NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

For the past year I have been assisting one of the men who fought the Japanese at Atate, Jose Mata Torres with the publication of his memoirs, “The Massacre at Atate.” Torres was a young man at the time who and wasn’t a main organizer for the attack but he said that he had never felt more inspired or exciting in his life, than to see the men from his village rise up and in order to defend their families and their lives, face off against their violent occupiers. On February 24th at 6:30 in the CLASS Lecture Hall at UOG, the book “Massacre at Atate” is being released. There will be a reading by Jose Torres and then a panel discussion afterwards. Please come and join us for this important step for Chamorro Studies, but also just the remembering of Chamorro history and in turn Chamorro possibility. As I come near to the end of this project it reminds me of something I posted earlier, last year titled "Three Massacres." It was originally posted on this blo

The article below comes from the Liberation Day commemorative booklet published in 1994 on the 50th anniversary of the retaking of Guam by American forces during World War II. It covers the story of the men of Merizo/Malesso' in the south, who fought and killed the Japanese in their own village, liberating themselves prior to the US return. For the past six months I've been working with one of the last survivors of this fight against the Japanese, Mr. Jose Mata Torres, featured in the article. Hopefully in the next few weeks we'll be publishing his memoirs of the war titled Massacre at Atate. Until then, here is the article telling the story from a slightly different perspective, written by the late PJ Borja.   *************** Men escape nightmare in Merizo By PAUL J. BORJA So near, yet so far. In July 1944, the ships of the U.S. Navy could be seen off Merizo, almost as close as the waves rushing over the reefs that fringe the southern village.

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

On Saturday, my special projects class "The Uprising at Atate" traveled to Malesso' in the South to take pictures of the two memorials at Tinta and Faha. Malesso' has the most notorious "village" story of the entire war. Despite being far away from the centers of Japanese power, by the end of the war it is the site of two massacres (Tinta and Faha) and one uprising (Atate). For this research project we have been studying why the massacres sites, which are zones filled with trauma and victimization have become so important in WWII memorialization, while Atate, a space where Chamorros fought back and killed their Japanese captors holds little to no significance over how people see the Tiempon Chapones tale unfolding. Finding the exact location where the uprising at Atate took place has proven difficult, as those who have been there are generally too old to travel there, and other know the general area and can point at it from afar in a way which is attemp