposite Kazuo Hasegawa. The song "Soshu Yakyoku" ("Suzhou Serenade"), which she sang in the film, also became a big hit.

     When she held a concert in Tokyo in 1941, there was famously a line for tickets that circled the theater more than seven times.

     Afte…

Every July Guam becomes transformed into an "island of massacres." As the collection memory of the island becomes focused around recalling and recounting the tragic final weeks of I Tiempon Chapones on Guam, the month seems to move from one horrific story to another. July 1944 was filled with more atrocities and more suffering than the 31 months of Japanese occupation that preceded it. Pale' Jesus Baza Duenas is killed. Chamorros are forced into concentration camps. Massacres take place in Hagat, Yigu, Merizo and Hagatna. War stories from war survivors build towards a brutal climax at this point. This brutal period however is the prologue to the happy end to Japanese rule. Within days or weeks of these atrocities taking place, Japanese guards have disappeared from concentration camps and stories of American troops being spotted are traveling around with lightning speed.

War narratives at this point jump from opposite sides of the spectrum. They go from being colored in …