Marianas Entrenched: North Korea’s Threats against Guam Represent a New Era of Generational Trauma8/16/2017 While Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un play out some twisted, phallic ICBM wargasm fantasy for all the world to see, residents of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) face the possibility of nuclear holocaust.
Holocaust may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you hear about the Mariana Islands. However, this isn’t the first time genocide has occurred in this remote Micronesian archipelago in the West Pacific. Chamorros, the indigenous peoples of the Mariana Islands, are not strangers to occupation or seeing a near obliteration of ethnicity, culture, history, and language. While mainstream media outlets fret over North Korea’s threats against US military bases and personnel, they often conveniently leave out that Natives also inhabit those islands – and they’re U.S. citizens. According to the CIA Factbook, Chamorros make up 37.3% (60,696) of Guam’s population of 162,742. In the rest of the Mariana Islands to the north, the CNMI’s population of 53,467 is only 23.9% (12,778) Chamorro. In 2010, the Census Bureau estimated that Chamorros across the 50 states account for 147,798 people in an ever-growing diaspora. Between the 50 states in the US and the Mariana Islands, this is really just shy of a quarter of a million people. That’s it. While Native Chamorros are desperately holding onto language, history, and precious cultural artifacts, the generational trauma inflicted by former colonial superpowers such as Spain and Japan have undoubtedly left behind irreversible damage. Since Ferdinand Magellan’s arrival in Guam in 1521, the Marianas have been subjected to endless foreign occupation. Spain committed mass murder and destroyed architectural marvels, indigenous language, and parts of our culture many Chamorros are trying to resurrect today. Imperial Japan in WWII followed up Spain’s reign of terror with instituting concentration camps and slaughtering Chamorros for their land. In high school, we’re taught about the cruelties of placing Japanese-Americans in Manzanar, but not Matansa. Matansa, which literally means ‘slaughter’ in Chamorro, is what they named my grandparents’ village in San Roque, Saipan in WWII when the Japanese military butchered its residents with machetes and took their homes. My grandparents survived. This slaughter coincided with the Imperial Japanese military rounding up Chamorros and throwing them into camps, modeling Nazi genocidal tactics, and nearly succeeded in wiping Chamorros off the face of the Earth. To date, very few people, including Americans who now occupy the Marianas, know how much devastation Chamorros have endured since the Spanish Inquisition. Chamorros today, like other Pacific Islanders (Micronesian, Polynesian, Melanesian), are overrepresented in the military, Type II Diabetes, and poverty. On the other hand, we are underrepresented in higher education, media, government, and practically everything else. Our language and culture are dying. Our islands are being used for human trafficking through Asia and organized crime. If you’re a resident of the Marianas, you can’t vote in a Presidential election, but the US Government can sure send you straight into combat on a whim. Chamorros have given their lives on behalf of the United States. The documentary, “Island Soldier,” paints a clearer picture that the Pacific is merely a target-rich environment for US Armed Forces recruiters to build a modern warrior caste. From our tortured ancestors to WWII survivors to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, Chamorros haven’t had a break from combat for centuries. After enduring relentless colonial occupation and surviving historic and interpersonal trauma, Chamorros are still standing. If North Korea does decide to attack the Marianas, crippling US bases and assets in the island chain, Chamorros around the world would see a permanent loss of a 7,000-year-old home to a unique seafaring civilization. Knowing Trump’s admiration of speeches made by Adolf Hitler, an ally to Imperial Japan in WWII, Chamorros today know to anticipate a worst case scenario. However, it would be far more beneficial to all to break the cycle of imperial wars in which we’ve been inundated since the 16th century. So long as Americans continue to elect and tolerate draft-dodging chicken hawks beating the drums of war – wars in which their children won’t be dying in – the Marianas will continue to be entrenched in conflict. We just hope we don’t have to lose our beloved ancient homeland in the process. M.B. Dallocchio is a Chamorro Iraq war veteran and former member of Team Lioness, an all-female group attached to Marine infantry and Special Forces units in Iraq’s Al Anbar Province in 2004-2005. She is the author of “Women Warriors” in “War Trauma and Its Wake,” as well as her forthcoming memoir, ”The Desert Warrior.” Follow @MBDallocchio
3 Comments
Koohan Paik
8/28/2017 14:32:42
Thank you for this. Do you have a mailing list? If so, please sign me up! Si Yuus Maase!
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Patricia Keeby
8/28/2017 17:37:22
Guam is my birth right too and everything you have posted is also in my heart.
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9/24/2017 00:20:56
I do! If you want to sign up via mbdallocchio.com, you can request updates or follow me on FB via www.facebook.com/DesertWarriorArt.
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AuthorM.B. Dallocchio is an artist, author, Iraq war veteran, and social worker based in London. Her latest book, “The Desert Warrior,” covers post-traumatic growth, resilience, and redefining one’s own personal meaning of “home.” Archives
August 2020
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