WWII/Japanese Era

Pan Am employees become Wake Island Defenders. Before the outbreak of World War II, 45 Chamorro men were employed by Pan American Airways at the company’s facilities in Wake Island, one of the stops on the Pan Am Clipper transPacific air service initiated in 1935. Guam was also a stop. The men worked as kitchen helpers, hotel service attendants, and laborers. But the peaceful life on Wake was shattered 8 December 1941, when Japanese aircraft bombed the island, killing five men from Guam and wounding five others.

Japan attacks the island. Saburu Kurusu, diplomatic pouch in hand, stepped off the Pan American Airways Clipper at Sumai while rumors persisted in Guam that war with Japan was imminent. But news reports elsewhere were saying that the Washington-bound Kurusu, special envoy for Emperor Hirohito appointed by the Japanese imperial government, was enroute to peace talks with high American officials.

All Micronesian islands under Japan’s rule except Guam. In the US Naval Era of Guam (1898-1941), life was generally as it had been for decades. Except for the presence of a small Navy contingent, the PanAm Clipper Service and the Cable Station at Sumai, Guam was basically a land of farmers and fishermen, with people living a simple lifestyle.

Killed 117 Japanese stragglers, captured five. Although Guam was liberated from Japan by the US military on 21 July 1944, and declared secured on 10 August, efforts continued until 1948 to ferret Japanese troops who were hiding out. Too proud to dishonor their country or their emperor, some Japanese soldiers chose not to surrender but instead took to the caves, jungles, and swamps of Guam.

Hiding in the jungle. After the US declared the WWII invasion of Guam to be over on August 10, 1944, two companies of approximately 60 Japanese infantry, each still under military command, were ordered by their officers to conduct guerilla warfare against American forces. These Japanese troops followed smaller groups of stragglers who had already escaped into the rugged interior of the island to avoid combat.