NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

There is a long list of people whom I wish I had the chance to interview and ask some basic questions, the overwhelming majority of which are Chamorros or from Guam. This long, gof annakko' na lista is divided into two parts. First, those whom passed away long before I was born, and those whose lives overlapped with mine, but I never had the chance to sit down and interview. High on my list was Påle' ( Monsignor) Oscar Lujan Calvo, who was close cousins with my grandfather. Påle' Scot as most Chamorros referred to him was the third ever Chamorro Catholic priest. He went to seminary in the Philippines alongside Påle' Jesus Baza Duenas and Påle' Jose Ada Manibusan was ordained in Manila during the war, but died before he could return to Guam. He returned to Guam and war ordained just a few months before World War II hit the island. He, Påle' Duenas and Reverend Joaquin Sablan were the only religious leaders on the island during World War II, meeting the spiri

Fine'nina bai hu na'klaru este, ti hu gogof komprende hafa masusesedi gi i Gima'yu'us Katoliko giya Guahan. Hu tungo' na guaha yinaoyao. Hiningok-hu na meggai na taotao mandesganao nu i Maga'obispo. Ha aguguiguiyi un nuebu na "cult" gi i familian guma'yu'us. Este na cult ha fa'sahnge yan ha fa'takhilo' maisa siha gi un banda. Mannina'layo' i otro siha, sa' este na cult ti para todu i gaihinengge. Kalang para i manakhilo' gi hinegge na i mas fi'et na taotao. Esta mana'suha dos na guaiyayon na pale', sa' ma chanda i Maga'obispo. Estague i tinige'-na Si Peter Onedera put i yinaoyao. Ya-hu i tininge'-na sa' gi fino' Chamoru. ************************ Kao malilingu i respetu tatkumu baluhan kottura? Tinige' Peter Onedera August 5, 2014 Pacific Daily News Piniti yu' na ma huchom i Faninadahen Kosas Katidråt-Basilika. Noskuåntos menhalom taotao siha

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

I attended the SEIS Public Comment Hearings at both Okkodo High School and Father Duenas Memorial School. As someone who was there during the last DEIS Comment priod meetings and wrote about it quite a bit on my blog and later in this column, it was interesting to see the public debate over militarization in Guam be shaped this time in a war of words, ideas, fears and dreams emerging from the clashing comments. Most public debates happen through the dusting off of faded and often outdated pieces of information in peoples’ heads. Your perception of how some important issues of public substance is determined by random snippets of information you have heard, read, been told, want to believe, are afraid to admit to and so on. In each society there are always a list of things that everyone is expect to know something about, and be expected to take some position on, even if that position is that you don’t care about it or that everything sucks about it. The milita

FROM WE ARE GUAHAN DOD SELECTS ONLY CRITICAL RECOVERY HABITAT ON GUAM FOR SITE OF FIRING RANGE COMPLEX DOD has released a draft Supplemental EIS or SEIS proposing a site for a firing range complex that impacts over 250 acres of critical recovery habitat at Ritidian.  A bill has also been introduced in Congress allowing DOD to place a “surface danger zone” over the Ritidian Wildlife Refuge.   WHAT IS THE SEIS? The Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement or “SEIS” is a DOD study that announces DOD’s preferred choice for the location of two things: DOD's proposed firing range complex; and DOD's proposed Marine base and housing.   The SEIS also identifies environmental, social, cultural and economic consequences associated with DOD’s preferred choices. WHY IS IT BEING PREPARED? The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Guam Preservation Trust and We Are Guahan filed a lawsuit against DOD in November 2010 based on DOD’s failure to

In order to get through our lives we will divide our consciousness into layers. There will be things that we will let float atop our consciousness on a daily basis because we judge them to be important enough to have access to all the time. There will be things that the context of each day will force to the surface. Things that we maybe didn’t wish would reveal themselves all the time, but will anyways because of what is happening around us. Then there are the things that we will knowingly or unknowingly push down as far as we can and hope they never emerge. These are notions, faint ideas, principles, realizations which pumuha todu. They have the ability to upset everything, like flipping over a jar filled with water and watching everything within be taken away by the momentum of the chaos. These are things that are banished or submerged deep below because they cost too much to acknowledge on a daily basis. They extract so much ideological flesh in their reco

Not many people remember who Guam's version of the Lone Ranger was. He was someone who in a time of terrible crisis and injustice, with great risk to himself, stood up for the Chamorro people. Juan Mala or Juan Malo might be someone you would consider to fit this category. In some of his stories he does wear a mask to hide his identity when he is tricking and defrauding the Spanish on the island. But alas, Juan Mala stories were popular long before the Long Ranger even existed. Agualin could be a wishful candidate. During a time of terrible warfare and atrocities he worked to organize the Chamorro people to fight against Spanish colonization. He did not shy away from a fight but in the speech attributed to him he called on them to rise up, and that he would lead them with his lance that has killed many and will kill them all. Metgot na sinangan. But once again Agualin lived long before the Lone Ranger was created. If you were a drinking man than someone from prewar Guam w

One project that I have slowly been working on for almost a year is to create a set of 60-second sports for KPRG about Chamorro culture, language and history in the Chamorro language. Last year UOG President Robert Underwood asked me to do something with Chamorro language and media. He made several suggestions, such as creating a Chamorro TV talk show or have Chamorro language radio interviews. All of these were wonderful ideas, but after I investigated them, they would require quite a bit of effort and planning, far too much for me alone. I look forward to trying to create something along these lines in the future. KPRG is right next door to UOG and I already work there for the radio show Beyond the Fence and so for someone whose plate is already overflowing with work this seemed like the most logical and most efficient choice. I met with Chris Hartig the General Manager for KPRG and he said that the best way to start off, and something that he was already

“Tåya’ Båtson San Jose” Michael Lujan Bevacqua The Marianas Variety 3/7/12 In the writing of my Masters Thesis in Micronesian Studies I conducted over a hundred interviews with Chamorros who were born in the prewar Naval colonial era of Guam history and also endured the trauma of I Tiempon Chapones, the period of Japanese colonialism in World War II. These interviews were conducted more than a decade ago, over the course of several years. Since then, so many of those I spent an afternoon with in their outside kitchen or a morning sipping coffee at Hagatña McDonald’s have passed away. One of the most interesting memories I have from that period is my attempt to figure out the meaning of an old Chamorro fina’kuentos, empe’ finayi, or in English “saying” that one of my interview subjects had used. While speaking to an elderly man in Inarajan about the work of Father Jesus Baza Duenas in World War II and the changes of life in his village, he invoked the saying “tåya’ Båston San Jo

Every couple of months I write about Pale' Jesus Baza Duenas. There are a number of reasons why. Here are two. One is that when I was an undergrad and graduate student at the University of Guam, I did a helluva alot of research put i lina'lan Si P ale Duenas. I combed the archives at the Micronesian Area Research Center and other places on Guam looking for whatever mention I could find of him. I also did several dozen interviews with people who had worked with Pale' Duenas during the war, had known him before the war, or had worked on his legacy after the war. From all this research I was given an extremely machalapon pinenta pu t Si Pale'. For instance, today there is a small movement to beatify Pale' Duenas and eventually get him sainthood for his ministry and bravery as the second Chamorro Catholic priest ever. Although the odds of Pale' Duenas actually being beatified are extremely extremely gof gof poor, if this was a possibility it would depend upon t