808 This is the 50-foot memorial at the Japanese Peace Park. The path to the Japanese caves is off to the right and the other, smaller memorials are off to the left.
813 This is my hitchhiker about actual size if you click on the picture to see the larger version. Can you make out C3PO’s head on his abdomen?
819 Latte Stone Park in Hagatna. Our guide is on the left with the red flowers in her hair.
825 The entrance to the Japanese caves and bunkers at the back of the park. The old fallout sign was somewhat nostalgic. In the square above the door on the right you can just make out the Japanese character.
846 The light was terrible for capturing the colors in the water. This is the best I could do. This cove is part of Asan Beach the WWII US invasion site.
849 Asan Beach looking from North to South. The ridge I’m standing on runs down the spine of the island like the Andes do in Chile. Nowhere to hide if you’re coming by sea.
Oct 9 – At Sea. Not much special today except that Philip Huber the puppeteer had a demonstration on his marionettes. He had a short video on how he builds them and the various joint types he uses. The strings on his puppets range in number from 8 to 32 for the Chinese Magician. He demonstrated the techniques he uses to achieve certain motions and poses. It was actually more enjoyable than his evening show. One of his characters has a movie role. If you’ve seen the movie The Great and Powerful Oz, he made and operated the marionette that played China Girl. They dressed him in blue so they could remove him and 90% of her performance is live with the actors so they had something to react to instead of the usual tennis ball on a stick
A very low key day.
Oct 10 – Guam (US Territory), Marianas Islands.
Guam is a territory of the United States in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. The island's capital is Hagåtña (formerly Agaña) and it’s the largest and southernmost of the Marianas Islands.
The Chamorros, Guam's indigenous people, first populated the island approximately 4,000 years ago but there’s a lengthy period of European colonialism. It all started with Ferdinand Magellan during a Spanish expedition in 1521. The first colony was established in 1668 by Spain with the arrival of settlers including Padre San Vitores, a Catholic missionary. For more than 200 years Guam was an important stopover for the Spanish Manila Galleons that crossed the Pacific every year on their way to Acapulco. In Mexico the valuable cargo traveled overland to the Gulf of Mexico to continue its sea voyage on a different ship. It was controlled by Spain until 1898, when it was surrendered to the United States during the Spanish-American War and later formally given to the US under the Treaty of Paris.
It is not only the largest Mariana Island but also the largest island in Micronesia. It was the only possession of the US in this area before WWII. It was taken by the Japanese in December 1941, a very short time after the attack on Pearl Harbor and they stayed for over two years.
Life was not peasant for the locals under the Japanese. Mistreatment was widespread and Japanese cultural standards were imposed. Rape, murder and physical abuse were common. When the US retook the island the battle was ferocious and the day that control was complete is still celebrated as Liberation Day, July 21. Next year will be the 70th anniversary. Ironically, Guam’s economy is mainly tourism based and the majority of those tourists are Japanese. The second largest contributor to the GNP is the US military.
The Chamorro came here from southeastern Indonesia. Most of what is known about them before the Europeans arrived comes from legends and myths and archaeological evidence. Missionary journals and letter as well as the accounts of visiting scientists document the later history fairly well.
Historically the Chamorro had a very structured society, the matua (upper class), the achaot (middle class), and the mana'chang (lower class). The matua were lived in settlements along the coast, so they had the best location for fishing. The mana'chang lived in the islands interior. Contact between the two was very limited. The achaot served as the liaison between the two. Like I said, very structured. They had shamans they called "makåhna" who served as doctors. The belief in "Taotao mo'na" (spirits) still persists as a vestige of pre-European culture. When Magellan came upon Guam they came out to meet him in a large number of small outriggers that he described as flying over the water. They must have seemed very fast compared to the lumbering hulks being built Europe. They must have used the same style of triangular sail they still use because he named Guam ‘Islas de las Velas Latinas’ ("Islands of the Lateen Sails").
Guam was the only Spanish outpost in the Pacific Ocean east of the Philippines and that’s the reason the galleons stopped here from the mid-1500s to the early 1800s. Since Philippine independence it’s the western most US territory in the Pacific. It’s the largest single segment of Micronesia and the largest islands between Kyushu (Japan), New Guinea, the Philippines, and the Hawaiian Islands.
The most unusual structures on the islands are latte stones. They’re stone pillars that are found only in the Mariana Islands. If you had a chalice with a long triangular base instead of a stem the silhouette from the front would be the same as a latte stone. There is some dispute about their purpose. It is generally agreed that they were the foundation stones of the chief’s residence and major public structures but there are some convincing and resolute dissenters who maintain otherwise. In any event they are unusual and indigenous to this part of the Pacific. A Latte consists of a base shaped from limestone called the haligi and with a capstone, or tåsa, made from a large brain coral or limestone, placed on top. The haligi is tall and tapers in slightly from the base to the top from the front view. It’s usually about a foot or so thick from the side with no taper. The tåsa is usually bowl shaped but solid to provide a flat surface for whatever was put on top. This stone provided a convenient tool for archaeologists. They are fairly easy to date using the useful, but sometimes very questionable, carbon-dating method. They’ve divided Chamorro history into three periods, oddly enough called Pre-Latte (2000BC? to 1AD), Transitional Pre-Latte (1AD to 1000AD), and Latte (1000AD to 1521AD the arrival of Europeans).
The weather was not looking good as we sailed into the harbor. Grey and overcast with a little drizzle. Visibility was fair for the sail in. We are docked about 1.5 miles from the town. The port is providing a shuttle service from the port to the shopping mall downtown. From there you’re on your own. We’ve booked a tour as we usually do when we’re in a place for the first time.
Because the government is shut down many of the memorials on the island are closed. We can’t go to the American military cemetery and memorial. So they substituted the Japanese Peace Park. It’s a place where there were mass graves of the Japanese solders that died here when the US retook the islands. There’s a little chapel there with some artifacts found in the various caves that were used for storage, headquarters and fighting positions. There were several cases with rusty relics like a stack of fused together tin cans that once held fish, a piston from a rather large engine, various tools and kitchen utensils. At the front of the chapel there was a Buddhist shrine with several Buddhas, origami crane strings,
The park came about because two men, one from Japan and a priest from Guam met here. The priest told the man about the bones of the Japanese dead that were scattered all over the island, mostly where they fell in combat. The priest had often felt he should gather the bones and give them a decent burial. The man agreed and the result was this park, funded by contributions from Japan. There are several smaller monuments erected by organizations and individuals in a row to the right of the main structure with the burial
The park has a main monument that resembles an upside down Y. It’s supposed to represent hands with their palms pressed together in prayer. At the base of the 50 foot arch is an ossuary into which the gathered bones were placed. Around the main memorial are several smaller monuments, some very simple, others quite ornate. The inscriptions are all in Japanese so I have no idea if they represent military units, people groups or are general memorials. Down the hill from the monument are a series of caves that served at the battle command for the area and storage for provisions and munitions.
It was still raining lightly while we were there and to keep my camera dry I had my umbrella up. I happened to look up inside the umbrella and a large spider was hitching a ride with me. His body was yellow and he had long legs. He was about 3.5 inches from tip to tip and his yellow body was about as large as two dimes or a bit larger. The front segment was white and black and his abdomen segment was yellow and black. The colors formed a design that was quite artistic. In the photo you can see his underside reflected in the rainwater and that side has the same design. Should be fairly easy to identify the species when I get home.
To the right of the tall structure is a stairway going down the hillside. It leads to a path where there are some Japanese caves used in WWII. Since it’s raining the path was very slippery and several people did a butt flop as I was going down the stairs. Normally this would be pretty comical but a couple of the people who fell were older and any fall by them is potentially dangerous. Everyone seemed to be ok and when asked they reported that they were fine. The path was through pretty heavy jungle with overhanging vines, branches and all sorts or bushes.
When I returned to the top of the hill and was headed for the bus I glanced up into my umbrella for some reason and discovered I had a hitchhiker. He/she seemed contented to be out of the rain and was only moving around a little bit. He was a spider about 3.5 inches across and a very pretty one at that. His head and abdomen were about an inch across with the abdomen taking up about 3/5 of that. The abdomen was yellow with burnt umber designs. If you look at it from the front it looks a lot like C3POs head right down to the beady eyes. His head was white with black designs that made it look like a tiger’s head. Close to his body his legs were the same red as the designs on his abdomen. Further away from the body the legs are greyish black. Like I said, he was pretty.
From the Peace Park we went to the Latte (sounds like latta) Stone Park in Hagatna, our port city. They brought a set of well-preserved latte stones from the interior of the island to and reset them exactly as they were found. As I mentioned before their use is not known. In fact, the indigenous people living here at the time Magellan arrived didn’t’ know either so that information was lost before the 1500s. Which of course begs the question, why have they called the Chammoro period ending in 1521AD the “Latte Period”?
The reconstruction in the park was done according to drawings of the original site in the 1920s. The 8 stones are lined up in two parallel lines of four each, forming a rectangle about 30-35 feet long and 12-14 feet wide. The stones are about 8 feet tall. If they were a support system for buildings the rounded stones at the top would have been very effective in preventing snakes from entering the structure and the two piece design could have mitigated the effects of the earthquakes the region has.
The cliffs rising from the rear of the park have some Japanese caves and bunkers in them. It was raining so hard at times that the entrances were cut off by fairly deep puddles. One brave soul ventured in and told us that they were completely dark and there was nothing to see inside. I was glad he was coming out as I approached because I would have gotten wet feet because I couldn’t have resisted looking in myself. One of the entrances had Japanese characters molded into the entrance frame. Also sometime during the cold war these caves had been designated as a fallout shelter and one of the old black and yellow signs we used to see in abundance was still attached.
Again because of the government shutdown we were not able to go to Asan Beach the site of the American invasion when we retook the island. We were able to go onto the naval base and up to the officer’s club, aptly called The Top ‘o the Mar, for a nice view over the Asan Beach area. It’s easy to see why the landing was difficult. From this vantage point and any other along the ridge on which the O Club sets there’s a sweeping view of huge stretches of coastline. A surprise landing was not an option. Offloading troops, equipment and vehicles had to be done in full view of an entrenched and determined enemy heavily armed with machine guns, artillery and shore guns. I’m glad that was not my war.
Despite being wet and windy, it was a nice day in a new place. It would have been great to visit Asan Beach and the US War Memorial but those are the rigors of travel. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
Tomorrow we have another port, Saipan, yet another first time port for us.
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