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WWII: 45 CHamorus Caught in Wake Invasion

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.

Governors of Guam

←Return to the Politics and Government Biographies Category Spanish Governors List of Governors of Guam from 1668 to 1898 from the Records of the Islands. Term End Governors 1668 1672 Juan de Santa Cruz (military commander) 1672 1674 Juan de Santiago (military commander) 1674 1676 Damián de Esplana (first sargento mayor) 1676 1678 Francisco de […]

Tsunami and Earthquake History and Potential for Guam

Since the devastating earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan’s coastline in March 2011 and sent thousands of Guam residents looking for higher ground, questions about the vulnerability of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands to an equally dangerous tsunami have been raised.

Whaling Influence in the Marianas

Eleven CHamoru men, kidnapped in Guam by Alonso de Salazar’s crew of the Victoria on 10 September 1526, to work the ship’s water pumps, became the first known Pacific crew members of a European based vessel. The Victoria was the only surviving ship of a seven ship fleet dispatched by Spanish Emperor Charles V.

The Matao Iron Trade Part 1: Contact and Commerce

Members of the matao, the highest-ranking strata of Mariana Islands society in the 16th and 17th centuries, carried on the first sustained cultural interaction and commercial exchange between Pacific Islanders and Europeans. From Ferdinand Magellan’s 1521 visit through the establishment of the 1668 Spanish Jesuit mission, these island traders, primarily from Guam and Rota, regularly bartered food staples and craftwork for iron goods with Spanish exploration and trade vessels, Dutch expeditions and English privateers.

Richard “Ric” Castro

Richard “Ric” Castro (1961 – ) , a Chamorro artist born to Juan and Magdalena LG Castro of Yigo, is a Professor of Art at the University of Guam, teaching at the Mangilao campus since the 1990s.  Castro, the third youngest of nine children, was raised on his family beach, Jinapsan, in the north of Guam.  He is known primarily for his paintings but also does printmaking and stone-carving.

Guam World War II War Claims: A Legislative History

After nearly 8 decades, a resolution. The war remains a sensitive issue for the Chamorros, in no small part, because, for decades, payment of war reparations by the US, for wartime atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Forces, was delayed as the number of Chamorro survivors from the war continued to diminish.

Potu: Tuba Rice Cakes

Potu (also spelled poto) are white rice cakes, distinctly flavored with a local coconut toddy or fermented sap called tuba (known as aguardiente in Spanish).

Carolinians on Guam

Peoples from the Caroline Islands have had a lengthy pre-contact history with the Mariana Islands. Research into indigenous Pacific voyaging overall shows indigenous movements throughout the Pacific, thus making centuries of Carolinian voyaging contact with the Mariana Islands – and CHamoru voyaging contact with the Caroline Islands a certainty.

Tamuning-Tumon-Harmon (Tamuneng-Tomhom)

“Tamuning” is a Carolinian word which was given to the area where Carolinians settled beginning in 1849, after a typhoon devastated Lamotrek and Satawal. It may be that Tamuning is the name of the Carolinian chief’s clan.