[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13727-13730]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



       TRIBUTE TO VETERANS OF PACIFIC THEATRE DURING WORLD WAR II

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kerns). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood) is 
recognized for the time remaining until midnight.
  Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the 
veterans of the Pacific theatre during World War II, especially for 
those who participated in the battle for Guam; and I also want to take 
the time to honor the Chamorro people, my people, the indigenous people 
of Guam, for their show of courage during the 2\1/2\ years of enemy 
occupation, and most especially to pay homage to the many lives lost 
during World War II, both by men in uniform and by the civilian 
population in Guam, particularly the lives lost at the Fena, Tinta, and 
Chaguian massacres that occurred near the end of the Japanese 
occupation. I will be submitting a list of names for the record of 
those who suffered the fate of death at those massacres.
  On July 21, 2001, at the end of this week, the people of Guam will be 
celebrating the 57th anniversary of the liberation of Guam. It is that 
day that commemorates the landing of the Third Marine Division on the 
shores of Asan and the First Marine Provisional Brigade, supported by 
the 77th Army Infantry, in Agat. I wish to extend a very warm Hafa Adai 
and sincere Si Yu'os Ma'ase' to the veterans of that conflict who 
liberated Guam. I would also like to honor and pay respect and remember 
the people of Guam and the suffering they endured for some 2\1/2\ years 
under the enemy occupation of the Japanese Imperial Army.
  On the morning of December 8, 1941, Japanese troops bombed and 
invaded Guam as part of Japan's attack on U.S. forces in the Pacific, 
including the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, both areas 
also having significant U.S. forces. They all occurred on the same day, 
except that Guam is on the other side of the date line. This 
commemoration, which I do annually, and try to bring a little honor and 
respect for the experiences of the people of Guam, is marked by a 
laying of the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, which honors both the 
American veterans and remembers the sacrifices of the people of Guam.
  This is also a tribute of the necessity for peace, for it is only in 
the remembrance of the horrors of war that we do really truly remain 
vigilant in our quest for peace.
  I was privileged to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns 
yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery honoring the liberation of 
Guam; and I was assisted by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stump), the 
chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services and a World War II 
veteran himself.
  My purpose this evening, in the time that I have, is to give a 
historical perspective to the events we are commemorating on Guam at 
the end of this week, and to enhance the understanding of people across 
the Nation of the wartime experiences of the people of Guam and the 
postwar legacy which has framed the relationship of my island with the 
United States. It is a story that is both a microcosm of the heroism of 
soldiers everywhere and the suffering in particular of civilians in 
occupied areas during World War II.
  This is encapsulated in these three pictures that I brought with me 
today, and it is part of a lengthy display that we have had called 
tempon gera, the time of war. And down here we have basically the 
cemetery, a temporary cemetery, in which servicemen were buried right 
after the battle of Guam. Here we have some servicemen entertaining 
some children from Guam right after the liberation of Guam. And this is 
the most poignant picture of all. Actually, these are a couple of kids 
from the Cruz family. This is a young lady and a young man, and this is 
probably the most remembered picture of the wartime period in Guam. 
Their mother has made a flag. Their mother was a seamstress, and she 
hand made this flag; and they carried it around at the time of the 
liberation of Guam.
  Guam has a unique story all to itself. It is an experience of dignity 
in the midst of political and wartime machinations of larger powers 
over smaller peoples as well as a story of loyalty to America and a 
demonstration of loyalty that has not been asked of any civilian 
community, I believe, during the entire 20th century.
  It is important to understand that Guam was an American territory 
since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. It was invaded, as I 
pointed out earlier, in the early morning hours of December 8, 1941, 
and thus began a 32-month epic struggle of the indigenous people of 
Guam, the Chamorro people, to maintain their dignity and to survive 
during an occupation by the Japanese.
  In the months leading up to the war in the Pacific, many of the 
planners had decided that it was not feasible to defend Guam against 
the possible invasion by Japanese forces in the surrounding areas. All 
of the areas in the Micronesian region were held by Japan, save for 
Guam. The rest of the islands in the central Pacific were held by the 
Japanese under a League of Nations mandate, the most significant 
Japanese installations being held in Saipan, 100 miles to the north, 
and the naval forces in the Truk Lagoon, some 350 miles to the south.
  This decision not to build up Guam became a major controversy in the 
latter part of World War II as people reviewed the records of Congress. 
Even though an effort was made in Congress, by amendment, to try to 
reinforce Guam, it failed; and subsequently the people of Guam, as well 
as the island of Guam, was laid defenseless.
  When the Japanese Imperial Forces landed on Guam in December of 1941, 
they basically found 153 Marines, 271 Navy personnel, 134 workers 
associated with the Pan-American Clipper Station, and some 20,000 
civilians, Chamorro people, who at that time were not U.S. citizens but 
were termed U.S. nationals. All of the American military dependents had 
been evacuated from Guam in anticipation of the war, with the last ship 
having left on October 17, 1941.
  Despite the fact that of course we all think of the Japanese attack 
on Pearl Harbor as a surprise attack because of where it took place and 
the suddenness of it, I think most people at the time were fully 
cognizant of the fact that war was eminent in some fashion in the Asian 
Pacific area. And proof of that is the fact that the American military 
dependents were evacuated from Guam. But, of course, the people of Guam 
were not evacuated.

                              {time}  2330

  And it was the people who were left faced to confront the cruel 
occupation that they did actually experience in subsequent months. The 
actual defense of Guam then fell to these handful of Marines and 
handful of sailors and actually to the Guam ancillary guard and Guam 
militia consisting of civilian reserve forces.
  The insular force, which was a locally-manned type militia, actually 
were the ones who faced the Japanese. The Japanese invasion force 
numbering some 5,000 easily overwhelmed these men in uniform. 
Ironically, the only ones who really fired any shots in anger were 
Japanese Imperial Forces, were members of the Guam insular guard who 
had set up some machine gun nests in defense of the Placa de Espana and 
at the governor's offices.
  Throughout the ordeal of the occupation, the Chamorro people 
maintained

[[Page 13728]]

their loyalty to America and their faith that American forces would 
soon return to liberate them from the Japanese.
  The resistance against the occupation manifested itself in many, many 
direct forms, but none so powerful and costly as the effort designed to 
help some American servicemen who had decided not to surrender.
  When the Japanese took over Guam, some seven sailors decided that 
they would rather hide in the jungle than surrender to the Japanese. 
All of them, save one, were captured and executed by the Japanese 
Imperial Forces.
  The one fortunate sailor who evaded capture throughout the entire 32 
months of occupation with the assistance of the Chamorro at the cost of 
numerous atrocities to them, the story of this one sailor, George 
Tweed, was made into a movie entitled, ``No Man is an Island.''
  The actual attack on Guam, the actual liberation of Guam began on 
July 21, 1944. As I have indicated, this Saturday is the 57th 
anniversary of that time period. But beginning in mid-June Guam started 
to experience a series of bombing runs as a result of a series of 
preinvasion bombardment.
  The preinvasion bombardment off the coast of Guam was very intense, 
perhaps amongst the most intense during World War II, made more intense 
by the fact that in June U.S. forces had landed in Saipan and their 
struggles against the Japanese forces in Saipan was additional reason 
to increase the ferocity of preinvasion bombardment for Guam. As well 
as the experience of Normandy in Europe also led to the reconsideration 
of the preinvasion bombardment of areas that were to be invaded.
  After U.S. forces began their preinvasion bombardment, which lasted 
over a month, they were called back only two hours after the initial 
bombing because of the ferocity of the battle for Saipan.
  When the preinvasion bombardment began in mid-June and the actual 
invasion occurred toward the end of July, this time period experienced 
by the people of Guam was the most intense period of cruelty and 
atrocities that had been experienced by the people from the Japanese 
forces.
  This actually gave some time during that 5-week's time for the 
Japanese forces to reinforce their position in anticipation and of 
course gave them additional opportunity to amass the Chamorro people on 
one side of the island to get them out of the way of the battle because 
they knew that the Chamorro people would be of assistance to the 
American forces.
  In April 1944, approximately 20,000 Japanese troops were brought in 
from Manchuria, and they began a wholesale series of agricultural 
projects designed to feed the soldiers in which people started to 
experience widespread malnutrition. Then you had the preinvasion 
bombardments, a lot of forced marches; and the preceding months also 
featured a great deal of forced labor as the Japanese tried to build 
various installations on the island in anticipation of the invasion by 
the American forces.
  Preceding the July 21, 1944, invasion of Guam were 13 days of 
preinvasion bombings that leveled almost all standing structures in 
Guam. It also served to act as a further stimulus for atrocities 
against the people of Guam. As the bombardment continued, the Japanese 
Imperial Forces, who basically realized their fate, that they were 
going to die either in suicide attacks or at the hands of the 
Americans, inflicted further brutality and mass slaughter against the 
people of Guam. The most known and remembered massacres were those that 
occurred in Tinta at the southern end of the island near the Fena 
Caves.
  Tonight I try to bring attention to another massacre that is really 
not known by very many and has not really been widely explained.
  Immediately after the island was secured, U.S. Navy Commander Roger 
Edison Perry filed a report on atrocities committed by Japanese 
Imperial Forces. A specific report dated August 16, 1944, mentions the 
decapitated bodies of 45 men who were discovered in the municipality of 
Yigo around the vicinity of the present Andersen Air Force base. What 
happened was these men were forcibly conscripted by the Japanese forces 
to be of service to them during their retreat from the central part of 
the island. Commander Perry's report indicated that the men were 
summarily executed because they knew too much about Japanese 
activities. The story of these men has largely been forgotten, and for 
over 50 years these men have remained unnamed and have hardly received 
any mention.
  Mr. Speaker, today I am going to enter what are very familiar 
Chamorro names into the Record. The fate of these and a number of other 
unnamed men who paid the ultimate sacrifice during the occupation and 
eventual liberation of Guam indicate the height of indignities, pain 
and suffering endured by the Chamorro people due to their loyalty to 
the United States. Men were taken away from their homes and families, 
forcibly made to serve the enemy occupiers, and ultimately paid dearly 
with their lives because of their allegiance to the United States.

                              {time}  2340

  On July 21, 1944, the actual liberation began. U.S. Marines landed on 
the narrow beaches of Asan and Agat to crawl up their way to what is 
now known as Nimitz Hill. The men of the Third Marine Division were 
thrust wave after wave onto Asan Beach already littered with Marines 
that had come before them and once on shore the U.S. forces were in the 
heart of Japanese defense fortifications. Simultaneously, the southern 
beaches of Guam were braved by the First Marine Brigade and this was 
quickly interrupted by the only Japanese counterattack of the first 
day. It is also on those beaches that former Senator Hal Heflin was 
wounded as a Marine in Guam.
  The people of Guam are a resolute and tenacious people as was proved 
some 57 years ago as they helped the Marines participating as scouts, 
lookouts and even forming little pockets of armed resistance to 
Japanese occupiers. The liberation of Guam is commemorated as a time of 
solemn memory and remembrance every year since World War II, because it 
is a very special struggle of what must ultimately be seen as Americans 
liberating people who were their fellow Americans. This serves as a 
reminder of the spirit of freedom and democracy and the high cost that 
must be paid to maintain it.
  During the Japanese occupation, the people of Guam suffered severe 
privations and cruel injustices. It is hard to perhaps explain that 
every family on Guam has a whole series of stories related to the 
Japanese occupation and that these stories form the corpus of a series 
of attitudes about the relationship to the United States, the tenacity 
of the Chamorro people to endure privation and still manage to survive 
and to thrive. In my own family, I am the youngest of 11 children that 
my parents had, I am the only child that was born after World War II. 
My parents lost two children during the occupation. To this day my 
mother sort of remembers where her two children were buried but we are 
not sure really where they are at to this day. That is not an atypical 
story. It was a story that almost every family in Guam experienced. In 
the interplay between these men who were coming as Marines and as 
soldiers and as sailors, interacting with these people who had been 
under American sovereignty since the Spanish American war, and in that 
interplay, there are many, many stories about the meaning of that. In a 
very powerful and poignant sense, you had really in Guam two sets of 
liberators. You had the liberators that were coming in on the beaches 
and coming in from the ships, and you had the liberators who were 
hiding in the mountains and they were coming down from the mountains. 
In that meeting in which these stories are very much documented, people 
wept and cried for joy and the soldiers and the Marines themselves 
frequently broke down in tears as they understood that something very 
special was going on in this particular liberation in Guam in 1944.
  Over the years, I have had the opportunity to discuss this, not only 
with the people of Guam obviously but also

[[Page 13729]]

with the men who came in uniform. To this day I am constantly amazed at 
the number of veterans who continue to show up, a little bit older but 
continue to show up at our events. Last weekend, I was at an event in 
San Antonio, Texas, commemorating the liberation of Guam in which there 
were over 700 people there. This weekend there will be numerous events 
not only in Guam but around the country. In San Diego which has the 
largest Chamorro community in the U.S. mainland, they are having a very 
special event to honor and bring in the veterans as their special 
guests, and there will be an event here in the Washington, D.C. area 
down at Fort Belvoir. Of course in Guam we will have a large parade, it 
is the single biggest holiday of the year, and marching down the main 
drive which in honor of the liberators is called Marine Drive, we will 
hopefully pay witness to some Marines marching and when they march, 
they will surely bring the biggest cheer.
  The war also changed the relationship of the people of Guam to the 
United States. Immediately Guam was taken for a number of reasons. 
Obviously it was part of a general strategy to cripple Japan, but Guam 
and Saipan and Tinian were very crucial islands because those islands 
were fairly large compared to other Pacific islands in the central 
Pacific, and they also could reach Japan. They had the ability to reach 
Japan by air. So these three islands immediately became enormous 
platforms for the continual bombing of Japan. Of course off the one 
island of Tinian is where the Inola Gay took off to bomb Hiroshima.
  So those islands, the islands were taken for this particular purpose. 
I always like to point out that one of our colleagues here in the 
House, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), flew many combat 
missions out of Guam, out of what was then North Field and what is now 
called Andersen Air Force Base. In the context of World War II, Guam 
became the forward base for the United States. What was Pearl Harbor 
for the first part of World War II was basically moved to Guam. It 
became, in the words of the Victory at Sea program on Guam, the 
supermarket of the Pacific. Admiral Nimitz moved his headquarters 
there. Admiral Nimitz strategized, triangulated, fought the rest of the 
war from Guam. As a result of the experience of World War II, and the 
upcoming Cold War with the Soviet Union, it was decided that there 
would be many, many military installations built on Guam. So 
immediately, in order to prosecute World War II, the rest of World War 
II, because we still had the invasion of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the 
Philippines to confront and many of those activities were triangulated 
out of Guam, many, many military installations were built on Guam. At 
any given time from the liberation of Guam until the end of World War 
II, you could find as many as 250,000 people in uniform on Guam while 
you only had a civilian population of about 20,000. So it became this 
military supermarket from which World War II in the Pacific was fought 
for the balance of the war. After World War II, it became a major Cold 
War base and, of course, based upon the experience in World War II, 
there were a number of political changes that were advocated by the 
local community in order to have, first of all, civilian government and 
not the pre-World War II naval government and also to have U.S. 
citizenship, and those things came to pass as well.
  All of these things, as we understand the meaning of World War II for 
Guam in its own light, we also have to bring some understanding to the 
meaning of war in a broader light, World War II across this country and 
across the world.
  One of the things that is upcoming on the national mall is the World 
War II Memorial. Based on what I have outlined here this evening, when 
they first conceptualized the World War II Memorial, which will be 
built on the mall, despite all of the ongoing controversies about it, 
when that memorial was first proposed, they proposed having 50 columns 
to represent basically the 50 States. It was a little incongruous 
because at the time of World War II, there were only 48 States.

                              {time}  2350

  But what was particularly disturbing to me was that given this 
experience which I have outlined this evening, that while it is true 
that the 50 columns which were being built for the World War II 
memorial should include each of the States, it did not include Guam. So 
after exerting some special effort in this regard, we have been happy 
to note, grateful to note, that Guam will be included in some fashion 
deserving its own pillar. So there are now 56 pillars representing each 
State and territory and the District of Columbia, so that all who 
participated in World War II will be recognized.
  That is particularly important in Guam's case, and it is particularly 
important to understand the meaning of sacrifice, and not only 
subjecting yourself to the danger of death, as sometimes men in 
particularly that time period are called to do in the context of war, 
but to understand that civilian communities like Guam experienced war 
at a more direct level, suffering untold atrocities, suffering in ways 
in which I hope no community is ever called upon to suffer.
  But it reminds us of a basic reality in human history, that there are 
times when we are called upon to suffer, there are times when we are 
called upon to fight, but there is something more at stake than that, 
and that is when we say we fight for freedom and when we say we fight 
for democracy and when we say we fight for liberation, we must 
understand that each generation is commanded, each generation is 
responsible to make their contribution to the perfection of liberation, 
to the perfection of democracy, to make sure that the sacrifices of 
people who came before us were for something more significant than the 
sacrifices just at that time; that it is part of a continuing saga of 
struggle, of the perfection of democracy.
  It is no secret that today Guam is what is called an unincorporated 
territory of the United States. Its political development and its 
political fulfillment has yet to be fully consummated. Even though we 
call July 21, 1944, Liberation Day, all of us in Guam are mindful of 
the fact that that liberation was liberation from enemy hands; that we 
have many more struggles in our desire to be fully liberated, to be 
full participants in a democratic and representative form of 
government, the kind of government which we do not have today, because 
as a territory you do not have voting representation in laws which are 
made that govern your existence, the same as any other American. By not 
having the right to fully participate in law making, you violate one of 
the core principles of American democracy, which is consent of the 
governed.
  So as we look back on this, and there are many, many stories that 
come out of World War II that I can tell, I will just end with one 
story about a 13-year-old girl. Her name is Beatrice Flores Ensley. 
This young lady was 13 years old in 1944. She and a friend of hers were 
actually caught by a Japanese patrol. The Japanese patrol decided to 
behead these two young people. I think the young man was only 14 and 
she was only 13. They cut through her neck, buried her and her 
companion and left them for dead. But by some miracle, both of them 
survived.
  She was in a very shallow grave, and Beatrice crawled out of the 
hole, maggots covering her wound, and she then became over the years, 
and I remember her looking at her, I remember seeing her when I was in 
high school and people remarking, oh, look at it, you could see the 
enormous scar on her neck, and she became over time a symbol of the 
Chamorro people's capacity to survive.
  She came on several occasions to testify here in Congress at great 
personal cost to her own psychological equilibrium, because it was a 
memory she did not like to relive. But she came here and testified on 
behalf of bringing justice to the people of Guam for their World War II 
experience and to gain some recognition.
  Because of her, we were able to get a Memorial Wall built in the War 
on the Pacific National Park, which is in

[[Page 13730]]

Guam, which lists all the Chamorros who suffered during World War II, 
because of her testimony.
  I can say one thing about Mrs. Ensley, who has since passed away, 
that during that whole time, she was never embittered. She never 
uttered one harsh word about the Japanese people or the Japanese army 
at the time. But she took very careful note of her experience, to 
explain it to other people so that they could understand it in its own 
light, not as a lesson of bitterness, not as a testimony to cruelty, 
but as a testimony to the human capacity to survive, to forgive, and to 
inspire others and to command others to make their own contributions to 
the perfection of democracy and justice and liberation.
  I am thankful for this opportunity to present these items. I have a 
number of names to enter into the Record for the Fena massacre, the 
Tinta massacre and the Chaguian massacre.

  Victim/Survivor Listing--2001 Fena Caves Massacre Memorial Services


                                VICTIMS

       1. Aguigui, Balbino G.
       2. Aguon, Jesus
       3. Babauta, Joseph
       4. Babauta, Juan B.
       5. Borja, Vicente Munoz
       6. Camacho, Gaily Cruz
       7. Carbullido, Evelyn T.
       8. Castro, Concepcion R.
       9. Castro, Dolores Rabago
       10. Castro, Maria Rabago
       11. Charfauros, Antonio B.
       12. Cruz, Dolores J.
       13. Cruz, Jose T.
       14. Cruz, Maria J.
       15. Cruz, Vicente T.
       16. Elliot, Antonio Cruz
       17. Fejeran, Dolores C.
       18. Fejeran, Enrique C.
       19. Herrera, Joe
       20. Lizama, Caridad T.
       21. Lizama, Gregorio T.
       22. Mendiola, Juan Ulloa
       23. Mesa, Rosalia Pinaula
       24. Ana Terlaje Nededog
       25. Nededog, Juan T.
       26. Perez, Ana P.
       27. Quitano, Ana L.G.
       28. Sablan, Nicolas
       29. Sablan, Raleigh Carbullido
       30. Sablan, Rosita Carbullido
       31. Toves, Frank
       32. Toves, Johnny


                               SURVIVORS

       1. Aguigui, Elias San Nicolas
       2. Alerta, Maria (Chong) San Nicolas
       3. Babauta, Jesus C.
       4. Babauta, Rosa C.
       5. Babauta, Vicente Torres
       6. Barcinas, Joaquin
       7. Babauta, Maria S.
       8. Borja, Francisco
       9. Camacho, Francisco G.
       10. Camacho, Juan Guerrero
       11. Castaneda, Ana Muna Salas
       12. Castro, Jose Rabago
       13. Castro, Santiago Rabago
       14. Chaco, Maria B.
       15. Charfauros, Francisco Muna
       16. Concepcion, Francisco Perez
       17. Concepcion, Ignacio Mendiola
       18. Cordova, Maria Mendiola Cruz
       19. Cruz, Antonio Reyes
       20. Cruz, Joaquin Mendiola
       21. Cruz, Joaquin Ofricido
       22. Cruz, Jose Ofricido
       23. Cruz, Juan Reyes
       24. Cruz, Pedro Ofricido
       25. De Jesus, Joaquin
       26. Dela Cruz, Antonio Reyes
       27. Espinosa, Jesus Mata
       28. Fernandez, Catalina C.
       29. Garrido, Joseph C.
       30. Garrido, Rosa Taitague
       31. Guzman, Jesus Concepcion
       32. Herrera, Maria
       33. Herrera, Vicente Q.
       34. Lizama, Juan Quitugua
       35. Manguba, Josefa San Nicolas
       36. Munoz, Gregorio Sablan
       37. Nauta, Maria Babauta
       38. Nededog, Roque Nededog
       39. Pangelinan, Francisco Sablan
       40. Pinaula, John
       41. Pinaula, Joseph
       42. Pinaula, William
       43. Quidachay, Jesus G.
       44. Reyes, Enrique Chaco
       45. Reyes, Gonzalo Chaco
       46. Reyes, Joseph C.
       47. Reyes, Juan Taijito (Severa)
       48. Roberto, Pedro L. G.
       49. Sablan, Francisco ``Nabing'' Manibusan
       50. Sablan, Jose S.
       51. Sablan Juan S.
       52. San Nicolas, Jesus Muna
       53. San Nicolas, Jose Chaco
       54. Sucaldito, Agnes Nededog
       55. Salas, Antonio Muna
       56. Santos, Jose B.
       57. Schmidt-Yates, Alfonsina Sablan
       58. Taitano, Jose
       59. Terlaje, Balbino Muna
       60. Topasna, Jose Q.
       61. Toves, Arthur Carbullido
       62. Toves, Joseph Carbullido
       63. Ulloa, Juan
       64. Unsiog, Agustin Nededog

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