Base Nation

4: THE COLONIAL PRESENT

1. Cooley, Base Politics, 65–66. The title for this chapter stems from Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).

2. Many in the military called for complete incorporation of some or all of the islands, including Guam and the other Marianas, into the United States as part of Hawaii or as a new state.

3. Stanley de Smith, quoted in Roy H. Smith, The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement: After Mururoa (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 42.

4. See Sandars, America’s Overseas Garrisons, 36.

5. See e.g. ibid.

6. Kaplan, Hog Pilots, 60–61.

7. City of Norfolk, “Norfolk 2030: The General Plan of Norfolk,” report, March 26, 2013, 2–1.

8. Shirley A. Kan, “Guam: U.S. Defense Deployments,” Congressional Research Service, report, Washington, DC, April 11, 2013, 2–3.

9. Michael L. Bevacqua, Chamorros, Ghosts, Non-voting Delegates: GUAM! Where the Production of America’s Sovereignty Begins (PhD dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 2010), 1, 8.

10. Dan Rather Reports, “Goin’ to Guam,” October 5, 2010.

11. LisaLinda Natividad and Gwyn Kirk, “Fortress Guam: Resistance to US Military Mega-Buildup,” Asia-Pacific Journal 19, no. 1 (2010); Hermon Farahi, “A Holistic Approach to Understanding the Military Buildup of Guam (Guahan),” unpublished paper, George Washington University, n.d.

12. Natividad and Kirk, “Fortress Guam.” See also Insular Nation, directed by Vanessa Warheit (Blooming Grove, NY: New Day Films, 2010).

13. Miyumi Tanji, “Japanese Wartime Occupation, War Reparation and Guam’s Chamorro Self-Determination,” in Broudy et al., Under Occupation, 162–67. Thanks to James Oelke, War in the Pacific National Monument, National Parks Service, for his help with the details of the World War II history.

14. Timothy P. Maga, Defending Paradise: The United States and Guam 1898–1950 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1988), 173–75.

15. National Park Service, “War in the Pacific National Historical Park Guam,” guide, n.d.

16. National Park Service, “War in the Pacific”; James Oelke, personal correspondence, March 17, 2014.

17. Maga, Defending Paradise, 193.

18. My thanks to John Calvo, Guam Fishermen’s Cooperative Association, for helping to clarify this for me.

19. Maga, Defending Paradise, 203–7.

20. Department of the Interior Office of Insular Affairs, “Definitions of Insular Area Political Organizations,” n.d., http://www.doi.gov/oia/islands/politicatypes.cfm.

21. Guam Department of Labor, “The Unemployment Situation on Guam: March 2013,” March 27, 2013; Mar-Vic Cagurangan, “Guam’s Poverty Rate Up, Income Gap Wide,” Marianas Variety, December 4, 2013.

22. Camacho, “Resisting,” 185. The Pentagon later revised the 79,000 figure to 59,000.

23. E.g. Joint Guam Program Office, “Guam/CNMI Military Relocation Opportunities for a Growing Community,” fact sheet, Guam, n.d.

24. GuamBaseBuildup.com, email, “Opportunity of a Lifetime!” September 17, 2011.

25. Guam Chamber of Commerce Armed Forces Committee, “Guam and the CNMI: America’s ONLY Sovereign Assets in Asia (100 Years and Counting),” white paper, June 2011.

26. Camacho, “Resisting,” 185–86; Department of the Navy, “Guam and CNMI Military Relocation Relocating Marines from Okinawa, Visiting Aircraft Carrier Berthing, and Army Air and Missile Defense Task Force,” Final Environmental Impact Assessment Reader’s Guide, Pearl Harbor, HI, July 2010, 2-58, 2-61–62.

27. Natividad and Kirk, “Fortress Guam”; Blaine Harden, “Guam’s Support for Military Has Its Limits,” Washington Post, March 22, 2010, A1, A7.

28. Quoted in Dan Rather Reports.

29. Cara Flores-Mays, “The truth about the military,” email, October 21, 2010. The quotations that follow come from the email except the single line about the Chamorro man’s teeth, which comes from an interview with Flores-Mays in October 2011.

30. Camacho, “Resisting,” 187.

31. Ibid., 184–89.

32. Government Accountability Office, “Defense Management: More Reliable Cost Estimates and Further Planning Needed to Inform the Marine Corps Realignment in the Pacific,” report to Congress, June 2013.

33. See e.g. Kan, “Guam.”