NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Since 2003 I have had a number of uneven traditions associated with this blog. Many of these have dissipated as I have used this blog less and less, but a few I have continued to hold on to. One of the longest held traditions is "Happy US Imperialism Day!" It started as a thinking piece while I was working on my Master's Thesis in Micronesian Studies at the University of Guam. I had spent a few years reading as much as I could about Guam History. I had interviewed hundreds of elders born prior to World War II, who had experienced Japanese occupation. I had even begun working for Puerto Rican filmmaker Frances Negron-Muntaner on a documentary that would later become War for Guam. I was also spending time with activists of every stripe on Guam, trying to talk to anyone who I could find who had long been critical of the things I was just starting to learn about the historical and contemporary realities of the Chamoru people.  I was encountering the history and the present of

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

Last June, M asahide Ota, former Governor of Okinawa passed away. He had been governor of the islands in 1995, when long-time resentment and culture of protest against the US military bases achieved a much greater and more widespread character after the rape of a 12 year old girl by three US servicemen. His was a powerful voice for peace and demilitarization in Okinawa. During a trip in October of 2015 Edward A. Alvarez and I (with the help of the intrepid interpreter Shinako Oyakawa) got to visit him at his Naha office one afternoon. When he learned that we were from Guam, he mentioned several Chamorros that he had met over the years and inquired about them. He told us a number of stories from his life, including as experience after being drafted into the Japanese army during the war. He shared others about the struggles to survive for average Okinawans, after the destruction of their island and displacement in order to build new US military bases. I have long written that Okinawa a

The image is from Suicide Cliff in Tinian, where a collection of memorials for those who died in World War II can be found.  The text below is the English translation of a poem written by Rinko Sagara, a 14 year old student from Urasoe in Okinawa. She recited it earlier this year at an event meant to remember the victims of the Battle of Okinawa in World War II. It's title is "Ikiru."  ******************** I am living. Standing on the earth transmitting the mantle's heat, My body embraced by a pleasant, humid wind, With the scent of grass in my nostrils, My ears tuned to the distant sound of the surf. I am now living How beautiful this island where I now live is. The sparking blue sea, The shining waves releasing spray as they hit the rocks, The bleating of goats, The babbling of brooks, Small paths leading through the fields, Mountains bursting with green colors, The gentle tunes of the sanshin (three-stringed traditional instrumen

For decades Guam has been used to being a joke. Generations of comedians have used it, such as Johnny Carson, David Lettermen and even Conan O'Brien. Robert Underwood has invoked the comedy specter of Rodney Dangerfield in order to explain Guam's situation, saying it is an island that gets no respect! The mere mention of Guam in this way stems from the fact that it is a signifier that floats around, it is always out there, especially for those in the US, but there often isn't any actual knowledge attached to it. That means that you can deploy it in ridiculous ways, a familiar, but empty signifier that can create laughter as the listener confronts that awkward gap between their knowledge and whatever might lie beyond the horizon of their understanding. That's why when you would say something random like "I'm headed to Guam!" it would elicit laughter, because of the way the audience would slip on the banana peel shaped gap between their knowledge and rea

Since the start of the year I have been working on an article about militarization in the Marianas Islands. It is for a special edition of Micronesian Educator edited by Tiara Na'puti and Lisa Natividad. I'm excited at the prospect of writing it, but my schedule over the past year has been tough, in addition to family drama and other setbacks. I've been coming back and forth to it in my notebooks every month, but until now I haven't been able to really try to finish it. I spent Christmas Day typing up my scattered notes and drafts. The article is an attempt to talk about militarization, military increases, military strategy in a Marianas wide context, and the ways it divides, unities, takes and stimulates. One of the most interesting sections is on the CIA training that took place in Saipan from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. The facility was known as the Naval Technical Training Unit or NTTU and it trained anti-communist operatives to destabilize and sabotage r

Guam gets its 15 mins of national or international media fame refreshed every few years, sometimes because of a typhoon or earthquake. Sometimes because of snake epidemics. Over the past few years, North Korea has had alot to do with Guam getting a little extra attention. Usually these periods are frustrating to analyze in media terms because Guam, even if it is mentioned as the focus of a story, still remains at the periphery of it. But this most recent North Korea scare led to a series of well-written and insightful articles that didn't shy away from Guam's colonial status, but engaged with it. Here below is probably my favorite piece to come out from all the drama. ************************* "Guam: A colonized island nation where 160,000 American lives are not only at risk but often forgotten" by Gene Park Washington Post August 11, 2017 “Total Americans affected: 3,831.” Fox News ran a video explainer  this week on the affect of North Korea’s missiles o