As I said in the replies to some of the comments, tomorrow we go to Iwo but the Guam government has disallowed our opportunity to bring back more than a vial of sand. Many people on the trip are flat broken-hearted as it was a main purpose of their trip.
I was informed late that we could fly a flag on Suribachi so I gave a girl at a restaurant $50 if she could find a place that had flags. (K-Mart was sold out.) She found a store in this little mall and I rode the bus there last night and bought 7 flags. So..that maybe will take the sting out of the sand issue for me.
I know at least 4 veterans that asked me to bring back sand so it is going to be hard to break that news.
We've been touring the island as I said. We saw the beaches where Guam was retaken by the USA in 1944 and I can tell you it is something. WWII here is definitely not something from the far past and everything around you is related to that time. There are two military bases on Guam and I think that helps the connection.
Chamorro people were rounded up and put in concentration camps as the war moved forward and they were none too fond of the Japanese. (Now Japanese tourism is a major industry on the island. Perhaps there is something to be learned from this development.)
Additionally, Chamorro people from the northern Marianas Islands were brought in to help get the Guam Chamorro to accept the Japanese as conquerors of the Pacific, so even today there is a terrible political rift between the Chamorro of Guam and the Northern Marianas Islanders. The rift stems from the days of WWII when the Northern Marianas Islanders collaborated with the Japanese.
Generally, the large city in Guam reminds me of something like Beaumont, Texas. It has some big city characteristics but it is nothing like being in Houston. Ancient Chamorro people were closely tied to the ocean and many of the primitive burial grounds are near the beach, where these large hotels go up. The large hotels in Tumon are built on ancient Chamorro burial grounds so now when a new hotel is constructed, an archaeological dig is conducted prior to construction.
Guam becomes a patchwork of villages as you move north and south along the island. Each village has something of an autonomous feel with a lot of local pride. The locals are all friendly.
I have only limited access to the computer so bear with me and be patient, but I will eventually pay off somebody to let me use the single computer in this hotel. (My laptop refused to make the trip.)
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20 comments:
Hey Coach Walker, its Justin Javier from 2nd period. It sucks that the Guam government is only letting you bring a vial of sand back. What could they possibly think its contaminated with? Also, are the concentration camps that the Chamarro were held in still in tact as historic sites?
Coach, during the island hopping campaign was Guam and the territories around it used as a gateway or staging point for actions such as Iwo Jima?
-A. Koch 1st Pd.
HELLO.
Sounds like you are having a good ol' time exploring the old battle grounds of world war two. that sucks that you can't bring back anything more than a vial of sand. why don't you smuggle some. KIDDING. I was wondering when you said that Guam was retaken by the US in 1944 who exactly had it first and why did guam of all places have to be captured?
A it is really sucks that you can't bring a lot of sand back. Does the government really think it might be contaminated? Were the concentration camps you mentioned as horrific as the ones in the Holocaust?
Joseph Kamm
3rd period
Flying flags on Iwo....hope you take some pictures!
FYI--Back in the USA, Maverick Law arrived on Monday.
wow! thats a bummer they wont let u bring back alot of sand! but the flags will be cool! i cant imagine the feeling of standing on the beach where so many u.s. troops died, thats got to be intense. this whole time difference thing is crazy! p.s. our sub is boring, but the essay topic about the atom bomb and the pros and cons of dropping it...gotta give you propps, it was fun to write! lol i have a feeling alot of kids in our class will be typing theyre essays haha!
Hey Coach,
I hope there won't be any mistakes when they're trying to identify you in your flag raising picture on Surabachi like there were during the war. Maybe they'll mis-identify you as Harlon Block. Ha! Just kidding. I know that there was an anti-Japanese resistence carried out by Filipino rebels during the Japanese occupation of the Philipnes during WWII so my question is this: Did the Chamarro people attempt any large-scale rebllions against thier Japanese oppresors during the war?
Ian Graham Period 2
The main concentration camp was sold by an investor - a Texas Aggie - who gave some land back to Guam and sold the rest to a Japanese developer..They built a huge resort villa on the hill and named it after the concentration camp! As you can guess, the Chamorra here aren't too keen on that idea but it is there....
Koch..Guam was essential to get to bomb Japan. More importantly, Guam became a floating Sam's Club for the military and was called the "supermarket of the Pacific" in which all military supplies for the continued war (including Iwo) were staged from Guam.
Angry white girl, the US had Guam since 1898 when we won the Spanish American War. When the Japanese decided to rule the Pacific, they attacked Guam and told the Chamorra they should be glad the white man is gone. But the Chamorra have always been very patriotic and resisted. Guam was critical in that it allowed the B-29's a staging area to attack Japan.
Kamm..the concentration camps were meant to be as bad as the Holocaust but they weren't put in place until the Japanese realized they were losing and then they decided to exterminate the population..but the US Marines and Army landed and stopped the extermination opporunity in the nick of time.
Graham, the Chamarro's resisted to many degrees. Many were beheaded by the Japanese and the Chamarro Insular Guard actually put up the only fight against the Japanese invasion. More on that when I get back.
Thanks for the props, Klutts. They have since changed their mind and they will let us bring in two water bottles of ash...keep your fingers crossed....
Later, hopefully, I can get back to more questions before we return.
Coach Walker! I'm glad you made it to the island in one piece. I'm sorry to hear about the sand though, that's too bad. It must be such a crazy feeling to be there, especially since Guam still had military bases there, even though it still wasn't the same as the time during the war. I'm glad you are getting a lot of information out of being there and also a good sense of how the soldiers felt when they were there. I didn't know there were concentration camps there. Who were the refugees or prisoners who were kept there?
p.s. it's my birthday today! you missed the cookies...
wooo! ur in my prayers! im sure the walk will be tough but it will sure be worth it to u when ur up there and get to see everything in full veiw! p.s. oh and uh todays essay topic...not so much...gonna have to give it a BOOO! and today was hannahs b day=)
Greetings Coach Jeff.. This is exciting--following you around the vast pacific. When I was wounded on Iwo, March 10 1945 I was flown out on a C-46 ambulance plane to --Quam- a tent hospital for about a week.
Whatever sand you get, it will surely be sacred, walked on, bled on by so many Marines And, the 5th div cemetary was right on green beach-2.And maybe still faint smells of gunpowder...
Now , GO TAKE THAT HILL !!
Did any of the Chamarro people that "supported" the Japanese have anything to do with the war to the point where some of their leaders were tried for war crimes?
Hey Coach, It's Chelsea Wood from your 3rd period... why did you buy 7 flags? What is so symbolic about that number? Or did you just feel like the more the better?
hey coach this is stephanie from your 1st per i think that's weird about how the beaches are when i think of WWII i think of it way back in the past and to hear that you can still tell in places that it happened that's just weird
hey coach walker, its Jared Hernandez im sorry i had taken so long to write on the blog is just because i was out of town and i just barely came back and had a robotics competition three days in a row, here are my essay.
The atomic bomb, one of the most powerful nuclear weapon that had being created, capable of killing thousands of people withing seconds of its release. why did US decided to drop this type of nuclear weapon into these two major Japaneses cities?
one of those reasons, in my opinion has to be the desire for superiority towards a country which was at its age of emerging to its best. The US response to this action, was an strategy to end that war, their reason was to kill as many people with the bomb, then just continuing with the same strategy which could have brought more deaths than just the atomic bomb itself.
Could this have being just an excuse towards admitting their mistakes for entering the war since the beginning? My opinion is that US just wanted to end the war with the atomic bombs, because they did not wanted to pay even more bigger debts for reparations, wiping two cities with nuclear weapons.
Could this same thing happen today in the war against terrorism? Beginning a war which we are not sure of winning. War is making society explode from its internal conflicts, that experienced our fathers of the constitution towards making the declaration of independence. Devastating a whole country, capable of killing more that 75,000 people within seconds and just one hit. Why kill? don't they always say that violence does not lead to an answer. Its people with power that become mad and choose to represent us, you push the bottom and they drop the bomb, you push the bottom and could watch it on the television, war is not answer its just an action that we view as a solution that erases enemies from the book of the perfect society.
Sorry for being so late. How could sand be contiminated anyways. But hey its the memories and photos out of the experience that really count :)
-Charles Grealy
3rd period
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