Map of Guam
'Guam' (
Chamorro: ''Guåhan''), officially the 'Territory of Guam', is an island in the Western
Pacific Ocean and is an
organized unincorporated territory of the
United States. The
Chamorros, Guam's indigenous inhabitants, first populated the island approximately 6,000 years ago. It is the largest and southernmost of the
Mariana Islands. The island's capital is
Hagåtña, formerly Agana. Guam's economy is mainly supported by
tourism (particularly from
Japan,
Korea and
Taiwan) and
United States armed forces bases. The
United Nations Committee on Decolonisation includes Guam on their
list of Non-Self-Governing Territories.
History
Main articles: History of Guam
Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for the King of
Spain, reached the island in
1521 during his circumnavigation of the globe. General
Miguel López de Legazpi claimed Guam for Spain in
1565. Spanish colonisation commenced in
1668 with the arrival of Padre
San Vitores, who established the first Catholic mission. The islands were then governed as part of the
Spanish East Indies from the
Philippines. Between 1668 and
1815, Guam was an important resting stop on the Spanish trade route between
Mexico and the Philippines. Guam, along with the rest of the Mariana and
Caroline Islands, was treated by Spain as part of their colony in the Philippines. While Guam's Chamorro culture is unique, the cultures of both Guam and the Northern Marianas were heavily influenced by Spanish culture and traditions.
The
United States took control of the island in the
1898 Spanish-American War. Guam came to serve as a station for American ships traveling to and from the Philippines, while the northern Mariana islands passed to
Germany then
Japan.
During
World War II, Guam was attacked, and invaded, by the armed forces of Japan on
December 8,
1941. Before the attack, most of the United States citizens were transported from the island and away from imminent danger. The Northern Mariana Islands had become a Japanese protectorate before the war. It was the Chamorros from the Northern Marianas who were brought to Guam to serve as interpreters and in other capacities for the occupying Japanese force. The Guamanian Chamorros were treated as an occupied enemy by the Japanese military. After the war, this would cause some resentment by the Guamanian Chamorros towards the Chamorros in the Northern Marianas. Guam's occupation lasted for approximately thirty-one months. During this period, the indigenous people of Guam were subjected to forced labor, family separation, incarceration, execution, concentration camps and prostitution. Approximately a thousand people died during the occupation according to Congressional Testimony in
2004. The United States returned and fought the
Battle of Guam on
July 21,
1944, to recapture the island from Japanese military occupation. The U.S. also captured and occupied the Northern Marianas. After the war, the
Guam Organic Act of 1950, which established Guam as an unincorporated
organized territory of the United States, provided for the structure of the island's government, and granted the people United States citizenship.
Geography
Southern part of Guam from space
Northern part of Guam from space
Guam is located at 13.5°N 144.5°E and has an area of . It is the southernmost island in the Mariana island chain and is the largest island in
Micronesia. This island chain was created by the colliding Pacific and Philippine tectonic plates. The
Marianas Trench, a deep
subduction zone, lies beside the island chain to the east. The
Challenger Deep, the deepest point on
Earth, is southwest of Guam at deep. The highest point in Guam is
Mount Lamlam, which is 1,332 feet (406 m). The island of Guam is long and to wide. The island experiences occasional
earthquakes due to being on the edge of the
Pacific Plate. In recent years, quakes with epicenters near Guam have had magnitudes ranging from 5.0 to 8.7. Unlike the
Anatåhan volcano in the northern Marianas, Guam is not volcanically active. However, due to wind direction and proximity, volcanic ash activity does occasionally affect Guam.
The northern part of the island is a forested coralline limestone plateau while the south contains volcanic peaks covered in forest and grassland. A coral reef surrounds most of the island, except in areas where bays exist that provide access to small rivers and streams that run down from the hills into the Pacific Ocean and Philippine Sea. The island's population is most dense in the northern and central regions.
Climate
The climate is characterized as tropical marine. The weather is generally warm and humid with little seasonal temperature variation. The mean high temperature is 86°
F (30 °
C) and mean low is 74°
F (24 °C) with an average annual rainfall of 96
inches (2,180
mm). The dry season runs from December through June. The remaining months constitute the rainy season. The highest risk of typhoons is during October and November. They can occur, however, year-around.
An average of three tropical storms and one typhoon pass within 180 nautical miles (330 km) of Guam each year. The most intense typhoon to pass over Guam recently was
Super Typhoon Pongsona, with sustained winds of 110 miles per hour, which slammed Guam on
December 8,
2002, leaving massive destruction.
Since
Super Typhoon Pamela in
1976 wooden structures have been largely replaced by concrete structures.
[1] [2] During the
1980s wooden utility poles began to be replaced by typhoon-resistant concrete and steel poles. In the
1990s many home and business owners installed
typhoon shutters.
Demographics
According to the U.S. census conducted in 2000, the population of Guam was 154,805.
[3] The 2007 population estimate for Guam is 173,456.
[4] As of 2005, the annual population growth is 1.76%.
[5] The largest ethnic group are the native
Chamorros, accounting for 57% of the total population. Other ethnic groups include Filipino 25.5%, Caucasian 10%, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and others. Today, Roman Catholicism is the largest religion with 85% attesting to it. The official languages of the island are English and Chamorro.
Culture
Traditional
Chamorro culture is visually manifested in
dance, sea
navigation, unique
cuisine,
games (such as batu, chonka, estuleks, and bayogu),
songs and
fashion influenced by the
immigration of peoples from other lands. Spanish policy during colonial rule (1668-1898) was one of conquest and conversion to
Roman Catholicism. This led to the gradual elimination of Guam's male warriors and displacement of the Chamorro people from their lands. In spite of the social upheavals, Guam's
matriarchs—known as "I Maga'håga"—continued the indigenous culture, language, and traditions.
Historian Lawrence Cunningham in
1992 wrote, "In a Chamorro sense, the land and its produce belong to everyone.
Inafa'maolek, or interdependence, is the key, or central value, in Chamorro culture ... Inafa'maolek depends on a spirit of cooperation. This is the armature, or core, that everything in Chamorro culture revolves around. It is a powerful concern for mutuality rather than
individualism and private property rights."
The core culture or Pengngan Chamorro is comprised of complex social protocol centered upon respect: From the kissing of the hands of the elders (inspired by the kissing of a Roman Catholic bishop's ring by those whom he oversees), passing of legends, chants, and
courtship rituals, to a person requesting forgiveness from spiritual ancestors when entering a jungle. Other practices predating Spanish conquest include
galaide' canoe-making, making of the
belembaotuyan (a string musical instrument), fashioning of ''åcho' atupat'' slings and slingstones,
tool manufacture,
Måtan Guma' burial rituals and preparation of herbal
medicines by
Suruhanu.
Master craftsmen and women specialize in weavings, including plaited work (
niyok- and
åkgak-leaf baskets, mats, bags, hats, and food containments),
loom-woven material (
kalachucha-hibiscus and
banana fiber skirts, belts and burial shrouds), and body ornamentation (bead and shell necklaces, bracelets, earrings, belts and combs made from
tortoise shells). Today only few masters exist to continue these traditional art forms.
Government and politics
War in the Pacific National Historical Park,
Asan, Guam.
Guam is governed by a popularly elected
governor and a
unicameral 15 member
legislature. Guam elects one non-voting delegate to the
United States House of Representatives, currently
Madeleine Bordallo. During U.S. Presidential elections, citizens in Guam vote in a
straw poll for their choice of president, which doesn't count toward the general election results.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a significant movement in favor of the territory becoming a
commonwealth, which would give it a political status similar to
Puerto Rico and the
Northern Mariana Islands. However, the federal government gave no response to Guam's request for commonwealth status for a decade before Guam leaders gave up the quest in the late 1990s. Competing movements with less significant influence exist, which advocate political independence from the United States, statehood, or a combination with the Northern Mariana Islands as a single commonwealth. These proposals however, are not seen as favorable or realistic within the U.S. federal government, which argues Guam does not have the financial stability or self sufficiency to warrant such status. The same sources quickly provide evidence of Guam’s increasing reliance on federal spending, and question how commonwealth status or statehood would benefit the United States as a whole.
Villages
Main articles: Villages of Guam
Guam is divided into 19
villages,
Dededo being the highest populated one.
The U.S. military maintains jurisdiction over bases comprising approximately one quarter of the island's area:
★
Andersen Air Force Base –
Yigo
★
Naval Air Station –
Tiyan (now administered by the government of Guam)
★
Apra Harbor – Orote peninsula
★
Ordnance Annex – South Central Highlands (formerly known as Naval Magazine)
★
Naval communications station –
Barrigada and Finegayan
Economy
Guam's economy depends primarily on tourism, the United States military base presence, and other federal spending. Although Guam receives no foreign aid, it does receive large transfer payments from the general revenues of the
U.S. federal treasury into which Guam pays no income or excise taxes; under the provisions of a special law of
Congress, the Guam treasury, rather than the U.S. treasury, receives federal income taxes paid by military and civilian federal employees stationed in Guam.
Sometimes called "America in Asia," Guam is a popular destination for Japanese, Korean, and Chinese tourists, and with over 20 large hotels, a DFS Galleria, Pleasure Island aquarium, SandCastle
Las Vegas shows and other shopping and entertainment features in its chief tourism city of
Tumon. It is a relatively short flight from Asia compared to
Hawaii, with hotels and golf courses catering to tourists. About 90 percent of tourists to Guam are Japanese. Significant sources of revenue include
duty-free designer shopping outlets, and the American-style malls:
Micronesia Mall,
Guam Premium Outlets, and the
Agana Shopping Center.
The economy had been stable since 2000 due to increased tourism, mainly from Japan, but took a recent downturn along with the rest of Asia. It is expected to stabilize when U.S. Marine personnel and operations currently in
Okinawa (appr. 8000, along with their 10,000 dependents) will transfer to Guam sometime in 2007-2008. Guam has a 14% unemployment rate, and the government suffered a $314 million shortfall in 2003.
[6]
The
Compact of Free Association between the United States, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands was signed in 1982, and ratified in 1986. It accorded the former entities of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands a political status of "free association" with the United States. The Compact was an agreement to which Guam was not a party. Over the years, it was claimed by some in Guam that the territory has had to bear the brunt of this agreement in the form of public assistance programs and public education for those from the regions involved, but was never compensated by the federal government for its expenditures.
Transportation and communications
Main articles: Communications in Guam,
Transportation in Guam
Most of the island has mobile phone service and high speed internet is now widely available through cable or
DSL. Cell phones are used by a majority of residents, and the telephone service is extremely reliable, as compared to 20-25 years ago when phone outages were common. Guam was added to the North American Numbering Plan in
1997, removing the barrier of high cost international long-distance calls to the
U.S. Mainland.
As Guam is also part of the U.S. Postal System (the postal code is
GU), mail to Guam from the mainland is considered domestic and no additional charges are required. Private shipping companies such as UPS, DHL or FedEx also regard Guam as domestic, although this is often not reflected in the shipping charges of many mail-order companies or websites. Mail takes approximately 1-2 weeks to travel between Guam and California. Express mail and Fedex takes a minimum of three to four days to reach the U.S. Most residents use post office boxes, though home delivery is becoming increasingly available.
Guam is served by the
Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport. There is one direct flight (through
Philippine Airlines) to Guam from the U.S. Mainland originating in Los Angeles; this flight takes almost exactly 12 hours. Other flights to Guam go through Hawaii, Japan, or Korea first and generally requires a layover and a plane transfer. Flying to Guam from the mainland, through Hawaii, requires a 5-hour flight from San Francisco or Los Angeles, and another 7.5-hour flight from Hawaii to Guam. To fly to Guam from the mainland, through Japan or Korea, requires a 10-12-hour flight from the mainland to Korea or Japan, and another 3-4-hour flight to Guam. There are two direct flights a day to Manila, Philippines.
US Customs and Border Protection screen all incoming flights.
Most residents travel in Guam using personally owned vehicles. A limited bus system for residents exists but is relatively unused.
Ecological issues
Guam exemplifies the effects of
bioinvasion.
The brown tree snake
Brown Tree Snake
Thought to be a
stowaway on a U.S. military transport near the end of World War II, the slightly venomous—but rather harmless—
brown tree snake (''Boiga irregularis'') came to Guam and killed virtually all of the native bird population on an island that has one native specie of snake, which is blind; this snake has no natural predators on the island. Although some studies have suggested a high density of the brown tree snake, residents rarely see these snakes. Prodigious climbers, the snakes were blamed for frequent blackouts in the 1980s by shorting across lines and transformers.
[7]
Other invasive animal species
From the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, the Spanish introduced pigs, dogs, chickens, the Philippine deer (Cervus mariannus),
black francolins, and
water buffalo. Water buffalo, known as
carabao locally, have cultural significance. Herds of these animals obstruct military base operations and harm native ecosystems. After birth control and adoption efforts were ineffective, the U.S. military began euthanizing the herds leading to organized protests from island residents.
[8]
Other introduced species include
cane toads imported in 1937, the giant African Snail (an agricultural pest introduced during WWII) and more recently frog species which could threaten crops in addition to providing additional food for the brown tree snake population. Reports of loud chirping frogs, known as
coquí, that may have arrived from Hawaii have led to fears that the noise could even threaten Guam's tourism.
[9]
Introduced feral pigs and deer, over-hunting, and habitat loss from human development are also major factors in the decline and loss of Guam's native plants and animals.
Threats to indigenous plants
Invading animal species are not the only threat to Guam's native flora. Tinangaja, a
virus affecting coconut palms, was first observed on the island in 1917 when
copra production was still a major part of Guam's economy. Though coconut plantations no longer exist on the island, the dead and infected trees that have resulted from the epidemic are seen throughout the forests of Guam.
[10] Also during the past century, the dense forests of northern Guam have been largely replaced by thick ''tangan tangan'' brush (
Leucaena-native to the Americas). Much of Guam's foliage was lost during
World War II. In 1947, the U.S. military introduced ''tangan tangan'' by seeding the island from the air to prevent
erosion. In southern Guam, non-native grass species also dominate much of the landscape.
Wildfires
Guam's grassland.
s plague the forested ("boonie" or "jungle") areas of Guam every
dry season despite the island's humid climate. Most fires are man-caused with 80 percent resulting from
arson.
[11] Poachers often start fires to attract deer to the new growth. Invasive grass species that rely on fire as part of their natural life cycle grow in many regularly burned areas.
Grasslands and "barrens" have replaced previously forested areas leading to greater soil
erosion. During the
rainy season sediment is carried by the heavy rains into the
Fena Lake Reservoir and
Ugum River leading to water quality problems for southern Guam. Eroded silt also destroys the marine life in reefs around the island. Soil stabilization efforts by volunteers and forestry workers to plant trees have had little success in preserving natural habitats.
[12]
Aquatic preserves
As a vacation spot for
scuba divers, efforts have been made to protect Guam's coral reef habitats from
pollution, eroded
silt, and
overfishing that have led to decreased fish populations. In recent years the Department of Agriculture, Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources has established several new marine preserves where fish populations are monitored by biologists.
[13] Prior to adopting
USEPA standards, portions of Tumon bay were dredged by the hotel chains in order to provide a better experience for hotel guests.
[14][15] Tumon Bay has since been made into a preserve. A federal Guam National Wildlife Refuge in northern Guam protects the decimated
sea turtle population in addition to a small colony of
Mariana fruit bats.
[16]
Education
Primary and secondary schools
The
Guam Public School System [1] serves the entire island of Guam. In 2000, 32,000 students attended Guam's public schools.
In 1998, the
U.S. Department of Defense opened schools for children of American military personnel.
DoDEA schools had an attendance of 2,500 in 2000. The four schools operated by DoDEA are Andersen Elementary School,
Andersen Middle School, McCool Elementary/Middle School, and
Guam High School.
[2]
Colleges and universities
The
University of Guam,
Guam Community College, and
Pacific Islands Bible College offer courses in higher education.
[17]
See also
★
List of radio stations in Guam
★
Scouting in Guam
★
Guam Police Department
★
History of Guam
References
1. Guam Catastrophe Model
2. Winds
3. .
"Guam Summary File," ''American FactFinder,'' Census 2000 Guam, Retrieved April 19, 2007.
4. "Guam," ''CIA World Factbook,'' April 17, 2007, Retrieved April 19, 2007.
5. MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base: Guam
6. 2004 Guam Yearbook
7. USGS: The Brown Tree Snake on Guam Fritts, T.H.
8.
9. Two Male Coqui Frogs Found in Guam Worth, Katie
10.
11. Territory of Guam Fire Assessment January 2004, Pgs. 6-7
12.
13.
14.
15. Tumon Bay - Engineering a Better Environment Packbier, Paul E.R.
16. Environmental Ethics in Micronesia, Past and Present, Part II — 'Guam Today: Still "on the Edge." Colonial Legacy and American Presence', , Rolston, Holmes III, International Society for Environmental Ethics Newsletter,
17.
External links
Government
★
Congresswoman Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Delegate, U.S. Congress
★
Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency
★
Guam Election Commission
★
Guam Code Annotated
★
Guam Department of Revenue and Taxation
News
★
Marianas Variety "Guam's only true independent news source"
★
''Pacific Daily News'', A Gannett Newspaper
★
''KUAM'', Guam's Primary News Channel
★
"Pacific News Center - News You Can Trust
Overviews
★
''allthingsguam'' A Guam History resource--virtual textbook, virtual workbook and more
★
Guampedia from the Guam Humanities Council and the University of Guam
★
Open Directory Project - ''Guam'' directory category
★
U.S. Library of Congress - Portals to the World: ''Guam''
★
''The World Factbook'' on Guam
Military
★
Commander, Naval Forces Marianas (COMNAVMAR) Guam
★
Andersen Air Force Base (AAFB) Guam
★
War in the Pacific - Liberation of Guam
★
Congressional Testimony - Guam War Claims
Tourism
★
Guam Visitors Bureau
★
Guam Portal
Others
★
Guam Chamber of Commerce
★
Maps - Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
![Cafe Havana, Guam\](images/articles/thumbs/cafehavanathumb.jpg "Cafe Havana, Guam\")
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