Maga’låhi Yula (also spelled Hula or Yura) was a chief from the village of Apotguan in Hagåtña, who is best known for sparking a Chamorro/CHamoru uprising in the summer of 1684.
Maga’låhi Tolahi (also spelled Tetlaje or Torahi) was a chief from Tachuc (immediately south of Malesso), who fearlessly led the southern villages in resistance to Spanish rule. Tolahi believed that Chamorros/CHamorus were entitled to live freely as they had for millennia before the Spanish arrived.
CHamoru patriot priest. On 10 January 1942, all foreign Catholic missionaries in Guam were sent by the Japanese occupying forces to prisoner of war camps in Japan.
Monsignor Oscar Calvo Read Post »
Saburu Kurusu, diplomatic pouch in hand, stepped off the Pan American Airways Clipper at Sumay while rumors persisted in Guam that war with Japan was imminent.
WWII: From Occupation to Liberation Read Post »
While remembrance of World War II atrocities against the CHamorus occur every year for the massacres at Fena in Sånta Rita-Sumai and Faha and Tinta in Merizo, as well as the Manenggon concentration camp, there were atrocities by Japanese soldiers against the CHamorus that took place on smaller scales in other areas.
WWII: War Atrocities on Guam Read Post »
One of the worst atrocities that took place at the end of the Japanese occupation of Guam during World War II was the Manenggon concentration camp. In July 1944, as American forces prepared to invade Guam, Japanese forces ordered nearly the entire civilian population of Guam to move to Manenggon as well as other smaller concentration camps.
War Atrocities: Manenggon Concentration Camp Read Post »
The Fena Caves Massacre occurred on 23 July 1944, shortly after American troops invaded the island on 21 July, when Japanese soldiers killed more than 30 young men and women from Hågat and Sumai with grenades and bayonets in the caves near Fena Lake, raping many of the women before killing them. In some accounts, it is reported that 66 others barely survived the massacre.
War Atrocities: Fena Massacre Read Post »
On July 15 and 16, 1944, with the American forces approaching Guam near the end of the Japanese occupation of the island in World War II, Japanese soldiers massacred nearly fifty Chamorro men and women from Malesso’ in two separate confrontations in the Tinta and Faha areas just outside the village of Malesso’.
War Atrocities: Tinta and Faha Massacres, Malesso Read Post »
Some months before the end of the Pacific War, the US Navy impaneled a war crimes commission for Guam. The responsibility of the commission, a national one rather than an international one as at Nuremberg and Tokyo, was to bring to trial suspected Japanese and native war criminals.
US Navy War Crimes Trials in Guam Read Post »
The outbreak of the Pacific War began with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on 8 December (7 December in Hawai’i) 1941 with a subsequent air attack on US military facilities on Guam. In the early hours before dawn on 10 December 370 land combat unit members of the Japanese Navy and 2,700 soldiers of the Army’s South Seas Detachment landed on Guam at five bays: Ylig, Malesso’, Humåtak, Tumon, and Hagåtña.
Japanese Occupation of Guam Read Post »
