Guam Island Quotes

Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation Delivered on December 8, 1941 Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack. It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace. The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu. Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation. As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

I was getting interested in self-transformation. I was straining to understand the worldview of the islanders whom we moved and lived among—and I had been doing so since before Guam, when I let myself sink deep into the coral-pebble speed-checkers subworld around the sakau bowl in Pohnpei. I had come here to learn, I figured, and not just a few things about some far-flung places and people. I wanted to learn new ways to be. I wanted to change, to feel less existentially alienated, to feel more at home in my skin, as they say, and in the world.

Yap in the western Carolines served as Germany’s western Pacific communication hub; the island had a powerful wireless station along with direct undersea cable links to China, to Java in the Dutch East Indies, and to Guam on the United States’ Manila to San Francisco line.

I was straining to understand the worldview of the islanders whom we moved and lived among—and I had been doing so since before Guam, when I let myself sink deep into the coral-pebble speed-checkers subworld around the sakau bowl in Pohnpei. I had come here to learn, I figured, and not just a few things about some far-flung places and people. I wanted to learn new ways to be. I wanted to change, to feel less existentially alienated, to feel more at home in my skin, as they say, and in the world. This was a hopelessly New Age wish, and I would never have mentioned it to Bryan. But it came out in my quickness to pick up local expressions, local lore, wherever we found ourselves, and in my wholehearted admiration for subsistence farmers and fishermen, and the ease with which I fell into a kind of intimacy with many of the people we met. I had that facility with strangers, but it had a new intensity now, and I wondered if Bryan sometimes felt abandoned by me, or disgusted.

times had changed. The chief impetus for rethinking the value of colonies was the global Depression. It had triggered a desperate scramble among the world’s powers to prop up their flagging economies with protective tariffs. This was an individual solution with excruciating collective consequences. As those trade barriers rose, global trade collapsed, falling by two-thirds between 1929 and 1932. This was exactly the nightmare Alfred Thayer Mahan had predicted back in the 1890s. As international trade doors slammed shut, large economies were forced to subsist largely on their own domestic produce. Domestic, in this context, included colonies, though, since one of empire’s chief benefits was the unrestricted economic access it brought to faraway lands. It mattered to major imperial powers—the Dutch, the French, the British—that they could still get tropical products such as rubber from their colonies in Asia. And it mattered to the industrial countries without large empires—Germany, Italy, Japan—that they couldn’t. The United States was in a peculiar position. It had colonies, but they weren’t its lifeline. Oil, cotton, iron, coal, and many of the important minerals that other industrial economies found hard to secure—the United States had these in abundance on its enormous mainland. Rubber and tin it could still purchase from Malaya via its ally Britain. It did take a few useful goods from its tropical colonies, such as coconut oil from the Philippines and Guam and “Manila hemp” from the Philippines (used to make rope and sturdy paper, hence “manila envelopes” and “manila folders”). Yet the United States didn’t depend on its colonies in the same way that other empires did. It was, an expert in the 1930s declared, “infinitely more self-contained” than its rivals. Most of what the United States got from its colonies was sugar, grown on plantations in Hawai‘i, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Philippines. Yet even in sugar, the United States wasn’t dependent. Sugarcane grew in the subtropical South, in Louisiana and Florida. It could also be made from beets, and in the interwar years the United States bought more sugar from mainland beet farmers than it did from any of its territories. What the Depression drove home was that, three decades after the war with Spain, the United States still hadn’t done much with its empire. The colonies had their uses: as naval bases and zones of experimentation for men such as Daniel Burnham and Cornelius Rhoads. But colonial products weren’t integral to the U.S. economy. In fact, they were potentially a threat.

Was it important that the United States possessed, to take one example, Howland Island, a bare plot of land in the middle of the Pacific, only slightly larger than Central Park? Yes, it was. Howland wasn’t large or populous, but in the age of aviation, it was useful. At considerable expense, the government hauled construction equipment out to Howland and built an airstrip there—it’s where Amelia Earhart was heading when her plane went down. The Japanese, fearing what the United States might do with such a well-positioned airstrip, bombed Howland the day after they struck Hawai‘i, Guam, Wake, Midway, and the Philippines.

There was reason to believe the battle for Iwo Jima would be even more ferocious than the others, reason to expect the Japanese defender would fight even more tenaciously. In Japanese eyes the Sulfur Island was infinitely more precious than Tarawa, Guam, Tinian, Saipan, and the others. To the Japanese, Iwo Jima represented something more elemental: It was Japanese homeland. Sacred ground. In Shinto tradition, the island was part of the creation that burst forth from Mount Fuji at the dawn of history.... the island was part of a seamless sacred realm that had not been desecrated by an invader's foot for four thousand years. Easy Company and the other Marines would be attempting nothing less than the invasion of Japan.

Hot Sushi mi lasciò vicino all'imbarco dei traghetti e mi diede un opuscolo del Pacific Island Club di Guam. "Ci sono anch'io nella foto" disse indicando un puntino appena riconoscibile. Se lui era stato ridotto a un pugno di pixel da un computer, il suo sorriso era ancora visibile, l'ultimo tratto a svanire, come il ghigno dello Stregatto. Salutai Abo, strinsi la mano sonnacchiosa di Say Ya, e diedi a Michelle uno di quegli imbarazzanti saluti mezzo abbraccio-mezzo stretta di mano così popolari tra i nordamericani. Quindi loro quattro s'infilarono in macchina e ripartirono alla ricerca dell'esperienza e di un eterno presente. Dio, come li invidiavo.

Setting aside embassies, consulates and military bases, Rose Atoll of American Samoa is the southernmost point of U.S. controlled territory. Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and half a dozen other islands are all further south than Ka Lae. While Ka Lae is not the southermost point of the United States, it is the southernmosr point of the fifty states.

I didn’t realize until I was an adult that most of my poor childhood friends were Asian American or Pacific Islanders. My idea of Asian Americans very much fit in with the popular stereotype of hard-working, financially and academically successful, quiet, serious people of predominantly East Asian (Chinese, Korean, or Japanese) descent. But most of my friends’ parents were from Guam, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and India. Most of my friends’ parents had fled war, conflict, and economic disaster. They were all poor, they were all struggling, and they were all discriminated against for their brown skin and their strong accents. But even though they were my friends, their racial and ethnic identity was invisible to me and continued to be so well into my adulthood.

By March 6, 1521, the fleet reached the island of Guam,

The fourth member of the Colorado-class was never completed because the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 brought new battleship construction worldwide to a halt. The World War I victors agreed to limit capital ship construction and scrap certain existing vessels to result in a 5:5:3 ratio among the three major naval powers of the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. Signatories pledged to honor a ten-year moratorium on capital ship construction and guarantee ships would not exceed thirty-five thousand tons or carry armaments larger than sixteen-inch guns. The treaty also contained a non-fortification clause aimed at American and Japanese intentions across the broad reaches of the Pacific. Beyond what the United States might undertake in Hawaii or what Japan might do in its home islands, the signatories agreed not to fortify bases on their island possessions, including Japan’s Caroline and Marshall Islands, recently won from Germany, and such American outposts as Wake, Guam, and most important, the Philippines. Whether Japan would honor this commitment was a matter of considerable debate. Franklin Roosevelt, out of the public eye while recovering from polio, asked in an article, “Shall We Trust Japan?” Citing Japan’s participation in the Washington Naval Treaty and noting there was “enough commercial room” in the Pacific “for both Japan and us well into the indefinite future,” Roosevelt answered with an optimistic yes.7 The end result was that America honored its treaty commitment and built no new battleships between commissioning the West Virginia in 1923 and the North Carolina (BB-55) in 1941. This left the Arizona and its sisters the undisputed, though aging, queens of the seas on the American side during the latter 1920s and throughout the 1930s. But even queens require an occasional facelift, and from May 1929 to March 1931, Arizona underwent a twenty-two-month modernization at the Norfolk Navy Yard.