Guam

Guam was settled by the ancestors of the CHamoru around 3,500 years ago; the latte stones — pillars topped with cup-shaped capstones that held up prestige buildings — are the enduring symbol of that society. Ferdinand Magellan landed in 1521, the first European contact anywhere in the Pacific. Spain claimed the Marianas in 1668 and imposed Catholic missions; the Chamorro-Spanish Wars and introduced disease that followed cut the indigenous population from tens of thousands to a few thousand, and survivors were concentrated on Guam and intermarried with Spanish and Filipino settlers.

The United States took Guam from Spain in 1898 and ran it as a Navy coaling and cable station under naval governors. Japan invaded within hours of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and occupied the island for 32 months — a period of forced labour, executions, and internment that CHamoru families still commemorate on Liberation Day. US forces retook Guam in a costly battle in July–August 1944, and it became a major air and naval base.

The 1950 Organic Act made CHamorus US citizens and created a civilian government; Guam has had an elected governor since 1970 and sends a non-voting delegate to Congress, but its residents cannot vote for president. Around a third of the island is US military land, and a large relocation of Marines from Okinawa is under way. Guam remains on the UN list of non-self-governing territories, and a long-running effort to hold a self-determination plebiscite — restricted to "native inhabitants" — has been tied up in the courts.

CHamoru culture blends Austronesian roots, three centuries of Spanish and Catholic influence, and, since 1898, American life. The guiding value is inafa'maolek — roughly "to make good", an ethic of reciprocity and restoring harmony within the extended family and clan. Respect for elders is shown through mannginge', taking an elder's hand and drawing it to one's face to inhale.

Catholicism is deeply woven in: each village holds an annual fiesta for its patron saint, with open houses and huge spreads of food, and rosary and nobena gatherings mark deaths. Family obligation (chenchule', the system of mutual contribution at weddings, funerals, and christenings) is a serious social duty.

The population is very mixed — CHamoru, Filipino (about a quarter of residents), other Micronesians who have migrated under the Compacts of Free Association, plus military families and communities of Korean, Japanese, and Chinese origin — and Guam's identity debates centre on decolonisation, land, and the weight of the military presence.

About 155,000 people live on Guam, concentrated in the centre and north around Hagåtña, Tamuning, and Dededo; the south is greener, more rural, and more CHamoru. The economy rests on the US military and its spending, federal transfers, and tourism — historically dominated by visitors from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and hit hard by the pandemic and by regional tensions.

Life is American in its institutions — dollars, US schools, big-box stores, the NFL on TV — and CHamoru and Pacific in its family structure, food, and Sunday routines. Typhoons are a recurring fact, with homes built of concrete and shutters, and the recovery from Typhoon Mawar in 2023 shaped recent years.

Emigration to Hawaii and the US mainland, especially for military service and university, is common, and remittances and visits keep island and diaspora families connected.

CHamoru cooking centres on grilled meat, rice, and bold sauces. Kelaguen — meat or seafood chopped fine and "cooked" in lemon juice with grated coconut, onion, and hot pepper — is the signature dish, served with warm titiyas (tortillas) or hineksa' aga'ga' (red rice coloured and flavoured with achote seeds). Finadene', a dipping sauce of soy, lemon or vinegar, onion, and chilli, goes on everything.

The village fiesta table piles up barbecue chicken and ribs, estufao (a Spanish-influenced stew), kå'du soups, pancit and lumpia from the Filipino community, and latiya and coconut ahu for dessert. Spam and other tinned meats, a Pacific-wide staple, are eaten without irony.

Fresh reef fish, tropical fruit, and — traditionally, though now protected — the fruit bat (fanihi) round out the diet. Imported American groceries fill the supermarkets, and the Wednesday night market in the Chamorro Village is the place to sample the local dishes.

Tumon Bay, a protected marine preserve backed by the hotel strip, is the tourism centre, with calm reef swimming and, above it, Two Lovers Point — a cliff wrapped in a CHamoru legend of star-crossed lovers, with wide views along the coast. The Latte Stone Park in Hagåtña, the capital, displays relocated latte pillars near the Spanish-era Plaza de España and the ruined forts that guarded the harbour.

The War in the Pacific National Historical Park spreads across several sites — the invasion beaches at Asan and Agat, gun emplacements, and a museum — telling the story of the 1944 battle, and the Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi hid in a jungle cave near Talofofo Falls until 1972. Fort Nuestra Señora de la Soledad above Umatac marks Magellan's landfall.

The wilder south and north reward a drive: the Cetti Bay overlook, the Spanish bridge and church at Inarajan (Inalåhan) with its natural saltwater pools, and, at the island's northern tip, the Ritidian unit of the Guam National Wildlife Refuge, with a white-sand beach, limestone forest, and caves with ancient pictographs. Divers head for the Blue Hole off Orote and the wrecks in Apra Harbor, where a Second World War Japanese ship lies across a First World War German one.