[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 100 (Thursday, July 27, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H7195-H7198]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  RECOGNIZING THE OUTSTANDING CAREER AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF ADMIRAL JAY 
                                JOHNSON

  Mr. KIND. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Guam 
(Mr. Underwood), for yielding me the beginning portion of his 1-hour 
special order.
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted to rise this evening to pay tribute and to 
express

[[Page H7196]]

the Nation's gratitude to a man who has served his country with valor 
and distinction over 30 years, one of the great patriots of our time, 
Admiral Jay Johnson.
  Last weekend in Annapolis, Admiral Jay Johnson retired as Chief of 
Naval Operations of the United States Navy. In that capacity, Admiral 
Johnson has firmly led the world's largest Navy through challenges and 
responsibilities rarely experienced by a peacetime military force.
  A comparable Navy of such complexity and capability has never before 
plowed the seas, and Admiral Johnson has been at its helm through 
tensions in Asia, action in the Persian Gulf and the Balkans, and the 
humanitarian relief around the world.
  Admiral Johnson was raised in West Salem, Wisconsin, a small town in 
my congressional district, and I know the folks back home are immensely 
proud of their local hero. After graduating from the United States 
Naval Academy in 1968, Admiral Johnson flew combat missions in the F-8 
Crusader over Vietnam, including missions with Senator John McCain.
  After transitioning his flying skills to the now venerable F-14 
Tomcat, Admiral Johnson went on to command a carrier airwing, a carrier 
battle group, and a Navy fleet.
  During his long and distinguished career, he also served on shore at 
the Armed Forces Staff College and the Chief of Naval Operations 
Strategic Studies Group and received numerous decorations, citations 
and accolades.
  I believe one of the most impressive aspects of Admiral Johnson's 
service as CNO has been his unwavering commitment to the men and women 
who serve in the uniform of the United States Navy. During Admiral 
Johnson's term with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his Navy served in 45 
operations around the world. Yet even while guiding the Navy through 
extremely complex operations during a period of heightened operational 
tempo, Admiral Johnson maintained undaunting support for his sailors 
and tirelessly advocated on their behalf at the Pentagon, the White 
House, and here in Congress. He has made it clear that military 
readiness depends greatly on the resources this country brings to bear 
on the training, pay and benefits and quality of life of its servicemen 
and women.
  I believe his message has been heard loud and clear here in Congress.
  At the birth of our Nation, President George Washington once said, 
and I quote, ``Without a decisive Naval force we can do nothing 
definitive and with it everything honorable and glorious.''
  In 1961, Admiral George Anderson, then CNO of the Navy, stated, 
quote, ``The Navy has been a tradition and a future and we look with 
pride and confidence in both directions,'' end quote.
  Mr. Speaker, Admiral Jay Johnson has proven both men right. Admiral 
Johnson has led the U.S. Navy through incredible trials with great 
honor. He has upheld the finest traditions of the Navy and our Nation 
while ensuring the bright future for the men and women who chose to 
follow the bold course he has set.
  Mr. Speaker, throughout his life and his career in the Navy, Admiral 
Johnson has set a fine example of spirit, dedication, fortitude, and 
leadership for all Americans, young and old. I urge all Americans to 
take to heart the vision set out by Admiral Johnson during his 
confirmation hearing when he said, and I quote, ``We will steer by the 
stars and not by the wake.''
  On behalf of the residents of western Wisconsin, I proudly commend 
Admiral Jay Johnson for his illustrious career in the service of our 
country.
  I also commend his wife, Garland, for her loyalty, patience, and 
steadfastness in the face of the challenges a life in the military 
poses to every family, and I am sure my colleagues join with me here 
tonight in wishing them all a very long and happy retirement.

                              {time}  1845

  Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I, too, would like to add my words of 
congratulations to Admiral Johnson for very excellent career in the 
Navy and upon his retirement and his last tour of duty as chief of 
naval operations.
  We in Guam had the opportunity to work with him on a number of 
issues. I always found him to be supportive. More importantly, he 
served at a time when the Navy was being asked to do many things. He 
was able to carry that out successfully with grace and always before 
Congress and before the Committee on Armed Services making a great case 
for the Navy.
  Mr. Speaker, tonight I take the opportunity to do a special order on 
the anniversary of something that is very important to the people of 
Guam and something that will be commemorated next week. I want to take 
this opportunity to explain a little bit about it to provide the 
historical background for this event.
  August 1, 1950 was the signing of the Guam Organic Act. Next Tuesday 
on Guam, there will be a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the 
Organic Act. Many times, unless one lives in a territory, perhaps the 
term organic does not really mean much, but Organic Act means it is an 
organizing act, an act that organizes the local government pursuant to 
an act of Congress.
  So it was that on August 1950, President Harry Truman signed the Guam 
Organic Act, creating and making permanent a local civilian government 
providing for a locally elected legislature and providing for an 
independent judicial system that had a direct linkage into the Federal 
court system and, most importantly, providing U.S. citizenship for the 
people of Guam, the people that I represent.
  This is the 50th anniversary of Congressional action which brought an 
end to military government in Guam, a measure of real democracy to a 
group of loyal people, of loyalty that had been just tested during a 
horrific occupation by enemy forces during World War II and were, 
therefore, granted U.S. citizenship.
  The Organic Act was preceded by a very sustained effort on the part 
of the people of Guam, the Island's leaders, and many friends of Guam 
and supportive persons in the United States here in Congress and in the 
administration of President Truman, as well as President Roosevelt, and 
in the national media, who at the time in the late 1940s, people who 
took a direct interest of the affairs of what were to happen to 
dependent territories coming out of World War II.
  The Organic Act formally ended although it had ended a few months 
earlier by Presidential action. The Congressional Act, entitled the 
Organic Act, put an end to military government in Guam, a form of 
government meant to be temporary but which lasted some 50 years, a 
military government, a clearly un-American form of government, clearly 
undemocratic form of government in which the people of Guam basically 
lived under the control of military officers, whose primary duties were 
military in nature and whose secondary duties included the civil 
administration of a people that they saw as a dependent people as wards 
of the state, clearly untenable and undemocratic form of government.
  Unfortunately, many people in the military had continued to justify 
the continuing nature of this government by saying that Guam had very 
strong strategic value for the United States and that, therefore, the 
people of Guam should not enjoy too many civil and political rights.
  Under military government, the people of Guam were called U.S. 
nationals. Under a military government, government was created by fiats 
mandated by the Naval Governor of Guam called General Orders. Every 
time he wanted to make a law, he simply called in a scribe. They 
numbered these laws in consecutive order, ranging from General Order 
No. 1, first promulgated in 1899, right up until the very end of Naval 
rule some 50 years later.
  One of those rules encapsulated the civil status of the people of 
Guam, and it was called General Court Martial Order No. 1923 held while 
the people of Guam owed perpetual allegiance to the United States. They 
are not citizens thereof, nor is there any mechanism through which they 
could become citizens.
  So as far as the Navy was concerned, the people of Guam owed 
perpetual allegiance to the United States, but they were not U.S. 
citizens; and, more importantly, there was no way that they could 
become U.S. citizens. That is probably the most outrageous General 
Order in the whole series of General Orders that were prosecuted on the 
people of Guam throughout naval government.

[[Page H7197]]

  That led to a citizenship movement. This movement for U.S. 
citizenship was seen in Guam as the way to eliminate the vestiges of 
military government. If one wanted to get rid of military government, 
it was assumed that, if people were declared U.S. citizens, that it 
would simply be untenable to continue to have military officers run the 
life of the island.
  This citizenship movement was led originally by two men, B.J. 
Bordallo and F.B. Leon Guerrero. During the 1930s, they made a trip 
here into Washington, D.C., met with the President, met with a number 
of congressional leaders to argue for a U.S. citizenship for the people 
of Guam.
  The way that they funded their trip was to go through the villages of 
Guam with a blanket that was carried at all four points, and citizens 
and children would throw pennies and dimes and nickels into the 
blanket. After doing this for a few months, they were able to secure 
enough funds to fly the then China Clipper to come here and spend 
several months making their case in Washington, D.C.
  They were able to a meet with President Roosevelt, and they were able 
to prevail upon two Senators, Senator Tydings from Maryland and Senator 
Gibson from Vermont who subsequently introduced a bill granting the 
people of Guam U.S. citizenship, and it passed the Senate. That bill 
went to the House where it died on the basis of a congressional 
testimony made by Secretary of the Navy Claud Swanson that said the 
people of Guam were living on too strategic a piece of real estate to 
be concerned with such things as civil and political rights.
  Subsequent to that, of course, the people of Guam endured an 
occupation by the Japanese during World War II. Coming out of World War 
II, there was a renewed spirit. Here one had a war that was essentially 
fought to end tyranny and, at the conclusion of the war, there were a 
number of territories and dependencies that existed throughout the 
world.
  So the United States and Great Britain and France and other countries 
that were on the victorious side of World War II had then created the 
United Nations in order to ensure a peaceful and stable world and 
introduced as part of the UN Charter Article 73, which was meant to 
deal with nonself-governing territories, that the countries that were 
responsible for these areas had a distinct responsibility to promote 
self-government and self-determination for these nonself-governing 
territories.
  The United States voluntarily placed a number of territories on those 
lists of nonself-governing territories to dramatize to the world how 
sincere the commitment was to end the whole nature of colonial 
government in the world.
  Also, commensurate with this effort, which was in the national 
consciousness and with the local citizenship movement, there was an 
effort by citizens of the United States who were very friendly to the 
idea of civilian government for Guam and citizenship for the people of 
Guam. These people were led by an anthropologist by the name of Dr. 
Laura Thompson who founded the Institute of Ethnic Affairs. She worked 
very closely with her husband John Collier and former Secretary of the 
Interior Harold Ickes, and a couple of people in the media, one was 
Foster Hailey with the New York Times, and Richard Wells, an attorney 
who had formerly been stationed in Guam right at the end of World War 
II.
  These people, in turn, worked towards generating media stories that 
appeared in Collier's magazine, Saturday Evening Post, a lot of very 
popular magazines at the time about what the exact conditions were in 
the territories, both American Samoa and Guam. But Guam offered the 
more dramatic story.
  In the meantime, the Navy tried to counteract this effort by 
instituting their own, by assigning a number of officials to point out 
the blessings of military government. All of this came to a head when 
the Naval Governor of Guam, the last Naval Governor by the name of 
Admiral Pownall, was presiding over then a bicameral what was called 
the Guam Congress, the House of Council and the House of Assembly.
  There was a provision in the law at the time that said that, in order 
to run a business on Guam, 50 percent of the ownership had to be of 
Guamanian origin so that the people of Guam would not be at the time 
subjected to undue competition from foreign sources.
  But there was a civil service employee who was surreptitiously 
running a dress shop. The Assembly subpoenaed this individual by the 
name of Abe Goldstein. He ran a dress shop called the Guam Style 
Center. They subpoenaed him to appear in front of the House of 
Assembly. Mr. Goldstein conferred with the Admiral, and the Admiral 
told him he did not have to appear in front of the Assembly, that the 
Assembly had no power to subpoena anyone.
  So the Assembly became very upset and walked out and adjourned and 
said that they would not reconvene until it was made clear by the Naval 
Governor what the extent of their authority was.
  Information on this particular walkout was front page news in several 
newspapers, including in San Fancisco and Honolulu, and attracted a lot 
of attention. This effort was coordinated by a man by the name of 
Carlos Taitano who is still very much with us today and who will be the 
principal celebrant of the Guam Organic Act celebration next week. 
Carlos Taitano at the time was a member of the Guam Assembly.
  The leader of the walkout was a man by the name of Antonio Borja Won 
Pat, who also had spent several months in Washington after World War II 
advocating U.S. citizenship for Guam. He was the speaker of the 
Assembly, the author of the walkout, the speaker of the subsequent Guam 
legislature after the institution of the Organic Act, and eventually 
the first delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives from Guam. So 
Mr. Won Pat is probably the single most important political figure in 
the history of Guam in the 20th Century.
  In November of 1949, there was a hearing in Guam on legislation 
introduced. This is pursuant to this walkout in March 1949. It was seen 
that something had to be done. Legislation was introduced in the House. 
The Public Lands Committee went to Guam in November of 1949, had a 
hearing; and in that hearing, the main concern presented by the people 
of Guam, interestingly, was land.
  During the intervening time from the reinstitution of the Navy 
military government of Guam after World War II, the Navy had acquired 
over a third of the island, probably about 40 percent of the island, 
closer to 40 percent; and people were told that they were going to get 
their land back. We have had this difficulty ever since, and we are 
trying to resolve this in a comprehensive way. That issue is still very 
much alive today and was part of a bill that was passed in the House 
earlier this week, H.R. 2462, the Guam Omnibus Opportunities Act.
  Now, the actual act that passed Congress, passed both the House and 
the Senate, was based on H.R. 7273, which was a modified form of the 
earlier version, and it was introduced by Congressman Hardin Peterson 
of Florida.
  In this final act, it set up a system of government which we would 
call clearly undemocratic in today's terms but seemed very democratic 
at the time. One, it provided for a unicameral legislature of 21 
Members elected by the people of Guam and limited to two 30-day 
sessions a year within the Organic Act.
  It provided for a local court system. But if one had a felony case or 
a case involving more than $5,000 in a civil suit, one had to go to a 
Federal court. So it established a Federal district court. So the scope 
of the local courts was limited, even though it established a kind of 
independent judiciary.
  Of course the main feature of this Organic Act passed in 1950 was it 
did not have an elected governor. What we had at the time was a 
governor that was appointed by the President. So even though it was a 
civilian and was not a person in uniform, and even though we had 
disestablished the naval military government of Guam, clearly there was 
much progress to be made.
  But for 1950, now we are talking about 1950, this Organic Act of Guam 
was seen as very progressive in the entire Pacific compared to all the 
other territories which France and Great Britain had, and some of the 
other islands in the Pacific. This looked like a very progressive step.

                              {time}  1900

  So indeed the Organic Act of Guam in 1950 was highly regarded at the 
time

[[Page H7198]]

and widely supported. And, of course, the good feature, the unique 
feature, about it was the acquisition of U.S. citizenship.
  The first civilian governor of Guam that was appointed by President 
Harry Truman was Carlton Skinner, who was a young, progressive 
governor, who made a very skillful transition from military to civilian 
government. He was a very important figure in the development of the 
Organic Act and the move from military to civilian government, and he 
also will be joining us in Guam on August 1 to commemorate the Organic 
Act.
  But the politics of the environment changed along with elections to 
president, and in 1952, with the election of President Eisenhower, a 
new governor was selected for Guam, a man by the name of Ford Q. 
Elvidge, who wrote an article, after he finished his term, in the 
Saturday Evening Post entitled ``I Ruled Uncle Sam's Problem Child.'' 
It was a very uncomfortable article to read. Nevertheless, Ford Q. 
Elvidge allegedly had an experience which indicated how strong the 
military still was in Guam.
  He was appointed to be governor of Guam, but up until the year 1962, 
people could not go to Guam and people could not leave Guam unless the 
Navy allowed them to leave or unless the Navy allowed them to come in. 
This was called military security clearance. Unless an individual had 
security clearance. This act lasted all the way until 1962. It was 
started right at the beginning of 1940, as the situation between Japan 
and the United States started to darken. So this military security 
clearance executive order was declared by President Franklin Roosevelt.
  Well, Ford Q. Elvidge, as he boarded a plane to leave Honolulu to 
come to Guam to take over as governor was stopped by military officials 
who refused to let him go on the plane because he did not have the 
appropriate security clearance from Naval authorities, only pointing 
out how deeply rooted military authority was in the lives of the 
people. After some discussion on the matter, they finally relented and 
they allowed the governor of Guam actually to go to Guam.
  So this situation existed in Guam for another 20 years. Finally, in 
1968, an elective governorship bill passed the Congress allowing the 
people of Guam to elect a new governor. The judicial system was 
simultaneously changed to expand the scope of the authority of the 
local court system, and later on in 1970 and 1971, there were laws 
passed in the House of Representatives to create the office of the 
delegate for the Virgin Islands and a delegate for the people of Guam.
  So after the completion of those elements it sort of completed the 
cycle and it certainly gave the sense that there was complete local 
self-government in Guam. The people of Guam elected their governor, but 
this was still 20 years after the original Organic Act. The people of 
Guam elected a delegate to Congress, which gave them some opportunity 
to participate in the affairs of the House, although, of course, in the 
final analysis, there is no voting representation.
  An interesting story. When Mr. Won Pat first came as the first 
delegate, there was some discussion in the initial House rules as to 
whether to pay him a full salary or not. There was some discussion 
about that. Fortunately for all the successors to this office, they 
agreed that they would pay the same salary as they pay other Members of 
Congress. But it shows, in a way, the kind of step-by-step process.
  But there was still something fundamentally incomplete about the 
Organic Act, and that is that at the end of the day the Organic Act is 
not a local self constitution. The Organic Act is an act of Congress. 
And every time we need to change portions of that act, we have to come 
back to Congress. There is a provision that allows the people of Guam 
to create a local constitution, but to date that has only been 
exercised once, and the proposed constitution was defeated because the 
people of Guam felt strongly that there was still a more fundamental 
issue even than the creation of a local constitution, and that is the 
exercise of self-determination.
  As I indicated earlier, the United Nations system, which was 
organized by the victorious powers coming out of World War II, in order 
to demonstrate that they were on the right side of democracy and to 
show that they meant democracy for everyone, created a system called 
the nonself-governing territory system inside the United Nations. To 
this date, Guam and American Samoa and the Virgin Islands remain on 
those lists of nonself- governing territories because there has not 
been a full exercise of self-determination to decide in what direction 
they wish to go and what directions are made available to them by what 
is termed, in the United Nations language of this relationship, the 
administering power.
  So Guam continues to be a nonself-governing territory. It remains a 
nonself-governing territory because it does not have any voting 
participation in the laws that are applicable to them in any respect. 
So an individual living in a territory and a law is passed here on the 
Endangered Species Act or a law regarding the regulation of land or the 
law regarding taxation, and that law has some applicability to that 
person, it violates the very first tenet of the American creed, which 
is government by the consent of the governed. And there is no consent 
to governance.
  Now, one can argue that there is a sense of participation; that there 
is some level of involvement, but at the end of the day there is no 
real consent of the governed. And of course people in the territories 
do not vote for the President, though, of course, he is our President 
as much as he is the President of any other American, and we go off to 
war just like we go off to war with other Americans as well, and he is 
our Commander in Chief.
  Today, at the end of the day and some 50 years having elapsed since 
the passage of the Organic Act, many see the Organic Act in Guam as 
reflective of past events and, to some extent, past political traumas; 
as seen as evidence of continued Federal control of Guam; as seen as 
passe at worst, maybe transitional at best. But I believe that that is 
looking backward, forgetting the sweet victory that the Organic Act 
represented in 1950.
  It was the kind of progress that was possible at the time, and it was 
progress that many people worked hard to achieve. It took many people 
to get us to that point, and we must not forget the efforts of those 
very hard working, sincere persons from Guam, as well as their friends 
here in Washington, D.C. who brought genuine political progress to 
Guam. We must not forget that they slain real dragons, they overcame 
real barriers, and they brought down a system of military government 
that, in the final analysis, did not really want to leave.
  So the Organic Act, while it is properly seen in its historical 
development for the island I represent is certainly not the Magna Carta 
for Guam or the declaration for Guam or not even the constitution for 
Guam, but it is an important document that embodied a fundamental shift 
of government from people in uniform to people in civilian clothes; a 
document that embodied the principle that there should be some consent 
of the governed over laws that are made locally; that embodied and most 
importantly recognized the loyalty of the people of Guam through an 
horrific occupation and finally declared them to be U.S. citizens en 
masse.
  At this time that we recognize this very important anniversary for 
the people of Guam, we must be mindful of the fact that there are still 
many tasks ahead of us. But at least let us remember August 1, 1950, 
and on August 1, 2000 take time and reflect upon our past history, the 
work of such great people in my own island's history, like Antonio 
Borja Won Pat, F. B. Leon Guerrero, and B. J. Bordallo, and take the 
time to honor and pay tribute to those men.

                          ____________________