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Shipwrecked off Guam

On 15 August 1568 the Spanish galleon San Pablo, anchored off the southwest coast of Guam, was hit by a sudden violent storm, blown onto a nearby coast and battered into a wreck, stranding 132 men from Miguel López de Legazpi’s embryonic Philippine colony.

The castaways’ three-month sojourn on Guam led to intensive interaction with the Chamorro people, alternating between periods of trade and cooperation, and confrontation and violence.  The Spanish mariners, who may have built a fortified camp on Cocos Island, a small sandy island off the southern coast of Guam, during their stay, converted the galleon’s boat into a large bark to return to the Philippines.

First galleon lost on Guam

The San Pablo, a 400-ton prototypical “Manila Galleon” that was a mainstay of Legazpi’s 1565 expedition to the Philippines, was the first recorded Spanish shipwreck in the Mariana Islands, as well as the first of more than forty galleons lost in the 250-year history of Spain’s trans-Pacific trading line, many carrying some of the richest cargoes ever transported on the high seas.

The galleon was constructed in the port of La Navidad on the Pacific Coast of New Spain (Mexico), along with her larger sister ship, the 500-ton San Pedro, by order of the Spanish King Felipe II, who wished to establish a trading colony near the Spice Islands (Moluccas) via a westward route through Spanish territory.

Built of Mexican hardwoods and iron fittings imported from Spain, the San Pablo and San Pedro “were the largest [Spanish ships] that had ever been built on the Pacific coast [at that time]….the best that have ever navigated on the South Seas and the stoutest and best equipped.”  They were designed along the “half-moon” lines of the armed galleons that carried Spain’s New World treasure back to Seville, and built in the fashion of the time, with a rounded “apple” bow, high forecastle and vaulting stern bracketing a low waist.  Each vessel was three-masted, mounted several cannon, and could carry more than 200 crewmen and soldiers.

These galleons were built larger and stronger than their typical Atlantic counterparts at the urging of Fray Andrés de Urdaneta, the most knowledgeable Spanish navigator of the Pacific.  Greater size and strength was needed, Urdaneta had advised the King, to enable the vessels to carry the significantly larger quantities of food, water, supplies and equipment, as well as more crewmen.  The galleons, as well, needed to be strong enough to circumnavigate the vast Pacific and to survive the violent storms, especially typhoons, that generated 40-foot seas and gale force winds along the western rim of the ocean.

The San Pablo probably had a deck length of 90 to 100 feet on a 25 to 30-foot beam; the San Pedro, about a 120-foot deck length on a 35-foot beam.  These vessels are regarded as the prototypes for the “Manila Galleons” that plied the 20,000-mile roundtrip journey between Asia and America, the longest continuous navigation ever conducted.

The San Pablo’s initial visit to Guam occurred in January 1565, when Legazpi’s fleet anchored off the island’s southwest coast for eleven days, trading with Chamorros for provisions and surveying the island’s resources.  Urdaneta, who was Legazpi’s principle navigator, was familiar with the southwest roadstead because he had visited it in 1526 on the Vittoria, the surviving vessel of the Garcia de Loyasa expedition.  Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition may also have visited the southwest anchorage in March 1521, but some scholars believe his ships stopped off northwest Guam and interacted with islanders along that coast.

Legaspi’s grandson was commander

In 1568, the San Pablo was chosen to make the return voyage from Cebu, Philippines, to Acapulco, Mexico, and sailed under the command of Legazpi’s grandson, Filipe de Salcedo, arriving off Guam’s leeward coast in mid-August.  The vessel carried more than 400 quintals of Philippine cinnamon (about 40,440 pounds), as well as samples of Philippine gold, Ming porcelain and other articles that might be valued in New Spain and serve as future trade products for the galleon commerce.  One hundred and fifty quintals of the cinnamon were intended for the King and 250 quintals were shipped to provide financial compensation and sustenance for key members of Legazpi’s expedition.

Though only in his late teens, Salcedo was Legazpi’s most trusted general and had served as captain of the sister ship San Pedro in 1565, when the vessel, piloted by Urdaneta, discovered the return route from Cebu across the North Pacific to New Spain.  This long-sought passage, known to the Spanish as the tournaviaje, had been the Holy Grail of Spain’s Pacific exploration, the secret to unlocking direct Asian-American trade.  Salcedo had visited Guam twice before, using the southwest anchorage both times, first with Legazpi in 1565 and again in 1567 when he brought the San Pedro back to Cebu from Acapulco.

In the 1568 visit of the San Pablo to Guam, Salcedo moored in the familiar southwest roadstead and went ashore in the galleon’s boat with some of his men.  On August 15th, the feast of the Asuncion de Nuestra Señora, a sudden and violent storm struck the island, driving the ship off its moorings and dashing her against an area of coastline, where she was smashed to pieces, with a total loss of her cargo.  The crewmen and passengers on board the vessel were saved through the diligent efforts of those already ashore, who rescued them using outrigger canoes and the galleon’s boat.

Because the crew and passengers required rescue by boats and the reportedly violent destruction of the ship, the galleon may have been driven south of its anchorage onto the submerged coral reef extending more than two miles off Guam’s southwest coast, forming a U-shaped spur.  The flat, coconut palm-covered island now known as Cocos rises from the center of the reef.  If grounded on the coral spur, the vessel would have been battered to pieces by the pounding storm winds and waves.  The island would also have well served the castaways as a defensible camp, as they salvaged what they could from the wreck and began building a bark, enlarging and building up the ship’s boat by adding decking, siding and topside structures using woodwork and boards from the lost galleon.

Chamorros attacked crewmen, then helped them

Sparse accounts of this encounter noted that islanders attacked the crewmen several times but also assisted the castaways.  The crew “experienced great difficulty” with the islanders, one report noted, there were “big clashes” and a number of islanders were killed by arquebus fire.  Another account attributed the crew’s survival to Captain Salcedo, who “with his prudence calmed them [the islanders] down until the building of the bark was complete.”  His approach may have involved the gifting and trading of iron and other goods from the wreck, which the crewmen visited regularly to salvage material and equipment.

This encounter may have followed a pattern of onshore confrontations-alternating with peaceful trading that had been reported during earlier Spanish visits.   Chamorros on Guam had vigorously resisted onshore incursions of armed landing parties during both the Magellan (1521) and Legazpi (1565) episodes, perceiving them as threats to their people, homes, canoes and food stocks.  Several Chamorros reportedly had been killed defending their village against Magellan’s onshore assault, yet islanders from other villages continued to trade with the expedition after the attack.

Chroniclers also described a number of violent confrontations between Legazpi’s survey parties and islanders seeking to prevent Spanish landings at west coast villages.  Some of these resulted in the death of warriors.  However Chamorros continued to engage in offshore trading with the fleet’s crews without boarding the vessels.  Legazpi’s chroniclers even reported that while Chamorros fought onshore with a Spanish landing party, others who were trading at the galleons “after leaving aboard their canoes would go ashore to fight with our men, to be replaced in the canoes by those who had been fighting who then came alongside to trade.  At all times they kept their weapons in their hands.”

In these early contacts, the islanders sought to keep Spanish visitors offshore as much as possible and at arms’ length, while gaining the material benefits of the encounter by trading in a safer offshore venue.  The wisdom of this strategy was underscored in 1566, a year after Legazpi’s visit, when the relief ship San Geronimo stopped at Rota, where soldiers went ashore en masse to loot provisions, killing numerous islanders who resisted and burning 200 houses.  The galleon had been dispatched from New Spain to reinforce the Cebu colony but the vessel had suffered a mutiny and lacked effective leadership. Chamorro traders from Guam who arrived in four canoes quickly returned to their home villages when they learned of the Spanish depredations, alerting their kin-groups and neighbor villages to the danger.

Because of these experiences, Chamorros from Guam’s southwest villages may have viewed the extended presence of the large, armed, fortified (and possibly belligerent) camp of San Pedro castaways as an actual or potential threat to their villages.  Forays by armed Spanish watering- and food-gathering parties, as well as attempts by Spanish officers to dominate islanders and various trading disputes – actions that had triggered violence in the encounters with the Magellan and Legazpi expeditions – may have sparked confrontations with the San Pablo camp.

The bark was completed by the end of October and all 132 crewmen and passengers boarded the hybrid vessel and safely navigated the 1,200 nautical miles across the Philippine Sea back to Cebu, arriving by mid-November 1568.

It is not entirely clear from Spanish reports, however, why the San Pablo fetched up at Guam in the first place.  An anonymous account maintained that the galleon had departed Cebu on 1 June 1568 “with good weather” but “after many hardships which they suffered they had to turn back to Cebu… [l]eaving behind many people who had become sick.”  Departing a second time, presumably on July 1st, the galleon arrived at Guam, “where Captain Salcedo was under orders from his grandfather, the Governor, to make a stopover, and to find out if some of the islands [grew] clove or pepper.”

In a letter to the King, Guido de Lavezaris, treasurer of the Philippine Colony, lamented the loss of the galleon, which he said had experienced “much hardship [as] she followed her course to [Guam]…and entered a port “which is very unprotected.”  Noting that Legazpi had to burn the sister ship San Pedro because “it was of no use, and so that the nails it contained might serve for a ship that was being made,” Lavezaris emphasized that without naval support, the small colony on Cebu was highly vulnerable to a Portuguese fleet then seeking to force the Spanish to leave the Philippines.  He prayed, “May God pardon whomsoever did us such harm in losing this ship [San Pablo] in this manner.”

Legaspi asked for Guam and Rota

Though Legazpi’s letter to the audencia of New Spain reporting the San Pablo’s loss did not explain why the ship was at Guam, his petitions to the King add plausibility to the suggestion that he had directed Salcedo to stop there and search for valuable spices.  In his initial requests, delivered by his son Melchior at Madrid in 1568 and 1569, he sought royal grants of titles, authorities, compensation and trading privileges in the Philippines, some of which had been agreed to by Velasco before his death.  Legazpi also requested that “two of the Ladrone Islands” be granted to him, with the title of Governor and Captain-General, “provided he conquer and colonize them at his own cost.”  He also asked that in his absence from the islands, a lieutenant might act in his name.

Noting that Guam and Rota “would be of great service as a way-station between New Spain and the Philippines”, Legazpi also asked that he, his sons and successors be granted “one-twelfth of all incomes from mines, gold and silver, precious stones, and fruits in the Ladrones; and two fisheries, one of pearls and the other of fish, in the same islands.”  Legazpi also asked that his grandson Felipe de Salcedo “be granted the habit of the order of Santiago for his great services in the voyage to the Philippines, and his discovery of the return route to New Spain, for all of which he had received no financial aid from the Crown.”

The King granted most of Legazpi’s requests, providing detailed royal instructions on how to establish and administer the newly claimed colonies, including “the Ladrones,” and govern their native inhabitants and colonists.  Legazpi’s plans for Guam and Rota and the King’s decrees guiding their colonization were never carried out, however, as exploiting the Philippine’s resources and trading nexus absorbed the colonists’ energies.  Legazpi died in 1572 and his successors did not pursue his grants and authorities for the “way-station” islands.

While Salcedo may have stopped at Guam under his grandfather’s orders, it is also possible that his vessel, which reportedly took six weeks to reach Guam from Cebu, was hit by storms after it exited the Philippines and slowly made its way to Guam in damaged condition – to repair, refit and revive its crew and passengers.  If this was the case, the San Pablo may have been an early victim of the region’s seasonal geophysical forces that plagued the galleon line throughout its history.

The first phase of the tournaviaje – northeast through the Philippine Sea to the higher latitudes southeast of Japan – was the most dangerous track, as typhoons often pounded some of the vessels, rending sails, dismasting the ships, dislodging rudder posts and springing leaks, leaving the galleons unable to effectively navigate.  The height of the typhoon season in this region is July, August and September.  Several galleons damaged by these storms during the history of the trade drifted back through the Philippine Sea toward the Philippines.  One of these wrecked at Rota (the Santa Margarita in 1601) and another at Saipan (the Concepción in 1638).  The San Pablo may have been the first of the Manila Galleons lost in this way.

For Chamorros, the San Pablo episode underscored the dangers of onshore incursions and encampments by armed Spanish parties, a salient issue of the early European contact period that had generated vigorous islander resistance and precipitated violent confrontations.  The San Pablo experience doubtless strengthened the islanders’ preference for trading with galleon crews in offshore areas from canoes, rather than onboard the vessels or onshore, a practice that exhibited itself repeatedly over the next century.

For the Spanish, the wreck of the San Pablo became a cautionary tale on the vulnerability of Guam’s southwest roadstead, especially during the typhoon season.  This concern influenced Spanish officials as they prescribed the roundtrip navigation for the developing galleon trade and directed captains of the silver-laden Acapulco ships to use the 30-mile wide Rota Channel, which they called La Bocana, as the navigational and provisioning station on the three-month, 9,000-nautical-mile voyage to the Philippines.  By the mid-1570s the silver argosies (large ships) would typically slacken sails as they entered the channel and drift through the passage, trading with islanders for fresh water, food and craft work in exchange for Spanish iron goods.

This development shifted the major venue for the iron trade in the islands away from the southwest coastal villages, thus providing an advantage to villagers in northern Guam and Rota who enjoyed regular and first access to these highly-valued goods from the Acapulco ships – an exchange that became the linchpin of islander relations with the galleon line for the next 100 years.

Though sporadic visits of British privateers and Dutch expeditions used the southwest roadstead in the 17^th century, the Spanish trade galleons generally avoided that anchorage until the 1670s, when the Crown ordered Acapulco ship captains to anchor there on their westward crossing in order to deliver funds, supplies and personnel for the permanent Spanish mission colony.  The anchorage remained vulnerable, however, claiming the Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragosa in June 1690, when contrary winds blew the 1,200-ton Acapulco ship onto the Cocos Island reef where it was pounded into a wreck by high winds.

By Frank Quimby

For Further Reading

Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas, 1565-1615. Gaspar de San Agustín; introducción por Pedro G. Galende; traduccion por Luis Antonio Mañeru/ Conquest of the Philippine Islands, 1565-1615. Gaspar de San Agustín; introduction by Pedro G. Galende; translation by Luis Antonio Mañeru. Manila, Philippines: San Agustin Museum, 1998. Vol. 1, Chapter 44.

History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents. Vol. 2: Prelude to Conquest. Rodrique Levesque (Quebec: Levesque Publications, 1992).

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803. Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson. Volumes 2 and 3.

General History of the Philippines: The Discovery and Conquest of the Philippines (1521-1581), Part 1, Vol. 1. Martin J. Noone, S.S.C.  Manila: Historical Conservation Society, 1986.

Mexico and the Pacific 1540-1565: The Voyages of Villalobos and Legaspi and the preparations made for them. Andre Gschaedler.  PhD Dissertation (New York: Columbia University, 1956.)

The Manila Galleon William Lytle Schurz.  New York: E.P. Dutton, 1959.

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Mother of the Chamorro people

Fu’una is the female protagonist of the Chamorro creation myth. In the story, Fu’una (also spelled Fo’na) along with her brother Puntan (also spelled Pontan) devise a plan to use their bodies and spirit to create and bring life to earth and mankind. She uses her spirit, at his request, to divide her brother’s body parts to create the earth and the heavens. She also brings life to flora and fauna. Afterwards, when Fu’una sees that her brother’s request is fulfilled, she throws her body into the earth and transforms into what is now known as Lasso’ Fu’a (Fouha Rock). From this rock sprouted the first humans.

Although there are several variations of the origin myth, this narrative tale passed on through oral tradition, explains how the ancient Chamorros viewed the world and what they valued. When early Catholic missionaries asked the Chamorros who created the heavens and the earth, they received several answers. The Chamorros told the missionaries that their ancestors made the universe, resonating the key Chamorro value of the interdependence of humans and nature, of man and woman, and of relatives. They also believed that a woman gave birth to the land and sea, and all that they could see.

The birth of Chamorro culture and the Mariana Islands

The Mariana Islands have been inhabited at least 4,000 years by seafaring people believed to have sailed from Southeast Asia. By the time the first European explorers arrived in the islands in the mid-1500s, Chamorro culture and society was already well established. Archeological studies confirm that Chamorro language and culture are Austronesian in origin. Austronesia refers to a region that comprises much of the Pacific and southeast Asia, and extends as far as Madagascar off the coast of the African continent. There is great cultural diversity within Austronesia, but many cultures – including the culture and society of the Chamorro people- are matrilineal and practice a form of ancestral worship.

Ancient Chamorros belonged to their mother’s clan. Name, wealth, and titles were inherited through the woman’s side. A man could not become a maga’låhi (chief) just because his father was one. Men inherited this status from their mother’s brother. Matrilineal clans were the basic unit in ancient Chamorro politics. Each controlled a specified area, and rank by seniority was very important. Within the clan, the matrilineage that was closest to the ancestral mother was oldest, and therefore received the most respect.

Women in ancient Chamorro society were treated with special status and consulted on all major decisions. The women exerted considerable influence, especially because decisions were based on consensus. For example, no one would help a man in an argument, however the whole tribal clan will side with a woman. If one sought the help of a male relative, he would come by himself. If one sought out the highest-ranking woman in the family, the whole family, including in-laws, were required to help.

The ancient Chamorros also engaged in ancestor worship. In early missionary accounts, there are descriptions of Chamorros keeping the skulls of their dead in special places in their homes. These skulls were the physical embodiment of their ancestor’s spirit (anti), and would be treated with signs of respect and also prayed to in order to request help or favors.

From the ancient Chamorros’ perspective, however, ancestors were not thought of as gods – creators with supreme powers and the source of moral authority. Their veneration of their anti, rather, was an extension of basic human relationships from this world to the supernatural world.

First female leader

Fu’una and Puntan, however, stand out because they are pivotal in the Chamorro understanding of the creation of the universe and the origin of the Chamorro people. Fu’una is the giver of life and the mother of the Chamorro civilization. In this sense, she is the first female leader and ancestor of the Chamorro people. While there are no records or evidence for veneration of Puntan as a god, the Chamorro people did pay special homage to Fu’una.

Although Jesuit missionary Father Diego Luis de San Vitores recounted the story of Puntan and Fu’una, he declared that neither was as given “any worship or visible ceremony.” However, Fray Antonio de los Angeles, the first missionary who lived among the Chamorros in Guam from 1596-1597, reported that the Chamorros “believed they are born of a rock – whence they all go each year for a fiesta.” This is undoubtedly a reference to Fouha Rock. In these fiestas, there would be presentations of gifts such as seeds, fishing implements and rice cakes. The blessed rice cakes would be kept and used to cure sick people back in their home villages. These celebrations would also include the recitation of the story of creation, among other stories, from memory. The individuals who could sing or tell the most verses were lauded for their skill.

The story of Fu’una and Puntan is one of the most enduring oral traditions, although it is not well known, even among many contemporary Chamorros. It is only recently that this story of creation has received attention along with other features of ancient Chamorro society, religion, language and culture. From the story of Puntan and Fu’una, both scholars and cultural enthusiasts alike have explored ways in which the two spirits are relevant for our understanding of Chamorro culture and society. What follows are examples that illustrate how oral traditions are often more than mere stories, but rather, are reflections of culture and the people who engage these stories as part of their heritage.

Gender relations

In ancient Chamorro society the family consisted of a lineage that was traced through women. This may be one reason as to why Fu’una is the active participant in the creation story versus her brother who is equally vital but conveyed in a more passive tone. From this family comes the first maga’låhi (male leader) and first maga’håga (female leader). The maga’låhi and maga’håga in Chamorro society are the eldest male and female children of a clan/village leader. Dr. Robert Underwood, professor emeritus and University of Guam President, noted that this form of organization denotes the influence of the Chamorro matrilineal society as well as gender equity. Fu’una also uses her own power to create life, thus emphasizing the unique power of women to give birth.

Language and symbolism

Like the other Austronesian languages, Chamorro is primarily oral, with no written form or ancient orthography. Chamorro cultural specialist Leonard Iriarte, who has extensively researched ancient Chamorro language that predates Spanish influences (known as Fino’ haya) adds that the allegorical language and intricate prose used to describe Puntan and Fu’una and the creation story are significant.

In the story Puntan and Fu’una were in “infinite space” (the universe); this is thought to represent the journey through vast open sea without land or anything in sight. The siblings were born without a mother or father, which conveys the sentiment of starting anew in a land with none of their ancestors’ remains. Puntan’s character and role epitomized the role of Chamorro males in society and is an oral deed to the lands he has discovered and has provided for his people. Fu’una’s character and role in the story convey the role of women in Chamorro society and the matrilineal heritage from which it stems. According to Iriarte, these symbols and their meanings were utilized by the people to perpetuate their customs.

Iriarte further asserts that the siblings’ names reveal that Fu’una, which means first or the first, and Puntan, which means a coconut tree sapling in Chamorro language, are significant because a coconut sapling takes root after dropping from its mother tree and sometimes grows elsewhere.

In this way, Fu’una represents the first maga’håga to settle in the Mariana Islands and the mother of the Chamorro society. Her ability to be empowered by her brother and create the earth and the heavens with his body denotes matrilineal heritage. This matrilineal heritage is exhibited in the highly valued relationship of siblings and gender equity which is unique to Chamorro civilization. This equity can been seen in the Chamorro language in gender-free words such as che’lu (brother/sister) and asagua’ (spouse, husband or wife). Likewise, Puntan represents the first maga’låhi; the symbolism of the coconut sapling represents the beginnings of the Chamorro people taking root in a new land.

Chamorro values

The brother/sister relationship between the Puntan and Fu’una can be used to explain the central value of interdependence between nature, man and woman, and relatives in ancient Chamorro society. Brothers and sisters helped to ensure the survival of the clan through providing for each other, nurturing children, and maintaining clan resources. This sibling relationship was, at times, more important than the relationship between husband and wife. Whereas spouses could divorce each other and end a marriage, the relationship between siblings was more more enduring.

The actions of Fu’una and her brother to work together also seems to emphasize the social value known as geftao. Geftao means giving and/or unselfishness in Chamorro. The spirit of geftao is exhibited through Puntan and Fu’una’s conception and execution of a plan on how to use their bodies and spirit to create life. Likewise, the Chamorro people practiced a communal effort in all that they did. In almost any endeavor big or small, such as harvesting crops, hunting and gathering, or building a house, everyone in a family or village took part in the task and the bounty.

Fu’una in contemporary Chamorro culture

Though Western society and the introduction of Christianity changed many practices of the Chamorro people throughout their history, today, there are people that still show tribute and praise to Fu’una through dance, chant, and pilgrimages emulating the ancient practice of pilgrimages to Lasso’ Fu’a (Fouha Rock) to have rice blessed and to pray and meditate.

Although most Chamorro households are comprised of a nuclear family, the extended family system still thrives in contemporary Chamorro culture, evident in large-sized gatherings for baptisms, marriages, and funerals. To this day, the oldest ranking-females are considered the matriarchs and are highly regarded. A review of Chamorro music throughout the decades reveals tributes to mothers, grandmothers, even elderly women.

As an ancient Chamorro mythical figure, Fu’una has influenced and inspired Chamorro women and society throughout history by the values that her story embodies, from the organizational patterns of men, women and children, to how they regard and care for each other. Fu’una’s legacy today lives in the people, land, water and air in the Islas Marianas (Mariana Islands), and for this reason Fu’una is given the gratitude and reverence as nana (mother) of Chamorro civilization.

By Celeste Perez

For further reading

Cunningham, Lawrence J. Ancient Chamorro Society. Honolulu: Bess Press,1995.

De Freycinet, Louis; An Account of the Corvette L’Uranie’s Sojourn at the Mariana Islands, 1819, University of Guam Press, 2003.

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Spanish Era adventurer

Very few Chamorros of Guam’s Spanish era (1668-1898) are mentioned by name in the annals of Pacific history.  Even fewer are women.  However, there is one woman who stands out as an enigmatic presence among a long list of priests, colonial administrators, travelers, missionaries and traders who journeyed to Micronesia for God, wealth and adventure.

Bartola Garrido was a Chamorro woman, born and raised on the Spanish territory of Guam in the early 1800s.  She received her education from the Augustinian Recollects, a religious order of Catholic priests who ran the Mariana Islands mission throughout the 19th century.  Under the guidance of the Augustinians, Garrido learned her prayers and was a devout Catholic; she also was deeply loyal to Spain.

Not much else is known about Bartola Garrido’s life as a young person– even her exact last name is unclear.  According to Guam historian Father Eric Forbes, she is referred to as Bartola Garrido y Taisague in some writings, and Bartola Taisipic y Delgado in others. (The inclusion of surnames of both parents was a Spanish custom that Chamorros on Guam appropriated after many years under Spanish rule.)  What is known, is that Garrido was one of the first Chamorros to move to the island of Yap, where she spent her later years living on her estate and working with the Spanish government and the Capuchin priests.

Bartola Garrido’s story is better appreciated as part of the larger history of colonial and religious politics of Micronesia.  When Spain colonized the Marianas in the 17th century, the Spanish also claimed the group of islands which they collectively named the Caroline Islands (known today as Palau, Yap, Chuuk, Kosrae, and Pohnpei).  Unlike the Marianas, Spain was not able to maintain as rigid a colonial presence in the Carolines, which meant, in the eyes of other Western nations, these islands essentially were available for colonization or business development.  The Germans in particular had become interested in setting up trading posts and establishing a military presence in the region, and claimed the Marshall Islands further east in 1885.  They also soon began to eye the rest of Spain’s colonies to the west, especially Palau.  Representatives from German trading companies requested permission to set up offices in Guam.

Spain, wary of the boldness of Germany’s actions, sent two ships to Yap in August 1885 to formally claim the islands for the King of Spain. Germany, likewise, had sent the warships Iltis and Albatross to lay claim on any other islands in Micronesia not formally possessed by Spain.  The Spanish ships San Quentin and Manila arrived in Yap first.  However, the new Spanish governor and his crew spent the first four days surveying the area to find the best place for the capital and planning the flag raising ceremony, when the Iltis arrived.   Within half an hour of dropping anchor, the Germans claimed the island and planted the German flag.  The Spanish had to pack everything they brought with them and leave shamefacedly.  The incident caused such a controversy that the Pope in Rome was asked to intervene.  The Pope ruled in favor of Spain and the Western Carolines remained under Spanish rule.  Spain subsequently was given the task of colonizing the islands and converting the natives to Christianity; however, Germany was also given rights to set up trading and military posts.

The Spanish frigate Manila brought the first governor of the Carolines, Manuel de Elisa, to Yap on 29 June 1886, along with a small contingent of Spanish officials, as well as several Filipino soldiers and convicts to help build the governor’s residence and military barracks on Tapelau (or Topalau), one of the small islands in Yap’s main bay (now known as Chamorro Bay); and six Capuchin missionaries.  When they arrived, Bartola Garrido was one of the first people to greet the missionaries at the dock.

Garrido’s presence in Yap is linked to her relationship with a former American whaling captain and entrepreneur named Crayton Philo Holcomb.  According to Micronesian historian Father Francis Hezel, Holcomb had first visited Yap in 1873 on a trip to procure beche-de-mer (sea cucumber or trepang), a delicacy in Asia.  Although long hostile to foreign visitors, by this time Yap had a few white European residents.  Holcomb, stirred by a desire to settle in the islands, returned in April 1874, but not before smuggling out two deportados (political prisoners) for pay in a stopover on Guam, which got him in trouble with the Spanish authorities.  A similar incident the following year led to Holcomb meeting Garrido for the first time.

Passenger on the Arabia

On 8 April 1875, Garrido was a passenger on the schooner Arabia.  A week after leaving Apra Harbor, the ship’s master, Captain William “Bully” Hayes, a known blackbirder and pirate, had been taken into custody when it was discovered the vessel was carrying eight deportados out of Hagåtña.  The ship had been anchored at Falcona Point near Ritidian in northern Guam.  A group of soldiers was dispatched to arrest the rest of the passengers, which forced the schooner to take off in haste.  Without a navigator and with very little water, the Spanish authorities assumed the ship was lost.  In the chronicles kept by Recollect Father Ancieto Ibañez del Carmen, Bartola Taisague was named as a passenger aboard the Arabia.  The Arabia drifted to Palau, where it was rescued by Holcomb – working in Palau at the time – who took command of the ship. Seeing Holcomb’s courage and resourcefulness, Garrido was easily persuaded to return with him to Yap.

The two began a relationship as a married couple, although Holcomb never mentioned Garrido in his letters to his family back in Connecticut.  Garrido became his “mistress and helpmate,” as Holcomb developed his copra trading business during his first few years in Yap.  In fact, Holcomb was one of four main traders in the Carolines, with stations in Palau and some of the other islands, and Yap serving as the main headquarters.  Vessels from Guam and Manila would stopover in Yap, which had become an important coaling station.  However, a series of bad investments and stiff competition forced Holcomb to close his station in 1880.  He worked for one of his trading rivals for a year in Jaluit, Marshall Islands, and for several months as a German man-of-war pilot in New Britain and the Admiralty Islands.  Holcomb returned to Yap in 1882 but found more financial troubles.  He was continually dogged by lawyers and investors back in the States for debts he had incurred when his original vessel, the Scotland, had sunk in 1876.  According to Hezel, his hot-headedness and lack of business acumen made it difficult for Holcomb to build good relations with the Yapese or compete with the other traders.  Hardly had he re-established himself in Yap and Palau when his family in New England began begging him to return home, basically abandon his business holdings, and help them financially.  Holcomb angrily refused his family’s request.

On bad terms with his family after so many years away from home and unable to secure his business interests in Yap, Holcomb became increasingly frustrated.  Competition with other traders in Micronesia, including the resourceful and wildly successful Irishman David Dean O’Keefe, compelled him to seek the establishment of permanent Spanish administration in Yap.  Holcomb apparently felt his business would benefit more if the islands were under formal Spanish rule.

On 23 October 1884, Holcomb presented a petition translated into Spanish by Garrido, and signed by himself, his wife, and a handful of Yapese, to the Governor of the Philippines requesting that a governor be assigned to Yap and Spanish rule be established in Yap and Palau.  While Holcomb’s interests seem largely economic, Garrido, with her strong religious background and loyalty to Spain was eager and dedicated to seeing Spain maintain its control and influence in the region over the Germans.

The Spanish government needed little encouragement by the time news of Holcomb’s petition reached Madrid, feeling that they would be welcomed by at least part of the native population.  Indeed, plans were already underway to solidify Spain’s claim on the Carolines.  On 26 February 1885 the steamer Velasco was sent to Yap to investigate the possibility of setting up a colonial government there.  It was reported that, hardly had the ship set anchor when Bartola Garrido hurried a party of Yapese chiefs to welcome the Spanish and declare their loyalty to King Alphonso XII.

In August 1885 when the Germans beat out the Spanish in raising their respective flags over the island, Garrido tore down the German flag and raised a flag of the Spanish colors, which she reportedly had sewn herself, on a tree at the highest point of the coastline. She persisted in flying the Spanish flag for several months, throughout the time the Germans occupied Yap.

By this time, Garrido already was a widow, Holcomb having been killed in the Admiralty Islands a few months earlier in May 1885.  He had just purchased a schooner in Sydney, Australia, which he named Bartola, and had gone on a trading mission for mother-of-pearl at the tiny island of Tench in the St. Matthias group when he was speared by the natives there.  The Yapese crew of the Bartola managed to navigate back to Yap without their captain.  Although Holcomb left very little to his wife, Garrido did send a letter to Holcomb’s mother in Connecticut, apologizing for being unable to send her a gift.

In 1886, when the Manila arrived in Yap with its small band of officials, soldiers and Capuchin priests, Garrido, again, was the first to greet them.  According to accounts, she was disappointed that the priests were not Recollect priests, as she had hoped.  Nevertheless, she welcomed them, offering them rolls, fish and other food and any assistance she could give.

Spanish colony educator on Yap

The colony set up by the Spanish was called Santa Cristina (later known as Colonia), in honor of the Queen Regent of Spain at the time.  They also built a church and a school.  The task for educating the young girls on Yap fell to Garrido, whose house had also become a school in those early years of the colony.  Although the Capuchins requested for religious sisters from Spain to help operate the school, Garrido recruited several Chamorro women from Guam to help when the nuns did not arrive.  Over the next few years, other Chamorros who were able to read and write in Spanish arrived in Yap and took jobs with the Church or the Spanish government.  Garrido herself had always had a gift for languages and could speak Chamorro, English, Spanish, German and Yapese.

Garrido spent the rest of her years in Yap, living to a very old age.  It not clear when she died exactly–maybe in the 1920s or 1930s–or where she was buried–probably on her estate in the island of Tapelau.   For thirteen years after the Spanish took over Yap, she was paid as a government interpreter, receiving about 600 pesos a year.  She was awarded a substantial pension for her loyalty and support of the government and the Catholic mission, and also was given the honorific titles of doña and maestra.

Yap remained a colony of Spain until 1899 when Germany bought all of Spain’s Micronesian possessions after the Spanish-American War.  After World War I, Japan took over the islands through a League of Nations Mandate.  The Chamorro community in Yap remained until 1947, when the islands became part of the United States Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.  At the urging of Yap’s indigenous leaders, the American administration relocated the Chamorros, some of them long-time residents, back to the Marianas – some to Guam, but mostly to Tinian.

Although little is known about Garrido’s life on Guam, her impact in Yap represents an interesting and unusual story in Micronesian and Pacific history.  Once described by a Spanish seaman as “una mujer muy fea” (a very ugly woman) in his opinion, she was nonetheless, a genuinely devoted and affectionate partner for Holcomb, who himself, apparently, was unlucky with women.  Her time in Yap showed her to be a kind, generous woman, extending her generosity to anyone in need.  Garrido was also fiercely loyal to her husband and to the Spanish crown.

By 1887 when the Spanish claimed Yap, she was already in her fifties, heavy-set and graying.  Garrido is not known to have had any children with Holcomb or with anyone prior to their relationship, but she did reside with two nephews, Raimundo and Juan, who probably arrived during subsequent migrations of Chamorros into Yap. Even young Juan, who could speak Spanish and Yapese, was very helpful for the Capuchin missionaries.

It also is not clear why she was aboard the ship that Holcomb rescued.  Accounts of the capture of Captain Hayes state that the Chamorros on board the Arabia were attempting to emigrate illegally, and that the ship was on its way to Pohnpei.  Spanish historian Carlos Madrid, however, alludes that the “respected Chamorro lady Bartola Garrido” was among the passengers with all the proper documents.  Perhaps she, like Holcomb, was just looking for a better life in a place that had so many possibilities.

Nevertheless, Doña Bartola Garrido and her indomitable spirit will mark her as the woman from Guam who stood up against an entire nation and helped shape the history of Micronesia.

 By Dominica Tolentino 

For further reading

Cruz, Karen A.  Hinanao: Travelers and Descendants of Travelers. Guam: Karen A. Fury Cruz, 2005.

Forbes, Eric.  Bartola Garrido. June 23, 2011.  (Accessed 26 February 2012.)

Hezel, Francis X.  The First Taint of Civilization: A History of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in Pre-Colonial Days, 1521-1885. Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No. 1. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983.

Hezel, Francis X.  Strangers in Their Own Land: Century of Colonial Rule in the Caroline and Marshall Islands. Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No. 13.  Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1995.

Hezel, Francis X.  A Yankee Trader in Yap: Crayton Philo Holcomb.  Micronesian Seminar.  (Accessed 26 February 2012.)

Hezel, Francis X and M.L. Berg, (eds.)  Micronesia: Winds of Change (A Book of Readings on Micronesian History). Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands: Omnibus Program for Social Studies and Cultural Heritage, 1980.

Ibañez del Carmen, Ancieto, et al.  Chronicle of the Mariana Islands: Recorded in the Agana Parish Church 1846-1899.  Marjorie Driver and Omaira Brunal-Perry (eds.). Mangilao: Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam, 1998.

Madrid, Carlos.  Beyond Distances: Governance, Politics and Deportation in the Mariana Islands from 1870 to 1877.  Quezon City, Philippines: Vibal Publishing House, Inc., 2006.

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Educator and advocate

Rosa Teresita Perez Salas (1926-1998) was an educator and vocal advocate for the physically and intellectually disabled, as well as the elderly.  Salas earned her reputation as an accomplished leader and for improving Guam’s educational system, particularly as it affected children with disabilities.

Salas, nicknamed “Beta,” was born on 8 October 1926 to Remedios LG and Juan Diaz Perez of Hagåtña.  She grew up during the United States Naval Era (1898 to 1941) before World War II as a typical Chamorro girl, chaperoned and protected.  She wanted to become a teacher like her mother, who was a noted educator.   Although there was some initial resistance from her family regarding her plans to travel abroad to study after high school, Salas’ uncle, former Senator Pete Perez, Sr., along with her aunt and music teacher, former Senator Lagrimas LG Untalan, spoke strongly on her behalf and influenced her parents to allow her to go.

After graduating as Salutatorian in 1946 at George Washington High School, Salas began her career as an elementary school teacher just prior to furthering her education off-island.  Salas first studied at La Escuela, Inter Americana de Verano in Satillo, Mexico.  With a government honor tuition scholarship (1947-1950), she then enrolled at the College of Saint Catherine at Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in elementary education in 1950.

Homesickness was almost unbearable for Salas but she eventually returned home to her family in Guam.  Shortly afterward she married G. Ricardo “Ric” Salas following years of a long distance courtship while both were attending college.  They were married on 26 November 1951 in a ceremony officiated by Father Cyril Langheim, OFM, Cap., at the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral in Hagåtña.

Salas taught English and music classes for five years at George Washington High School, spent three years as an instructor at the College of Guam, and then became assistant principal at Sinajana Elementary School for two years where she developed an interest in special education.  She wondered how the educational system could help a child from having to spend years in the same grade or what to do with a hyperactive child.  These questions challenged Salas to get special training to provide answers.

Once again, Salas went abroad, this time with a government scholarship to attend Los Angeles State University (now UCLA) where she received her master’s degree in Special Education in 1962.  Returning to Guam, her career took off as she moved from teacher into administrative duties as acting Superintendent of Schools (1962-1963); first Headstart Director (1963-1964); Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction (1964-1966); and Associate Superintendent of Elementary and Special Education (1966-1969), which was the post her mother vacated when she retired in 1957.  This last position involved the supervision of 22 elementary school principals and 20,000 elementary school children.

Following her mother’s colorful 49-year service in education, Salas went a step further when she was appointed Chief of the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation in 1969 by Governor Carlos G. Camacho.  During this period, Salas started the School for the Deaf at New Piti School in 1969 as the first locally-funded program for the intellectually disabled and the deaf.  Before this local funding was found, teachers would voluntarily take extra students so that children with special needs could be taught separately.  Salas was ecstatic when the Elementary Secondary Education Act, Title I, provided federal funding for bilingual and culturally different children.

In a Pacific Daily News interview, Salas explained her excitement:

“What was often thought of as mental retardation was actually cultural deprivation and language handicaps.  The goal of Vocational Rehabilitation is to channel handicapped persons into work-a-day world.  And this we shall do.  The first step is evaluation – medical and psychological.”

Seven years later, Salas lobbied to make the division a separate Government of Guam department.  She was met with success and became the first director of the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation (1976-1979), as appointed by Governor Ricardo J. Bordallo.

With the election of a new administration in 1979, however, she was asked to resign, but her achievements did not go unrecognized.  In Resolution No. 261 authored by former Senator Francisco R. Santos of Sinajana, the Fifteenth Guam Legislature commended Salas for her outstanding service to the people of Guam and service to the Educational and Vocational Systems.

This temporary retirement also did not slow Salas down.  She kept active in the family business, the Salas Agency, and took her only grandchild, Richard Conrad, Jr., on a round-the-world tour.   She served as president of the Soroptomist of Hagåtña, an international organization of business and executive women, and was a member of the Hagåtña Municipal Planning Council and the Advisory Council for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Guam.

Salas was a devout Catholic and long served the Agana Cathedral as an organist for 32 years, since 1950 until 1982.  In 1974, she was awarded the most elite women’s honor in the Catholic Church, the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Award by Pope Paul VI.

In 1984, Governor Ricardo J. Bordallo re-appointed the veteran administrator as director of Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, a post she held until 1990.

On 21 June 1990 Governor Joseph F. Ada issued Proclamation No. 90-75 proclaiming 30 June 1990, as “Rosa T. P.  Salas Day” for her outstanding public service, as she retired due to health reasons.   “Such service is vital in the rehabilitation of the physically and/or developmentally disabled, to enable these persons to lead happy, productive, and useful lives within the community of Guam” stated the Proclamation.

Salas believed she did her best to help people understand that handicapped people can earn a living and do not have to be a burden on their families or the government, and made efforts to help the disabled find viable employment.   However, she faced obstacles to her goals of getting jobs for the handicapped, such as exorbitant costs, lack of trained personnel and the problems of wheelchair accessibility during her tenure as director.  Nevertheless, she derived great satisfaction in creating rehabilitation programs, and found the opportunity to serve the people very rewarding: “That’s really the whole thing – loving and helping your neighbor, especially those who are less fortunate than me.”  Salas indicated that the highlight of her tenure was raising vocational rehabilitation from a division within the Department of Education to its present status as a separate department.

Salas contributed to several journals of education and spoke at various conferences locally and nationally on the topics of mental retardation and occupations for the elderly.  She was an active member in numerous community and religious organizations, with a particular focus on the Lytico and Bodig Association and the Marianas Association for Retarded Children.

She died on 15 July 1998.

By Marilyn Manibusan

For further reading

“Education in Guam Marches On.” Peabody Journal of Education, July 1966.

“Vocational and Social Aspects for the Mentally Retarded on Guam.” Report Second Asian Conference on Mental Retardation – Japan League for the Mentally Retarded. Tokyo, Japan, 1975.

“Guam Department of Vocational Rehabilitation”, Educational Perspective,  Journal of the College of Education, University of Hawaii, Volume 15, November 4, December 1976.

Political Status Education Coordinating Commission. “Rosa Perez Salas,” in I Manfåyi: Who’s Who in Chamorro History, Volume II.   Hagåtña: PSECC, The Chamorro Heritage Institute Planning Group, 1997.

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Trusted nurse

Maria Anderson Roberto, born in 1880, was a Chamorro woman who had been employed as a chaperone for the Native Nurses program on Guam from 1914 to 1924 during the early United States Naval administration of the island.  Her work with US Navy medical officials, her eventual contraction of Hansen’s disease while employed at Naval Hospital, and her departure to the Culion Leper Colony in the Philippines, reflect the larger political, cultural and social complexities and contradictions of life on Guam as a new American, military territory in the early 20th century.

Little is known about Roberto despite the significant role she played as a part of the Native Nurses program on Guam prior to World War II.   What is known of her tragic story has been gathered through Naval accounts and oral histories.  Written accounts by American nurses who worked alongside Roberto, as well as by manåmko’ (the elderly), shared their experiences and attitudes pertaining to Naval Health policies, particularly policies related to Hansen’s disease and the Navy’s Native Nurses program.

In essence, the United States Navy, in addition to other changes to the social and cultural fabric of life on Guam, undertook efforts to transform Guam’s healthcare system which was reliant primarily upon the wisdom of local herbal healers (the suruhånu), traditional massage techniques, Catholicism, and women’s health remedies that were administered by midwives (pattera).  Services provided by local healers had evolved into a unique brand of healthcare tailored to the Chamorro people’s indigenous heritage and their contact with Spanish customs.  Unlike Western healthcare, traditional healers did not operate within a formal structure that required monetary compensation.  Instead, Chamorros who sought traditional care paid practitioners with other valuable commodities, such as rice, produce, and livestock.  Traditional healers also held no formal licenses and were not required to adhere to established guidelines.  Concern regarding the lack of a formal structure, a formalized payment system, and licensing or certification programs prompted the Navy to create, promote, and in some instances, enforce policies and programs that discouraged traditional methods and guided the local population toward Western models of care and healing.

The suruhånu and the pattera were held in high esteem by the native population.  While traditional healers of both the male and female sex existed, the level of respect shown toward female healers was most apparent to the Navy.  As the Navy sought to secure a safer environment for American families and servicemen working on the island, they began to stress the importance of Western health practices and regulations throughout the island.  Fears of contracting exotic diseases and the desire to contain epidemics motivated the Navy’s campaign against the loosely structured health care system implemented by Chamorros prior to World War II.  In order to advance their argument in favor of the American health regime, suruhåna and pattera were the focus of many early efforts to influence healthcare preferences in Guam.

The Navy began the Native Nurses program in 1907 in order to provide Chamorro midwives with a type of “systematic instruction” that the Navy believed would create an improved rate of mortality during births and prevent the spread of various infections and diseases.  The Native Nurses program was promoted as an opportunity for Chamorro women to learn a new skill, help others in need, and establish an income that could be used to help their families within the new military economic model.  The Navy struggled to attract Chamorro women to the program due to cultural norms and strained relations between Americans and locals.

In her tribute to Roberto, Della V. Knight, a Navy nurse who worked closely with Roberto, explained that women on island were “anxious to do this work, but there was an objection on the part of some parents.”  Chamorros, being heavily influenced by Spanish occupation, subscribed to many beliefs and practices regarding the protection of the reputations (and bodies) of unmarried women.

The Native Nursing program required that women leave their homes and board at the Navy hospital, and work alongside American men (all of which was unfamiliar and uncomfortable for Chamorro women).  Unmarried Chamorro women, in those days, required a chaperone while away from their homes.  The chaperone was usually a male within the family or an older female.  Enrollment and interest in the Navy’s nursing program was low due to social scrutiny that could arise from ignoring such widely held cultural practices.  Knight explained that in order to ensure the program was more successful, it became clear that the Navy would “have to first obtain a chaperone for the native nurses.”

Knight and another nurse, Elsie Brook, describe Roberto as coming from a “better class” of Chamorro women and was appealing because of her position within the Chamorro community, as well as her fluency in both Chamorro and English.  According to local historians, affluent families from the Hagåtña and Sinajana areas were influential, making Roberto an ideal candidate for convincing local families of the program’s legitimacy.  Families could trust a woman like Roberto to watch over the reputation of their daughters.  In her book on Naval Health policies, Dr. Anne Perez Hattori explained that the employment of Roberto “had been an important concession made by health officials, who realized that their nurse-training program would suffer from a lack of participation without a culturally appropriate Chamorro matron to live at the hospital and look after the nursing students.”

Roberto played the role of both chaperone and surrogate mother for women enrolled in the program, keeping a watchful eye over romantic indiscretions and behavior that would have been frowned upon within the Chamorro community.  Knight described, with amusement, an incident wherein Roberto disciplined a young woman and a “native policeman” who had been caught flirting.

Indeed, Roberto was described as a woman who was received with the utmost respect from the women under her charge.  She was also remembered by Naval employees for her physical attributes.  Roberto was tall, well-built, and graceful, which, in addition to her fluency in English, likely would have contributed to her popularity within the Naval medical community stationed on island.

Roberto was employed by the Naval government for ten years, from 1914 – 1924, before her contraction of Hansen’s disease (leprosy) at the Naval Hospital.  Roberto’s contraction of Hansen’s disease was met with great sorrow by both Navy personnel and the Chamorro community.

Hansens’s disease and differences in Chamorro and Naval practices in interacting with individuals afflicted with leprosy had become a source of great tension between the Navy and the Chamorros.  The Chamorro people wanted to care for relatives who suffered from the disease, providing them with affection and allowing them to remain part of their daily life without added social stigma.  However, Western medical circles at the time saw the need for those suffering from Hansen’s disease to be separated from the rest of the population in order to contain the illness.  Fears of contracting Hansen’s disease by Americans stationed on the island were high.

Naval officers, such as Governor Richard Leary, General Mack Stone, and Lieutenant Vincedon Cottman, wrote in great detail about the discomfort they felt regarding the presence of Hansen’s disease on the island.  On a more global scale, encounters with Hansen’s disease in the Pacific by American servicemen had prompted confinement areas throughout the Pacific, with the leper colony in Moloka’i, Hawaii being the most widely referenced.

Chamorros struggled to accept the Navy’s policies regarding the care of Hansen’s disease because they entailed the seclusion of individuals and the separation of their familia, the extended group of relatives who are viewed as essential to caring for a person in need.  Within her summary of Naval accounts discussing leprosy, Hattori highlighted the great concern Navy officials felt when they found that Chamorros had been allowing lepers to live in the “midst of a friendly community.”  Upon finding individuals suffering from Hansen’s disease, Naval officials forced immediate confinement.  Confinement, however, was not easily accepted by Chamorros, who often hid relatives who had (or may have had) the disease, fearing separation.  Confinement areas in scenic locations were viewed by the Navy as a benevolent way to confront the threat of the disease.

Unfortunately, different cultural understandings of benevolence made Navy areas of confinement places of particular horror for Chamorro people.  Despite being located in places Naval officers considered picturesque and calm, Chamorros residing within the leper colonies experienced great emotional trauma.  Chamorros were reported to have attempted escape on several occasions. Despite barbed wire, an enforced curfew, and armed guards, family members were consistently finding new ways to see their loved ones.

Cultural and economic difficulties in sustaining the confinement areas on Guam caused the Navy to seek alternative options.  In December 1912, the Naval Governor received official orders to transport lepers on Guam to Culion Island in the Philippines.  Roberto was one of the unfortunate Chamorros who was forced to leave her home en route for Culion after becoming a victim of the dreaded disease.  After ten years of serving as a well-respected chaperone and translator for Chamorro nurses within the Navy’s Native Nurses program, Roberto was deported in 1925.

Her departure was described with great sorrow by both Chamorros and Naval nurses.  Roberto was credited for having held together the Native Nurses program.  The care she provided to her young charges and children within the hospital made her beloved by many.  Navy nurse, Elsie Brook, explained that a large portion of the island had come to say farewell to Roberto and the Chamorros who were to be taken to Culion.  Brook wrote that “great indeed was the grief of all who were associated” with Roberto “at the Naval hospital and, in fact, all over the island.”

Roberto’s fate upon reaching Culion, like the others who were sent to the Philippine colony, has remained shrouded in mystery.  Naval accounts described Culion as a place where Chamorro Hansen’s disease sufferers struggled to adjust.  Despite the perceived similarities between Filipinos and Chamorros held by Navy officers, it became apparent that Chamorros in Culion experienced a great deal of depression and stress being away from their island and surrounded by foreign languages, such as Tagalog, French, Polynesian languages, English, and Spanish.  Hattori describes the reports of George W. Calver, a naval officer sent to investigate the Culion colony.  In observing the lepers in Culion, he wrote that the Chamorros “found communication with the rest of the  colony difficult and as a result felt the isolation more severely.  Again transplanting of these natives into an entirely new environment caused considerable homesickness.”

The fate of Chamorros deported to Culion has been difficult to determine for a number of reasons.  In addition to the lack of records regarding Culion and the absence of individually marked graves, the lack of news reported to family members on Guam regarding their deported loved ones could have been the result of the great sense of shame many Chamorros associated with the disease.  The creation of Naval confinement policies created an atmosphere of inhibition and fear regarding having a loved one afflicted with the condition.  Upon traveling to Culion in search of information about his grandfather, who was also deported after contracting Hansen’s disease, Speaker Antonio Unpingco could only find a mass grave.  He returned to Guam from Culion without a date of expiration.  One can only assume that the absence of information regarding Roberto’s fate is the result of similar circumstances.

Roberto was viewed by some Chamorros as a Navy collaborator, a woman who assisted the Navy in promoting a health care structure that undermined traditional ways of healing and caring for individuals in need.  However, Hattori suggests a more likely explanation for Roberto’s willingness to participate within the Navy Nurses Program.  She explains that Roberto was probably “motivated by the desire for material advancement in a military economic system that otherwise constricted opportunities for women.”

Regardless of the motivation for promoting and participating within the Native Nurses program, it is clear that Roberto was an exceptional woman who made a profound impact on the lives of those with whom she came in contact.  In all the accounts written about her, little is said regarding her contraction of leprosy.  Instead, she is written about as an intelligent, dignified, and beautiful woman who made it possible for two cultures to better interact with one another in order to take care of those in need.

By Desiree Taimanglo Ventura

For further reading

Brooke, Elsie. Maria Roberto: A Further Tribute. US Naval Medical Bulletin 23,  1925.

Cruz, Karen A. The Pattera of Guam: Their Story and Legacy. Hagåtña: Guam Humanities Council, 1997.

DeLisle, Christine Taitano. Delivering the Body: Narratives of Family, Childbirth and Prewar Pattera.  MA thesis, University of Guam, 2000.

Hattori, Anne. Colonial Dis-Ease: US Navy Health Policies and the Chamorros of Guam. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004.

Knight, Della V.  “Maria Roberto – A Tribute.”  American Journal of Nursing 22, 1922.

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Community organizer, senator, business woman

Cecilia Cruz Bamba (1934 – 1986) was a community organizer, senator, businesswoman and mother of ten whose legacy is manifested in her involvement in numerous civic organizations that remain active today.  She also is remembered most notably for her championing of the cause of war reparations for the Chamorro people who suffered or died during World War II.  Bamba worked tirelessly to obtain just compensation for lands taken from the Chamorro people after the war.  As a result of her efforts, an additional $37 million was awarded to individuals who lost their land.

Bamba was born 14 November 1934 to Rosa Rosario and Jose Leon Guerrero Cruz.  As a child, Bamba, known as “Chilang,” lived with her family in the capital village of Hagåtña.  Bamba was preparing to receive her First Holy Communion on 8 December 1941 when the Japanese began to bomb Guam during World War II.

Guam’s occupation by the Japanese led to life-altering losses for the young Bamba as she was orphaned by the time she was nine years-old.  Her mother died from hemorrhaging after giving birth to a stillborn baby after being beaten by a Japanese soldier at a check stop in Tamuning.  Bamba witnessed the violence against her mother, who was near-term at the time.  Then, in late 1944, just before the war ended on Guam, Japanese enemy forces beheaded Bamba’s father for helping an American pilot escape from a downed US military plane.  After his death, Bamba and her younger brother, John, were raised by their maternal grandmother and great-grandmother in the village of Agana Heights.  The US Marines never allowed them back to their family home to claim their personal belongings in what is now Naval Communications Station (NCS).

In 1949, Bamba graduated from George Washington High School and shortly afterward, at the age of sixteen, she married twenty year-old George Mariano Bamba of Agana Heights, who became a businessman and a politician, serving several terms in the Guam Legislature.  Together they had ten children.  The couple also raised John, Bamba’s younger brother.

In the early 1950s, the young mother attended the Territorial College of Guam.  As the devoted and supportive wife of a civic leader, politician and entrepreneur, Bamba became an active community member herself, which allowed her to fine tune her own community activism, business sense and organizational skills.  Bamba credited her grandmother and great grandmother for her successes, for instilling values and helping her raise her children, and supporting her throughout her endeavors.  Bamba later received an honorary degree in humanities from the University of Guam in 1970.

Dr. Laura Marie Torres Souder-Jaffery wrote in her doctoral dissertation that Bamba was a “Lady Extraordinaire.”  Her professional resume shows that she was, indeed, an organizer extraordinaire.

In 1972-1973 Bamba was recognized for her work in the National Register of Prominent Americans and International Notables, a prestigious national and international acknowledgement.  The Register listed prominent men and women for their outstanding achievements in “their business, profession, community, state or country.”  Others from Guam included in the Register were Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Jesus B. Guerrero, Frederico Taitano Gutierrez, William Albert McAlister, Sister Jean Marie Menke, Dr. Simon Angeles Sanchez and Dr. Antonio Carbullido Yamashita.

Bamba was a businesswoman, joining her husband in his enterprises, and eventually became the owner of Bamba’s Insurance and Oceania Consultants.  She also had interests in other businesses such as Cetti Bay Development Company.

Initially Bamba was a member of the Popular Party of Guam, forerunner of today’s Democratic Party of Guam, but later, she became a member of the Republican Party.  After her husband’s death in 1976, Bamba successfully vied for a senatorial seat in the 15th Guam Legislature in 1978.

War reparations advocate

Her organizational skills were a boon as a policy maker.  She sat on more than a dozen legislative committees and served as chairwoman of the Committee on Governmental Operations, Military and Veterans Affairs.  It was during this time that she introduced legislation to establish the War Reparations Commission, collecting testimonies from hundreds of people who lived and suffered through the Japanese Occupation of Guam during World War II.  In her capacity as senator, she also went before the US Congress, becoming first Chamorro woman to testify before Congress to argue for recognition for atrocities suffered by the people of Guam during World War II.  Her efforts were the catalyst for recognition and justice that are still being sought today.

She organized meetings of Chamorros living in the continental United States who had suffered brutalities, torture and death during World War II and traveled to meet with them at her own expense.  These wartime firsthand accounts were donated to the Richard F. Taitano Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam as her family believes that the stories of atrocities committed must never be forgotten and must be passed on to each generation.

Other civic organizations where Bamba led the charge or had notable participation in include the Guam Girls Scouts, the Guam Chapter of the American Red Cross, the Guam Chapter of the American Cancer Society, the Guam Women’s Club, the Guam USO Council and the Guam Beauty Association.  She was a founder of the Guam Memorial Hospital Volunteers Association, the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the Jerry Lewis Telethon, and the Guam Landowners Association, among many others.

On 30 September 1986, Bamba passed away at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City California at the age of 51, after a long fight with cancer.  Meanwhile, the struggle for war reparations continues.

By Tanya M. Champaco Mendiola

For further reading

Bamba, Cecilia Cruz.  “An Interrupted Interlude.” Pamphlet, Guam War Survivors Exhibition, 2010.

Leon Guerrero, Victoria-Lola. “War Survivors Continue to Die without Restitution,”  Guam War Survivor Story Website, 2007. (accessed 7 March 2012.)

Political Status Education Coordinating Commission. “Cecilia Cruz Bamba,” in I Manfayi: Who’s Who in Chamorro History, volume II.  Hagåtña: PSECC, 1997.

Souder, Laura Marie Torres.  Daughters of the Island: Contemporary Chamorro Women Organizers of Guam. MARC Monograph Series No. 1.  2^nd Ed. Mangilao, Guam: Laura Marie Torres Souder & UOG MARC, 1992.

Souder, Laura Marie Torres.  “New Perspectives on the Chamorro Female Experience: Case Studies of Nine Contemporary Chamorro Women Organizers.” PhD Dissertation. University of Hawai`i, 1985.

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Dedicated educator

Mariana Leon Guerrero Lujan (1914-2006) was one of a cadre of dedicated educators who began teaching during the United States Naval Era (1898-1941).  Before the World War II, she taught at the Guam Post Office, Leary School and Padre Palomo schools. After the war she became the principal of Yona Elementary School, Chalan Pago Elementary School, Price Elementary School and Talofofo Elementary School.

Lujan was born 12 November 1914 in Hagåtña, Guam.  She was one of nine children born to Maria Manalisay Manglona and Vicente Aguon Leon Guerrero.

On 29 November 1941 she married fellow educator Manuel Ulloa Lujan.  The two shared a special bond beyond careers in education.  When the couple were courting Mariana would ride her bicycle behind the fence of the baseball diamond in Hagåtña when Manuel was playing baseball. Distracted by her presence, Manuel who was the pitcher would inevitably throw a wild pitch. Mariana had that effect on Manuel throughout their lives.  The couple had five children: Vincent “Sonny,” Rudolph, Ramon, Ronald and Raymond; and three reared children: Maria R. Leon Guerrero, Leonard Sablan, and Ana R. Cruz.  Her son, Vincent, said, by her presence she could “make my dad melt.”

A lifelong educator Mariana Lujan retired after 41 years of dedicated service. In recognition of her and her husband’s contribution to the island the Yona Elementary School was renamed “Manuel U. Lujan Elementary School” on her 62nd birthday in 1975.  On 25 October 2006 the 28th Guam Legislature passed Resolution No. 202 recognizing the accomplishments and contributions of Mariana Leon Guerrero Lujan.

Lujan was greatly involved in the community through various associations.   She was a lifelong member of the Guam Memorial Hospital’s Volunteer Association, a member of the Catholic Daughters of Americas, the Sorpotimist organization, the Secular Franciscan Order, and served as president of the Confraternity of the Christian Mothers in Yona.  She also served as president of the St. Francis School PTA, was the secretary of the PTA at Father Duenas Memorial School, and vice-president of the island-wide Christian Mothers Association.  In recognition of her service to the Catholic Church she was awarded a Papal Award in 1960 by Bishop Apollinaris W. Baumgartner.

Lujan’s service to the community extended to politics where she was one of the first women to serve in the Guam Congress.   She was elected in 1948 as the representative from Yona and served in the 9th and 10th Guam Congress.  She also served as Legislative secretary.

She died on 20 October 2006.

 By Jillette Torre Leon-Guerrero, MA

For further reading

Political Status Education Coordinating Commission.  I Manfåyi: Who’s Who in Chamorro History. Volume II. Hagåtña, Guam: PESCC, The Chamorro Heritage Institute Planning Group, 1997.

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Educator, University of Guam president

Rosa Roberto Carter (1929-2010) was a highly accomplished educator whose professional career spanned from kindergarten teacher to University president. She is the only woman to serve as University of Guam president.

Carter, the oldest of nine children, was born to Antonia Santos Garrido and Jose Duenas Roberto on 29 August 1929. Under the Japanese occupation of Guam (1941-1944) she and her family survived World War II, including internment in 1944 in the Menenggon concentration camp.

Not counting her employment as a librarian in Guam’s United States Army Medical Center in Dededo immediately after the war, her career as an educator began at age sixteen in 1946. The island had turned to a double-session to make up for schooling lost during the war. For three years Carter was a student at George Washington High School in the morning and an elementary school teacher in the afternoon.

After graduating from George Washington High School in 1950 as salutatorian of her class, Carter continued her academic pursuits to earn several post-secondary degrees. These included a Bachelor of Science degree in history and elementary education from Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1954; a graduate diploma in comparative education as a Fulbright Fellow from Sydney University in Australia in 1958; a Master of Arts degree in guidance and counseling from Northern Colorado University in Greeley in 1962; and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in administration and supervision from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, in 1976.

These degrees provided Carter with the academic background to teach as well as serve as an administrator at various educational institutions. She taught at several public and private schools including Agana and Adelup schools, and Wettengel Elementary school, where she was also an assistant principal; counselor at PC Lujan Middle School, Notre Dame High School, Guam Community College, and the University of Guam (UOG). Following her full-time experience at UOG and prior to returning to teach Chamorro and English part-time for the university, Carter taught at the special school located in the Department of Youth Affairs for six years.  In the 1950s and 1960s, and again in the 1990s, Carter also taught as a volunteer in her church.

Hired as an instructor at the Territorial College of Guam in 1958, Carter attained the rank of full professor at the University of Guam. She taught courses including Chamorro, English, History of Guam, Psychology, Tests and Measurements, and Counseling, as well as other courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

In addition to serving as president, other administrative positions that she held at the University of Guam include Registrar, Admissions Officer, Director of Registration, Financial Aid Officer, and Dean of Students.

In 1970, she married Lee Carter, a professor at the University of Guam.  Together, along with William Wuerch, the Carters edited the publications Guam History: Perspectives, Volumes I and II, in 1997 and 2005, respectively.

In 1977, she was selected to serve as the President of the University of Guam. In 1980 Carter lobbied with legislators and won a much needed increase of approximately ten percent in university faculty salaries. In January 1981, when a few members of the university faculty abandoned their positions in sympathy with striking Department of Education teachers, Carter kept the university operating as usual while encouraging those absent members to return. When some of them did not she issued official recognition of their permanent departure. The Board of Regents voted to return those faculty to their former positions after one year.

During Carter’s tenure as president, the university experienced accreditation challenges based on two factors: the uncertain level of funding for its programs, as well as outside political interference. The first factor impacted the university’s ability to do what it claimed to do. The second factor undermined the self-governance component essential for internal decision-making as an accepted institution of higher education.

Carter’s term ended in 1983 with her firing by a new board of regents at the direction of a new governor, which was standard procedure at the time. Eventually, due in part to Carter’s lobbying, local laws were changed and the responsibility for education belonged to the Government of Guam, rather than the Governor of Guam.

Allowing purposefully for a full five years between her service at the university and her own political activism, in 1988 and 1990 Carter was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Guam Legislature. In 1988 and 1992 she attended national political conventions with a vote as a national committee woman elected by Guam’s Republican Party.

In 2003, Carter provided testimony about her family’s experiences during the Japanese occupation of the island during World War II. Her poignant portrayal of the experiences during this time of her personal history is part of the documentation for the Guam War Claims Review Commission.

In her testimony Carter, who was twelve at the beginning of the Japanese occupation, said:

“There’s no way to know all the negative effects of the two years of malnutrition we were forced to experience when the occupiers confiscated our food for themselves. In the last two weeks, they forced us into more difficult situations involving a forced march and virtual imprisonment in a squalid camp, where there was no food at all. We older kids foraged for our family, searching wild lands for many miles. We nearly starved to death at that time.”

Carter was a member of several civic and education-related organizations, serving as the elected leader of most of them in turn, including the American Association of University Women, the American Red Cross, the Governor’s (Manuel Guerrero) Youth Council, the Government of Guam Retirement Board, the Guam Community College Board of Trustees, the Guam Memorial Hospital Volunteers’ Association, Soroptimist International of Guam, Phi Delta Kappa (education), and the Women’s Clubs of Guam, among others. Additionally, she was recognized with several awards including the Distinguished Alumni Award from Northern State University and induction into the Guam Educators’ Hall of Fame.

Carter died 11 April 2010 at the age of 80.

By Velma Yamashita

For further reading

Carter, Rosa Roberto. An Analysis of Teachers’ Demographic Data and Teachers’ Perception of Administrative Functional Efficiency (doctoral dissertation, December l976), Bowling Green State University: Bowling Green, Ohio, 1976.

Carter, Rosa Roberto. “Education in Guam to 1950: Island and Personal History,” in Guam History: Perspectives, Volume One. Lee D. Carter, et al (eds.). Mangilao, Guam: Micronesian Area Research Center/University of Guam, 1997, pp. 181 – 218.

Guam Legislature. Resolution No. 91-30 (COR). “Relative to recognizing and commending Dr. Rosa Roberto Carter for her life time of accomplishments, and for being a candidate for the Guam Educator’s Hall of Fame.” Adopted 19 April 2009.

Guam Legislature.  Resolution  No. 334-30. “Relative to posthumously recognizing and honoring the late Rosa Roberto Carter, Ph.D., for her lifetime of public service in the education of our people and island community; to extending a sincere Un Dangkolo Na Si Yu’ os Ma’ ase’ to her family for the outstanding contributions she had made to the betterment of our island community; and to further extending condolences to her family, on behalf of I Liheslaturan Guahan and the people of Guam.” Adopted 16 April 2010.

Guam Legislature, Guam War Survivors Stories website.

Political Status Education Coordination Commission.  I Manfayi: Who’s Who in Chamorro History, Volume II. Hagåtña, Guam: PESCC, The Chamorro Heritage Institute Planning Group, 1997.

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Influential voice of a survivor

Beatrice Perez Emsley (1929-1995) is best remembered as a survivor of the Japanese Occupation on Guam during World War II, and subsequently, as the voice of fellow Chamorro survivors with her powerful testimonies for the Guam War Reparations Commission in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Her experience of  brutality and survival at the hands of the Japanese revealed the atrocities suffered by the Chamorro population and brought national and international attention to the issue of compensation for Chamorro survivors.

Born Beatrice Flores Perez on 16 December 1929, Emsley was raised in Yigo, Guam, and was twelve years old when the Japanese occupation began on 10 December 1941.  Under Japanese military rule, life for many Chamorros had become difficult and uncertain.  Emsley lived at her family’s ranch in Tai, Mangilao (where Father Duenas Memorial School now stands), along with her uncle, Baldumero T. Peredo, who worked at the Naval Hospital.  In 1944, at the age of fourteen, Emsley worked as a house girl to Japanese soldiers for one month.  She was paid thirty yen for her services.

The events Emsley described in her testimonies before the War Reparations Commission began in July 1944, just a few days before the American invasion that liberated Guam from Japanese rule.  Emsley’s uncle was missing during the Japanese census of the ranch, where three other families also were seeking shelter.  An officer threatened to have the families killed if Peredo was not found immediately.  Emsley, whose mother had just given birth to a baby girl, volunteered to search for her uncle.  She was given a signed paper of permission from the Japanese officer in order to pass security stations throughout Hagåtña.

By this time, Hagåtña largely had been abandoned as residents had relocated to their lanchos (ranches) or were hiding in the island’s jungles.  Emsley bowed repeatedly toward Japanese soldiers and was finally chased away when she showed them her pass.  She broke through thick jungle foliage, calling for Peredo, even searching a foxhole her mother thought her uncle might be hiding.  Finally, she heard the sounds of his breathing.

Emsley found her uncle lying in a trench.  He had fallen and badly wounded his leg. He was filthy and his leg was infected, leaving him unable to walk.  Emsley pleaded with Peredo to attempt the walk back to the ranch.  Peredo, however, insisted he could not, even if his niece dragged him.  The minutes lost persuading Peredo to return with her placed the young girl and her uncle in a precarious position as the Japanese did not want any Chamorros to be in the area while they were preparing for battle with the Americans.

Attempted beheading

Within minutes of finding Peredo, Emsley heard the stomping footsteps of Japanese soldiers marching in Hagåtña.  Suddenly, some of the soldiers pushed through the jungle, and she and her uncle were discovered.  Emsley presented the soldiers with her permission pass, but the paper that once granted safety was pushed aside.  The Japanese accused Emsley and her uncle of knowing the American Navy radioman George Tweed, the only American soldier who was able to remain hidden from Japanese forces and survive during the Japanese occupation.  In spite of Emsley and Peredo’s arguments that they had never known Tweed, the two were taken by the soldiers toward San Ramon Hill, below where the Government House stands today, amid flares and bombing by American planes.  When the flares had passed, they were forced into one of three tunnels cut into the hillside below where the Archbishop’s residence is currently located.

There Emsley discovered other Chamorros assembled by Japanese soldiers.  She saw a group of seven men, among them Juan Cabrara, age sixteen.  Later, they were joined by a group of three young women who were crying as the soldiers pushed them into the tunnel. For two days without food and water, the group of Chamorros were held against their will.

As the night waned and daylight approached the interrogation wore steadily on.  The Japanese repeatedly accused the group of lying and slapped the Chamorros across their faces, even after the Chamorros agreed with the untrue accusations.

At dawn, the Japanese officers demanded the group line up and stand before a string of Japanese soldiers, dressed in full uniform and armed with bayonets.   An officer divided the men and women into two groups.  The men were led off into the jungle with the soldiers, while the women were ordered to wait and remain standing in a straight line.  Before the men were led away, Emsley’s uncle reached out and pulled at her, but the two were forced apart by the soldiers.

In her formal testimony before the US Congress on 27 May 1993, Emsley recounted what happened next:

“All us four girls hear is like somebody chopping down the forest, and moaning for God, for mother, and I’m dying, and all that.  Since then, Mr. Chairman, I didn’t have any feeling.  I’m standing there like I’m just out in a cloud.  So then after they finish and everything is quiet, they [the soldiers] come back and went by us and they all have a bloody uniform. Their rifle and everything are all [covered in] blood.”

Emsley then witnessed the Japanese soldiers execute the other Chamorro women.  In her words from the 1993 testimony:

“They finally start calling Diana Guerrero, the oldest woman, who walked up to this officer, and the only thing I seen, and it start to get blurr[y], was he cut this front and start sawing off her breast.  Then the sister next to her came running up to try to help.  They do just everything they can with what they got.  And the third one was Toni, because I was the youngest and the last.  They march her up, and the only thing they did is sliced down her stomach and everything come out.  When it comes to me, when they took me out, I was walking in air.  As soon as they let go of me, I fall down to the ground.”

The Japanese officer’s attention focused on Emsley.  After briefly questioning her, the officer pushed her head down and he hit the back of her neck with his bayonet.  Emsley fainted from the impact as the bayonet cut through her neck muscles.  The gash from the bayonet was four inches deep.  The Japanese officers then pushed her into a nearby hole they had dug as a grave.  Emsley’s body fell on top of the other women.

Buried alive

When Emsley awoke she found herself buried with the bodies of those executed before her eyes.  Phasing in and out of consciousness, Emsley began trying to dig herself out.  At one point, she recalled Toni, still alive, moaning beside her asking for water.  The two managed to drink something wet on the ground nearby.  Emsley passed out again and when she awoke, Toni had already died.

Emsley crawled out of the dirt grave during daylight, after the Japanese had left the scene and hidden themselves.  She stumbled away from the area, half crawling when she was conscious and fainting after she had exhausted her limited energy supply.  She went to where she had heard the other Chamorro men and recognized her uncle’s wounded leg because of the filthy pants he had been wearing. As she described in the 1993 statement:

“I don’t know where I’m going.  I don’t know what happened to me.  I don’t know nothing.  I just keep going.”

Time passed for Emsley.  Making her way through the jungle she spotted a ranch and began approaching it.  She hid when she heard Japanese soldiers already at the ranch removing whatever they could find.  When the soldiers finally left, Emsley went around the other side of the building and found Juan Cabrara, who had also survived the attempted execution.  Cabrara had suffered five deep bayonet wounds.  Emsley called to the boy and asked if he had food or water.  Cabrara called her to him and he gave her some coconut to eat.  Together, the two continued to search for food, drinking swamp water to quench their thirst.  At Carbara’s urging, they made their way to a house in Hagåtña where Cabrara knew his mother had left some rice and salted fish.

As the teenagers struggled along in search of help and medicine, they looked at the remains of the old Naval Hospital but could not find anything.  Meanwhile, Emsley had developed a high fever and chills.

At the Hagåtña house, Cabrara began to prepare rice, leaving Emsley to watch it cook while he went out.  Cabrara returned running, having encountered some Japanese soldiers and was now being chased by them.  As Cabrara escaped the soldiers, a dog started to chase his pursuers.  Reaching the house, he grabbed Emsley and the two ran to the back of the destroyed chapel in the San Antonio district, waiting quietly until the barking sounds stopped.

Emsley and Cabrara then made the long trek toward Manenggon where other Chamorros had been taken to a concentration camp set up by the Japanese.  They found an abandoned ranch and were elated to discover six large drums of rainwater, as well as star apples and bananas.  The two ate until, as Emsley recalled, she got a stomach ache.  They set off again to search for their families and  came across an abandoned house where they stayed for a few days.

The two were eventually found by one of Emsley’s uncles and another man who had left the Manenggon camp to search for food they had hidden away from the Japanese.  Emsley’s uncle, however, did not recognize her at first.  He brought the two teenagers with him to Yona where they met up with soldiers of the Third Marine Division, part of the invading American forces.  The Americans, however, were unable to treat her or Cabrara’s wounds because of the fighting.  The three Chamorros then made their way back to the Manenggon camp.  After sneaking the teenagers into the camp, Emsley and Cabrara were finally able to receive medical care.

Two Chamorro nurses cleaned the survivors’ wounds for the first time.  Emsley recounted that she felt maggots moving across the gash on her neck and that she guessed these maggots had eaten away some infection from her injuries.  When American soldiers finally entered the concentration camp, Emsley was taken down the long trail to Asan where she was cleaned up and received more medical treatment for her wounds aboard one of the US ships.

Life after the War

Like other war survivors, Emsley focused on trying to pick up the pieces of her life and survive the devastating aftermath and reconstruction of the island.  She attended school for a while, but could not continue as she had been too traumatized.

She eventually married Charles Emsley, a former private in the US Army.  Together they had ten children, including Karen Emsley Guerrero.  In spite of the trauma she had suffered, Guerrero recalled her mother’s forgiveness towards the Japanese officers and soldiers responsible for her attempted beheading:

“She always told us, ‘In order to be forgiven, you must learn to forgive.”’

Emsley became an influential community leader because of her emotional and candid War Reparations testimony in front of the US Congress.  She spoke about her experiences openly, despite the tendency among other Chamorro elders to keep quiet about stories that reveal the harsher side of their lives during the Occupation.

Emsley died on 6 August 1995 at the age of sixty-five.  She was honored with a state funeral attended by various local senators, military and Japanese officials.  Over one hundred mourners were lead in prayer.  Emsley was buried at the Guam Veterans Cemetery.

A symbol of Chamorro strength and resilience

Beatrice Emsley often is seen as embodying the Chamorro people’s suffering during the Japanese Occupation; she has been named the “symbol of Chamorro strength and resilience,” among other titles, by the media.  The symbol, however, belies the broken woman who suffered from this experience the rest of her life.

Emsley struggled with a lifelong nervous disorder as a result of her near death and the violence she witnessed.  She never did go back to school and relied on her mother to teach her how to manage her household.  Interviewers constantly noted the detached way in which Emsley processed words when recounting her story.  For example, Howard Handleman, while writing for the July 1964 issue of the Pacific Profile, wrote about Emsley: “The girl showed no emotion as she talked. Her almond eyes show neither a reflection of the terror that was past nor a hint of happiness (……).”

Emsley relayed her memories in a factual manner, recalling the names of people and friends she saw tortured, while her face remained a stoic mask.  A reporter noted in a 1952 article in the Guam Daily News: “Beatrice tells her story to a Daily News reporter in a flat voice without emotion.  Tonelessly she continues.”

This was an essential part of Emsley’s psychology – her defense tactic for surviving war atrocities and relaying her story.  Emsley apparently built a wall between her present self and her memories.

But her experience as a survivor and as an advocate for war reparations for the Chamorro people remains her contribution to Guam history and its people.  Her closing words of her 1993 testimony captures the conflicted feelings of so many Chamorro survivors – grateful for the American liberation, loyal to the American nation, but wanting to be acknowledged for their suffering and sacrifice: “All I am trying to ask Chairman Ron de Lugo – Recognize us, please.  We are American.”

By Samantha Marley Barnett

For further reading

Handleman, Howard, Pacific Profile, July 1964

War in the Pacific National Historical Park.  Testimony Hearing before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, Committee on Natural Resources, House of Representatives, One Hundred Congress, first session, on H.R. 1944, to provide for additional development at War in the Pacific National Historical Park … hearing held in Washington, DC, May 27, 1993 Washington, DC, 1993

Guam Daily News story on World War II survivors, 21 July 1952.

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Traditional weaver

Although weaving was once a practice in which nearly all Chamorros participated, a select few have been singled out over the past few decades due to their exemplary skill and commitment to perpetuation of the craft.

Elena Cruz Benavente (1905-2005) was a master folk artist, recognized for her skill in weaving natural materials such as coconut palm and pandanus leaves.

Born in Hagåtña on 17 December 1905 to Maria Fraga Hernandez and Pedro Guerrero Cruz, Benavente learned how to weave coconut and pandanus (ük’gak) leaves as a child, as many island residents did. By the age of sixteen, she had learned to weave more complex items, such as sleeping mats (guaffak), round and square baskets (kottot), and lunch bags (kostat tengguang).

Weaving is an important cultural practice in many Pacific societies and Chamorros were known as being particularly skilled. Many utilitarian items, such as food baskets and traps, mats for sleeping and ceremonial use, and thatching for houses, were produced by hand. Weaving was also important to the cultivation of community life. In a time before contractors built houses, villagers made their own homes. This meant that they had to work together during the dry season to fix or make new thatch roofs. A typical 18 to 20 foot-long roof could use up to 1,000 coconut leaves and take up to a month for a village to craft. Many people were needed—not just to weave, but also to climb trees, trim leaves, and prepare materials for assembly. Thus, a thatching party, like other community activities such as fiesta preparation and church celebrations, was one component of Chamorro life that not only produced goods, but whose very practice exemplified and transmitted Chamorro values like inafa’maolek and chenchule’.

Thatching roofs were an entry point to the weaving practice. Typically, once a person could reliably weave thatch, that person had enough experience to move on to basket craft, and later, pandanus weaving. In other words, making thatch roofs was a beginner’s way of becoming a weaver. Making a thatch roof required that the elders taught and mentored younger community members how to weave.

The changes in Chamorro society following World War II, however, would affect weaving traditions, both in functionality and perpetuation. In the four to five years immediately after World War II, people rebuilt their houses using wood and thatched coconut leaves. But with the importation of manufactured materials and military surplus like concrete and tin in the 1950s, house building—and the accompanying community traditions like thatching parties—changed. One reason for gathering together—making a thatch roof—was no longer essential to how people made their homes. The decline of these thatching parties also meant that weaving skills declined. With the demand for that basic skill decreasing, peoples’ weaving skills also weakened.

But while others gave up the practice due to changing times leaving less demand for weaving skills, Benavente kept up the practice and eventually passed it on to the next generation. She married Jose Quichocho Benavente from Dededo and together they had eight children, Elisa, Jose, Jesus, John, Priscilla, Elena, Manuel and Pedro. Throughout this period of change into the modern world, Benavente continued her weaving amidst (or perhaps because of) the demands of raising eight children, supporting her husband, and caring for a house. Ever the Chamorro traditionalist from her dress (a mestisa) to familial duties, her weaving did not stray from the forms and materials she had known since she was a little girl.

Benavente passed this traditional craft to those of her children who wanted to learn. Remarkably, she cultivated her own plants, harvested the leaves and used traditional drying and storing techniques to prepare the leaves before weaving. Benavente practiced and had perfected her craft of pandanus weaving as well as coconut leaf plaiting throughout her lifetime and was renowned for her skills in creating art from these traditionally utilitarian objects.

Her method of teaching others her craft was also faithful to pre-World War II traditions. While formalized, Americanized schooling emphasized strict adherence to schedules, lectures, and mandatory attendance, Benavente would accept students at their request and at mutually agreeable times. Students would first observe her, attempt to weave on their own, and ask the all important question of “taimanu?” (how?) when needing help. A student would progress from making fans, to thatched roofs, on to baskets, and, if interested, on to the demanding, labor-intensive craft of pandanus mat weaving. There was no money exchanged for teaching, although bartering or sharing things—again, in the tradition of chenchule’—was acceptable.

Beginning in the late sixties when her son, John Benavente, returned to Guam from the United States, the two found more of a demand for their skills, although it would not grow to the pre-war demand in her lifetime.  A resurgent interest in Chamorro-specific traditions and bilingual education, embedded in larger social forces of political change, took hold in the local community, facilitated by the beginning of cultural fairs, such as those held at Jeff’s Pirate Cove in Ipan.  Meant initially to promote the business, over time these fairs helped shape a market for Chamorro cultural products as well.

Because of her abilities, Benavente was selected to represent Guam at the Second Festival of Pacific Arts held in New Zealand in 1976. She was  honored with the Maga’lahi or Governor’s Art Award for Lifetime Cultural Achievement for her role as one of Guam’s master folk artists in 1989 and 1991.

Traditional weaving evolved from a skill of necessity to an art form, over the course of Benavente’s 99 years of life on Guam. She died a few months shy of her 100th birthday, in 2005, leaving a legacy of dozens of weavers, including her grandson Mark Benavente, and a greater appreciation among the Guam community for her talent, generosity, and her contributions to the preservation of Chamorro culture.

By Marie Ada Auyong

For further reading

Political Status Education Coordinating Commission. ”Elena Cruz Benavente,” in I Manfåyi: Who’s Who in Chamorro History. Volume II. Hagåtña, Guam: PSECC, The Chamorro Heritage Institute Planning Group, 1977.