I spent some of the happiest days of my life in Guam. I do yet remember it and all the people I met there fondly. I still own an ocean-front condo in Tamuning. It used to be a hotel but went bust in the Asian economic crash of '97 and was converted into condominiums. I still harbor vague plans to retire there in my old age to bask in the warm tropical sun and wade in the warm tropical waters.
The island has been dominated by the US military, especially the Navy which for decades after the Spanish-American War controlled the island. The Navy built a reservoir so the island has a permanent fresh water supply, as well as roads, health clinics, schools, etc. -- the Spanish never bothered. The most notable thing the Spanish ever did was, after the native Guamanians revolted against their rule, they killed ever male, man and boy, on the island, leaving only women and girls alive to be their servants and concubines.
Liberation Day, July 21, which celebrates the American reconquest of the island from the Japanese, is Guam's biggest holiday. The Japanese occupation, short as it was, was horrifying in its brutality and is not forgotten. I think that on a percentage basis, more Guamanians join the armed forces than any other group except American Indians, mostly the Navy, same as the Indians.
Despite the American armed forces presence, nowadays tourism is the most important business of the island. Millions of Japanese, Koreans, Chinese and Russians visit annually. The Japanese and Koreans mostly consist of honeymoon couples who stay a few days. The Chinese usually stay a couple of weeks and the Russians may stay for a month or more, avoiding the
harsh Siberian winter weather. The beaches near the big hotels and shopping areas where the tourists teem are usually all that the visitor sees, but the beaches accessible from Big Navy and Anderson AFB, as well as the off-the-beaten-track local beaches, are practically pristine and on a weekday morning or at midday are deserted. Even on busy weekends, compared to the beach scene at the resort areas of the island, the base beaches are practically empty.
The joke is that should the Chinese or Russians nuke the island, they would kill more of their own countrymen than American military -- there are only about 20,000 stationed there, mostly submariners and support personnel at Big Navy. Andersen Air Force Base hosts units that rotate in and out on a short-term basis, so the big bombers are still based in CONUS. The Marine air comes down from Iwakuni in Japan for short stays as well and the Navy air wings are on visiting aircraft carriers. From what I understand, the Army, in conjunction with the Navy, is building a multi-layered missile defense system.
Filipinos are a big presence on the island and seem to run most of the businesses, except the strip joints and prostitution, which are run by the Koreans. These cater to the tourists, not the locals or military. They bring in some "talent" from Korea, but mostly they lure naive Micronesian girls from other islands with promises of office jobs and the like, only to force them into prostitution, keeping them as virtual slaves. The local Guam government and police don't seem to care. Chinese are notorious for kidnapping women, drugging them and shipping them back to China to work as prostitutes. When I was there, the Navy put out a warning memo to female personnel to always walk on the inside of sidewalks close to buildings and be alert for vans that might pull up beside you. That was a typical kidnapping method, a van pulling up beside a woman, the door opening and men jumping out and grabbing her. On the other islands, Chinese and Korean fishing fleets were notorious for kidnapping local girls, including children, to keep aboard ship as sex slaves. When they were returning to their home port they would throw the women overboard so there was no evidence of any crime.
Gosh, here I've gone and talked about a lot of negative stuff about Guam, but nothing bad ever happened to me there, and every day had its moments of sheer delight. The water inside the reef was clear, and never seemed cooler than 80 degrees and often was much warmer It was full of colorful sea creatures, too, and some scary ones -- sea snakes and sharks and giant manta rays, but only the rays seemed to be common. The air was usually in the eighties, too, with 80-some percent humidity. And when the frequent showers sparkled down from the blue sky full of billowing cumulus clouds it was about 80 degrees, too. You could go for a swim and when you entered the water it wasn't a cold shock and when you came out of the water the air did not feel chilly, nor did it feel hot, with the sand burning your feet, forcing you to skip up the beach to get under some shade.
Of course, there were some big thunderstorms in the afternoons. The clouds would billow up into giant towers, the sky would grow dark and then the rain would come down in big warm drops. It was actually a pleasure to stand in it; it was like taking a shower with the whole sky your shower head. If you were outside walking in casual clothes, you were probably already soaking wet with sweat, so getting washed clean by the rain left you no wetter than you were before.
Guam does get hit by typhoons, sometimes record-breakers. But the building codes have long taken those big winds into account and the there is never much damage beyond some downed trees and power lines, and the usual low-lying flooding. Houses are made of cement, as are the power and telephone poles. I actually enjoyed watching the typhoons rage from my condo, high above the flying debris and with a good view out to the reef and beyond, to see the spectacular waves, the coconut trees bending almost flat in the raging wind, and always, always, somebody walking around outside simply glorying in the power of the storm.
Away from the tourists, a lot of Guam is still
undeveloped jungle and grassland, and there is plenty of hiking to be done, boonie stomping as we called it, sometimes to beautiful secret places, more often well known but hard to reach spots that take some effort to get to. It was not hard to find relics of the fighting on the island during World War II, everything from Japanese sake bottles to crashed airplanes. If you came across an old hand grenade or mortar shell it was best to give it a wide birth. I always enjoyed the hikes, but you were guaranteed to get muddy, hot and sweaty, so it was good to hike to a water fall and enjoy its cool mists and wade in the pools at its base. Wouldn't you like to do that, too?
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