NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I didn’t grow up singing any Chamorro Christmas songs. There was little to no Chamorro in my house growing up in Mangilao. We celebrated Christmas, but didn’t do it in the way that many Chamorros do it. Where it involves a bilen, the creation of a nativity scene, the making of bunelos dagu, or the singing of Chamorro Christmas songs, the majority of which are Catholic in nature. So learning about Chamorro Christmas experiences, the stereotypical, more general kind is bewildering in a way. I am coming into traditions that people who sometimes know far less Chamorro language than I do and much much less Chamorro knowledge or history than I do, know more intimately than I do. To them these experiences are commonplace, are normal, are kind of boring. For me they are interesting. While for most of my students the idea of gathering material for a bilen is irritating and frustrating, it is intriguing to me. Something I would like to do one day, not because of any affec

(Note this image is not of the 731st MP Unit I'm discussing in the text below).  The text below is for a project I am working on for Chamorro Studies. Documenting and telling the story of the 731st MP EPW, the only reserve component unit from the Pacific to go to fight in Desert Storm. As you'll read below, they performed very well while there: ******************* People often think of Guam as a small place, and therefore assume that those small places and those who come from those small places are not capable of great deeds. We see this to hardly be true in the work of the 731 st MP Company, started on July 31 st , 1981. Formed soon after the Guam National Guard was created, this company was trained specifically for EPW processing or Enemy Prisoners of War Processing. Their training was tested when they were activated and deployed during the First Gulf War. They were the only reserve component unit from the Asia-Pacific region to be dep