Memorial Day on Guam

 Every Memorial Day, 3,055 flags are placed at Asan Memorial Beach Park in Guam to commemorate each individual civilian and serviceman who was killed during the Japanese invasion, occupation, and American liberation of the Island where America's day begins. The Third Marine Division landed at Asan on July 21, 1944, ferried ashore by 180 armored landing vehicles, 20 of which were destroyed by enemy artillery fire before they made the beach. The Marines then assaulted the dug-in Japanese troops who occupied the high ground you can see in the video.
The Army 77th Division attacked Agat.
During the ensuing 21 days of fighting, 1,866 American marines and soldiers were killed, mostly during the first week of the invasion, when Japanese resistance was strongest.

Same gun (?) many decades later.

A Japanese six-inch battery on Chonito Cliff, 
Asan beachhead, Guam, after the battle.

Asan was also where a field hospital was set up, once the area was believed cleared of the enemy and safe. Japanese troops regrouped and attacked it, shooting doctors and nurses, bayoneting  patients in their beds before being driven out.

 The Japanese had behaved horrifically to Guamanians during  their occupation, as they did in most of the lands they conquered, so much so that even today, 81 years later, Liberation Day is celebrated island-wide on Guam.  The Japanese forced essentially all the  men on Guam to be slave labor, an estimated 15,000 persons, to build airfields and defensive positions.  They routinely raped women and children.  They massacred dozens of Chamorros, the native Guamanians, in  Fena, Merizo, Agat, and Yigo.

The Fena caves where one of the most rotten mass killings took place is on Big Navy and I've visited the site.  It's hard to imagine what sick bastards the Japanese were.  Here's a recounting of the episode from Guampedia. Please check it out.

Fena Massacre

 

This is actually a commemoration on Guam of the
Battle of Midway that occurs a week or so after
Memorial Day.  But it shows how important the
events of the war against Japan still are in
that part of the world.
The photo was taken some years ago. Who's that
little girl crying because she doesn't want to
stand in the hot sun by all those stupid flags?

As I've mentioned, I spent a lot of my childhood in Japan, and, by and large, the Japanese seemed like fine, decent people.  But when I learned of the monstrous things they did in China and during the Pacific War and have gotten away with; in fact being seen as victims (oh, please!) of the evil, racist Americans...I couldn't help but look at them with an estimating eye. One may smile and smile and be a villain said Hamlet about King Claudius and so it may be said, we should not forget, about the Japanese.  

The Chamorros don't forget, even though their island, a bit bigger than Santa Catalina Island off the coast of southern California, is inundated with hundreds of thousands of Japanese tourists annually. We shouldn't either.