Ambrosio Torres Shimizu (1909 – 1988) is well known on Guam for he and his family’s success in business. His Japanese father, Jose Katsuji Shimizu, moved to the Mariana Islands in the early 1900s and has been credited for making rice a staple food on Guam.
Ambrosio Torres Shimizu Read Post »
When the US established a military government in Guam in 1899 it became clear that the costs of administering Guam would be high. The US military government renewed the efforts started by the Spanish government to establish an agricultural economy on the island.
Early American Economic History Read Post »
Guam’s banking history began during what is known in the banking world as the Pacific’s Concessionary Era that ran from 1900 to 1945.
Many private print collections on Guam center around authentic Japanese woodblocks including a sizable patronage of French artist Paul Jacoulet. Jacoulet worked out of Japan with master woodblock carver, Kazuo Yamagishi, in the early 1930s and created a body of work based on Pacific cultures, Korea and Japan. Some of his subject matters were Pacific island natives of Micronesia, which provided an affinity with many local collectors on Guam.
Photography as an art form is relatively new on Guam. There have been visiting photographers on Guam since the early 1900s. However, the evolution of photography as a form of artistic expression of the island residents has only happened within the last half a century.
Though it is still relatively small, filmmaking is growing on Guam as both an art form and an industry. On an island that values story-telling, community, and preserving history and traditions, film is a natural fit as an arts medium and technology is only expected to help it continue to flourish.
The Jose P. Lujan 1911 house in Hagåtña is listed on both the Guam and National Registers of Historic Sites. With so few prewar homes left standing, particularly in Hagåtña, it was important that this structure was restored, according to the Guam Preservation Trust. The two story structure is located on the corner of Hesler and Padre Palomo Streets.
Laura Maud Thompson (1905-2000), a distinguished sociocultural anthropologist who studied peoples and cultures around the world, is best known for her comprehensive studies of the Chamorro/CHamoru people of Guam.
Laura Maud Thompson Read Post »
In 1898, at the twilight of the Spanish-American War, the US claimed Guam as a token of war. Though this event would bring an end to more than three centuries of Spanish colonial rule, it would also begin a new era in which the CHamoru people of the Mariana Islands would experience separation from one another.
Chamorro Migration to the US Read Post »
