NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

It remains a tragic, frustrating but also telling statistical anomaly that Guam has one of the highest concentrations of US veterans, but ranks amongst the lowest areas in terms of spending by Veterans' Affairs. A few years ago this led to the PBS program American by the Numbers flying out to Guam to do a documentary on what it is like to come from a place that signs up and serves in such high numbers, but does not translate into high levels of spending to thank those who have served for their sacrifices. I am not a patriotic person in any form really, and I do not take much pride in the high levels of military service Chamorros and Guam in general sign up for, but this poor treatment of our local veterans is something that anger and irritates me as well. Below is an article that discusses an overview of the PBS documentary, which was titled Island of Warriors. ****************** "Guam's Wounded Warriors" by Marlon Bishop LatinoUSA July 6, 2016 Every July

PBS recently did a short documentary about Guam and veterans here as part of their program America by the Numbers. It was a pretty good piece. I was interviewed for the program at the WWII Memorial Asan Overlook as seen in the picture for this post. The interview was pretty long covering a whole range of topics. As usually happens with these sorts of things, very little of it was used in the actual interview. I still think it was a good piece even if I was barely in it, although there was a glaring, but expected lack of discourse around Guam's political status. The issue of Guam's colonial status is always something that mainstream media in the states have difficulty with. You can describe it in a hundred different ways, talk about it from this angle, that angle, give a wide range of options for how to approach it, but ultimately it is for your average media person, something they can't engage with. It would require too much discursive muster, it would consume any piece