Guam (America's Forgotten Colonies, Part 2/3)

Guam is an unincorporated but organized territory of the United States in the western Pacific those born here are considered US citizens and all US constitutional provisions apply here including land ownership but excluding the right to vote for president the land was settled four thousand years ago by the Chamorro people Spain colonized the island not long after Ferdinand Magellan arrived in 1521 but in 1898 Spain ceded Guam to the US it becoming one of the first US colonies or territories on December 8 1941 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor Japan invaded and captured Guam from the United States the Japanese forced the Guamanians into hard labor torturing and raping and killing many of them American troops liberated the island recapturing it three years later on July 22nd 1944 this year is our Santa Mary and Carmel and statue she is our patron saint she is the protector of our island Catholicism runs deep in Guam over 95 percent of the population is Catholic one of their most important public holidays is a Catholic feast day the Immaculate Conception of Mary which coincidentally is intertwined with much of their history on December 8th we have the Immaculate feast of Mary but that's also when we were celebrating and in prayer that we actually got attacked by Pearl Harbor the Japanese came over and over the International Dateline and so that was also on December 8 1941 but one of the unique things about it is every December 8th it's what we call a public holiday one year one of our governors decided that he would take that public holiday away and as it turned out that's when our super typhoon pokes on Wall head and devastated our island therefore our Monaco's our elders had told him that you did you disrespected the taotaomona spirits and therefore to place it back into which has been ever since and what is dr. Mona our tottemo know it toda means people so we say the the people the Tata Mona is our spirits it's our ancestors because we believe on this island there's always talked to Mona spirits if we have children we try to tell them not to make noise after sunset don't disrespect the taotaomona even if you're going into an ancient ground we ask permission we will do a little prayer well your singular defense at Zuko for boat asking for the permission and then we also you know seduce Marcy thank you for allowing us to be on this ground we've actually had places where and I even had witness to where if you disrespected the spirit you either got a bruise or a pinch and or a sickness that you couldn't explain and it wasn't until you went back to where you offended the spirit that you actually go back and ask forgiveness and then the illness goes away mysteriously now and we hiked to the two numbers cave right and we asked permission we asked permission to go in the cave but my other half he didn't tell me he he cut one he cut a silent one and so for a whole week he was complaining of stomach problems he had pains and he had blood in his stool and we couldn't explain it was nothing different that we ate and then I said what did you do he goes well I farted in two lovers cave and I said no did you ask forgiveness he goes no so believe it or not I had to go and arrange with the art arrows that we could access to their private beach and then we had to hike down to the cave and then we actually had to go in and ask forgiveness and which he did and then as soon as that happened everything went away just mysteriously the taotaomona spirits had forgiven him and his illness was gone Marte is referring to the sacred site of the two lovers in ancient Chamorro legend its climax happened here on this high cliff above tomb on Bay there was once a young beautiful upper-class woman of mixed Spanish and Chamorro descent without her consent her parents set up an arranged marriage for her to a Spanish captain the girl was unhappy with the plan and fled from home to the cliffs to stare at the sea and starlit night there she met a young strong man from a poor Chamorro family who like her wondered at the stars above the two fell in love and promised to meet again the girl went home to tell her parents her father was outraged and demanded she marry the Spanish captain immediately the girl fled again at sundown and met her tomorrow lover at the same high point along the shore her father the captain and all his Spanish soldiers pursued the lovers and trapped them on the cliff with no way of escape the lovers tied their long black hair together into a single knot kissed and jumped from the steep cliff into the waters below so this is the area where the two lovers had jumped off to their death so if you go out you'll see that three hundred three hundred forty feet deep down to the down to of the ocean level when you look here here at the lovers point you look down to the right here you'll see the face of a female woman then the silhouette over here going back that rock right there so that's a female's face with her hair going back is this you like pray that you find a boyfriend or something here or actually she wanted to tie her hair with someone what do you have the entire hair so basically the hair tie from what we were talking about earlier was that for ya the forbidden love they because they loved each other so much that the two more men and the two more women had long hair so because of that and they they decided to jump together they decide to tie their here so that they both would do it at the same time and then you know that ended their love and they still be bounded by the tying of the hair we are now here at the Nimitz Hill war the Pacific overlooks the acid beach that is where the Americans came in and had worked their way in true Guam through this mountain site and started clearing out all the Japanese that were on island so this is how they came into the island started their liberation of the island of Guam yes there was a Japanese the soldiers that were all over the jungles that were shooting back at them to try and keep them out but the guns were located like at the PD guns they had the PD guns where they had some guns there they had some guns located over the apra harbor area so those were the sites that where the guns were located to shoot against anyone coming in but the Americans were smart enough but that they didn't have any guns in this area in which way they were able to come in well this place was you know the Japanese known did as the Banzai charges so a lot of the the Japanese counteracted attacked the Americans coming up this Hillier the valley here so they were trying mortars and stuff like that back to them just to keep them away from from coming and invading the island of Guam or not invading but having to take over the island itself so this is a photo of the area this is the south pacific memorial erected here by japanese citizens citizens residents of guam after the after World War two in 1944 American troops landed in the south and pushed the Japanese forces to the north this area was the Japanese commands last stronghold when the Japanese realized the American troops had taken Guam they were treated to this hill with many Chamorro prisoners they first forced the tommorow's to dig caves and then beheaded them all before taking their own lives inside the caves your tomorrow is that right that's correct how do you feel about the Japanese you know with that history modern day Japanese well I do you have forgiveness or do you hold resentment well growing up my parents never talked about the war they my father was a prisoner of war my father came out of that war being only 68 pounds because he was a prisoner of war and he was one of the prisoners that dug the holes and in her gut Ania there are several holes several caves that were dug there and they were more like labyrinths you went in and out of these holes in different directions and that was where my father was imprisoned in that area so but I didn't know that I was not born at that time my oldest brother had just shared that information with us and it was only then that I really felt a little bit uneasy with them but before that this island was just they just wanted peace they were just happy to be alive they they just believed that it's over it was it's it's war it was war and we just are happy to be alive and move on that was the mentality of the tomorrow's when I was growing up so as far as being oppressed we the jamal's were forced to speak Japanese prior to that they were forced to speak to Spanish I'm sorry English before that they were forced to speak Spanish so the tomorrow is are multilingual I know my parents spoke all different languages only because all that was imposed on them over the years so we kind of adapted to that kind of a mindset that imposition is a part of life it seems like for the tomorrow's so therefore they became very peace peace loving and okay well they yeah they did this to us but we survived or is still here so after World War 2 I mean looking back Jamal's had all kinds of kids after World War two because they had gone through this period with the Spanish back in in the 60s 70 thunders where they were almost eradicated there were only 3,000 chemours left so after the Japanese left the Chamorro had tons of kids some of them had 1012 kids so that they could rebuild the population and they were just happy to be able to do that so the Japanese come here to give gift offerings to the men and a lot of these Japanese that come to Guam have relatives that were that fought in this war that have never returned to Guam so they're whole they come here hoping that this is the last place that their relative was it's a Buddhist symbol has nothing to do with missing it looks like that it sounds chest Julie then took us to the far north driving alongside the u.s. Anderson Air Force Base which as shown in blue occupies a large part of the island it's known as the US military supermarket because of the massive amounts of weaponry here North Korea's Kim jong-un had just threatened to strike Guam because of this there were hundreds of reporters here from around the world and street demonstrations supporting simultaneously both peace and support for the US military Anderson Air Force Base is where there's a hot concentration of bombers starting with the b-52s on to current or current bombers stealth bombers we constantly see jets flying overhead right now it's kind of a quiet a quiet time and it seems to have quieted down after the northern korean threat and it's because they're out there the Jets are out there they're out flying in different locations now but here on Guam you would see them on a daily basis if we were to get attacked by a missile we have missiles so they're going to be shot in the air in the air to intercept those missiles as far as atomic bombs I'm pretty sure that those bombers probably will be loaded with those nuclear bombs yes I feel safe of course one bomb is going to blows up and if that should happen then what can we do there's nothing we can do but I feel safe for the fact that we have them available to us at our disposal so to speak not the military here we can I'm I'm hopeful that the interception will happen once the missile gets launched from North Korea that that intercept intercepting missile will shoot it out of the air before it hits Guam so that's where my confidence is now my dad was in World War two in the city okay he basically grew up there poor in Maryland so probably when he entered the Marines he'd probably never up to it before then he probably never been more than 20 miles away from his farmhouse in Maryland we have actually the museum houses two separate wings okay one dedicated to the Japanese and you know one dedicated to the Americans all right we have our vehicles here we have pictures on the walls and they first actually took over the island this is the Japanese I guess Japanese naval troops in front of the Marine Barracks that was located in Sioux my they also have these are prisoners of war Japanese prison camps and then we have the war trials Japanese war trials were held up at Nick camps and then these are some of the u.s. I didn't you know like things that were found in the jungle around the island of Cologne and we have the m1 garand this photo here is actually a to celebrate our first Liberation Day this is plaza de espana in the background and then father Duane yes while they're joining us was said to be very outspoken against the Japanese so they had executed him and a few local men so the possession you see here was actually the locals that had gone and taken his body and he has now entered in our st. Joseph's Church in in a rotten well when when I was growing up in this village here you know we take turns during before mass like half an hour before mass we have to somebody has to be assigned to climb up to that tower up there and ring the bell three times before the mass started yeah like walking up to the altar where father dress was buried underneath right there is where father drains was buried actually father drainage was the priest beta1 and he was accused of you know by the Japanese that is helping one of the emerging that named twit here in the Ireland and he was accused that he's helping him you know to scape from the Japanese so he was taken to to tie Magilla area where father Drinan says and he was beheaded right there so after a war that took his body they excavate his body and reburied right in this outer here I talk about you know the wood that they Justice is made from the hardest wood you could find here in the island they called it if it would but how come there's so many big hall on the floor these thinkers said caused by a bark or termites or anything like that no it happened on December 8th 1941 Japan in the island within two days to overrun the entire island and it happened that the fighter plane from the parent was shooting all the houses and this village unlucky nobody was killed people were so fat they go into hiding and look at this all this machine gun rid of an employ so again the area is steeped in history what all along the river you have what they call Lackey sites the ancient villages that feed up all the way to the lake that supplies the river with its fresh water fed no lake and so most of the people prior to the arrival of the Spanish we're situated in this area there there were other villages around the island along the shores but you had a lot of people here again primarily because fresh water easy access to it fast-forward to World War Two and December 7 1941 they're bombing Pearl Harbor well simultaneously December 8 they're bombing Guam and then we become the only possession of the United States that was occupied for by Japan or 3-year 1941 to 1944 which leads the story of the guide that stayed out here for 28 years so Ichi Okoye two of his comrades and he decided that instead of surrendering they stay out there two of the comrades died during the course of their stay but in 1972 28 years after the end of the war two gentlemen here that owned land and farm and fish of it found sergeant yokoi checking their fish traps so they brought him and took him to this building this building used to be an old store called Surfside did the first interrogation in here and found out he was a Japanese straggler right 28 years and ultimately he was repatriated to Japan they they said that he was a national hero but his desire is you ready his desire was to meet with the Emperor of Japan to apologize for not serving his country well because you're not supposed to surrender right let's go on the boat the the National Museum from Guam was a project really started by governor Felix Camacho and at the time we talked about leaving a legacy that would transcend all our generations and tell the story of the evolution of our people so he appointed me chairman of the museum task force I became chairman of the Museum Foundation and worked with the entire community to be able to first choose a design and then ultimately determine how to fund building that facility and talk about 27 million dollars and of the bulk of that funding came from the tourist attraction fund but a lot of the funding also came through donations from our community because it was a place that they really wanted to be able to tell the story of the evolution of our people here half a day my name is Pilar leg want yeah I'm with the Guam Visitors Bureau direct their global marketing we boast over 1.5 million visitors and I have to say a majority of them comes from our Asian region we have not seen any decline in our visitor arrivals in fact we have more South Koreans visiting our shores today than any place in the United States of America and we also have many many tourists from our beautiful neighboring countries of Japan Taiwan from the Philippines from China from even Russia this is a playground for Asian visitors they come here to rest and relax and enjoy the beautiful Vista view and wide those 1.5 million visitors come here today do you know myself Korean arrival have a boost it in the last week from South Korea so while the world thinks were losing business our Asian visitor arrivals are boosting because we are very safe destination and then what do you think about the threat of thermal nuclear war bother you at all well you know that is a very concerning issue for the entire world this is not an isolated concern that we would have it would be the entire world we never want to see that day come we are an island of peace and love and in fact we are celebrating the year of love here on Guam so what the world needs now is love sweet love

Channel: La Mancha Media

Views: 1,201,955

Keywords: Guam

Id: fCTB1XoAeFU

Length: 21min 59sec (1319 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 22 2017