EMILY KWONG, HOST:
Today marks 81 years since the end of the second battle of Guam, a tipping point in the Pacific during World War II when U.S. forces overtook Imperial Japan and recaptured the island. And the moment that American troops came ashore, July 21, is known in Guam as Liberation Day, commemorated every year with a parade...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Oh, go, go, go, go (ph).
KWONG: ...Filled with floats, a Liberation Day queen and citizens marching alongside members of the U.S. military, which has maintained a presence on the island all of these years. All of this has given Leialani Wihongi-Santos pause. I spoke to her in an episode of "Inheriting," the podcast I host from LAist Studios and distributed by the NPR Network. Leialani is from Guam, and she wants to know the deeper history of the island. We started off our conversation with her telling me about her deep connection to the land.
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LEIALANI WIHONGI-SANTOS: The sand back on Guam, it's like powder. It's so very soft, so it feels nice to walk on.
KWONG: These are her ancestral lambs. Leialani is Chamorro. Chamorros are the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, which are these volcanic and uplifted coral formations, curving along the Philippine Sea like a crescent moon. Guam is at the tip of the moon, the island furthest south, where she grew up.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: In, like, Chamorro practice, before you go into the jungle or anything, you have to ask the Taotaomo'na. Taotaomo'na are the spirits of our ancestors.
KWONG: Leialani deeply respects her ancestors. As a child, she was taught to stand at the edge of the jungle and wait for permission from the spirits to pass through.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: I was like, if the wind blows, that means I can go. And so far, like, I've never been harmed or anything, so I'm like, they like me (laughter). And if you don't do that, you can get very sick.
KWONG: And her memories there are anchored in a tension between the indigenous culture and outside influence. Guam is one of the most heavily militarized islands in the world, as the U.S. territory that's closest to Asia. So the island's nickname in defense circles is the tip of America's spear, a staging ground for military action all over the Pacific. As a child, everywhere Leialani looked - along the ocean, in the trees - there were traces of World War II. Massive coastal defense guns lined the shores of her home village of Piti, and the elders were constantly telling her to be careful.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: Growing up, you hear, like, don't touch something that you don't know what it is 'cause it could be, like, ammunition that never detonated.
KWONG: Teachers talked about World War II in school. Her elders lived through it.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: If you are on a land that has experienced a lot of trauma, especially if, like, you are the people of that land, have you learned that land's history?
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KWONG: Have you learned that land's history? As an adult, that is the central driving question of Leialani's life. For 500 years, Guam has been controlled by foreign powers. The Chamorro homeland was taken over again and again, first by the Spanish, then by the Americans, then by the Empire of Japan during World War II. Leialani was taught about the 1941 invasion in school, how in the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Imperial Japan soldiers occupied Guam in a matter of hours and imposed a brutal three-year occupation that set out to erase the culture of Guam. Speaking the Chamorro language was forbidden. And towards the end of occupation, when U.S. forces were close to winning the war, Japan soldiers carried out a campaign of enslavement, torture and murder. This was a painful history that Leialani learned about on field trips. And she was taught they were rescued when U.S. forces overpowered the Japanese military.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: The emphasis is America saved us.
KWONG: Right.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: Like, we love America. America saved us, and so that was kind of, like, the main message.
KWONG: To this day, the U.S. military controls about one-third of the land on Guam. The Air Force has a base, the Navy and Marine Corps, too. There's nuclear submarines in the ocean. The Pentagon has plans for what they call a 360-degree missile defense system. If China, North Korea or another nation were to attack Guam, the whole economy is tipped in the defense direction. So out of all U.S. states and territories, Guam has one of the highest rates of military service.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: If you don't join the military, you're kind of screwed. Like, there's not a lot of job opportunities on Guam.
KWONG: So some people leave to find work. The majority of the Chamorro population actually lives in the United States. When Leialani was 9 years old, her mom moved her to the U.S. to be closer to her side of the family. And that's when Leialani really got to know her paternal grandfather, Joseph Santos, who she calls Papa.
JOSEPH SANTOS: Every morning, like, I would get up and walk her to school. I would miss her when class started 'cause I was just waiting for her to come home.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: My papa would sneak me off to buffets after school.
SANTOS: And then later in the evening, we would ride bikes around the neighborhood and stuff.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: We went bike riding one day in Vegas, and he thinks he could do all these cool tricks.
(LAUGHTER)
KWONG: Oh, God.
SANTOS: She's like, no, Papa, don't do it (ph).
WIHONGI-SANTOS: Don't do it (laughter).
SANTOS: I'd be like, yeah, watch this (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
SANTOS: Oh, man, did I eat it.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: (Laughter).
KWONG: She spent most of her teenage years in Vegas and in 2018 went off to college at Soka University of America in Southern California. Her freshman year, she joined the school's Polynesian dance club, which was called Ka Pilina Ho'olokahi.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: That was run by, like, all these Japanese girls. And, you know, my first year, I was like, oh, like, that's cute. Like, I want to - especially 'cause my friends, I was like, I want you guys to, like, experience my culture.
KWONG: But Leialani was the only Pacific Islander. The club would perform dances, the hula from Hawaii or otea from Tahiti, in a way that really bothered her.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: The women were very fetishized on their hip-shaking abilities, not just by, like, onlookers, but, like, folks participating in it. And then when it came to haka, there was just so much, like, obviously racist rhetoric around there, like, let me see your savage, like, performance.
KWONG: The haka is a Maori dance, and Leialani is Maori. She confronted the club leaders and said...
WIHONGI-SANTOS: It's just weird. Like, there's no islanders here.
KWONG: Yeah.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: Not - an Islander's not even teaching it. And I was like, I don't think you guys are, like, doing the culture justice 'cause you're just teaching the moves. And they did not take it that - they were just kind of very neutral. Like, oh, I'm sorry you feel that way, but, like, that's not our intention. Which is like - I feel like that's just worse than being like, I don't care. So then I was like, OK, like, let me connect the dots for you, like, why this is not cool and, like...
KWONG: Right.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: ...Given history, like...
KWONG: Right.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: ...Even worse.
KWONG: The club performed to make money and presented the dances without explaining much of their history to the audience. Leialani pointed out how offensive that was to Pacific Islanders. She shared her grievances in private meetings with the club leaders and in an open mic night on campus. She spoke openly about the history of Japan's occupation of Guam. This got her a lot of hate from students of Japanese descent. Leialani started getting weird emails.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: They're like, you're lying.
KWONG: They didn't believe you?
WIHONGI-SANTOS: Yeah, they're like, people are trying to, like, smear Japan. You're a liar. Don't trust her. Like, it was horrible. It was, like, the worst years of my life.
KWONG: Leialani told her papa all about it.
SANTOS: I was really proud of her. Like, yeah, all right, you know? Like, stand up for your rights.
(LAUGHTER)
KWONG: A few years later, the club disbanded with a Facebook post that read - for years, our club has been appropriating cultures that we do not fully understand.
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KWONG: The depth of her peers' ignorance about Guam and Pacific Islander histories was alarming to Leialani, and it marked the beginning of this journey she's been on ever since to question history as it's always been taught, including what happened once the U.S. military took over the island. Her grandfather even calls this period American occupation.
SANTOS: Even in school, we couldn't speak Chamorro. We had to speak English. We had to comply with whoever was ruling. Like, the governor in Guam, during, like, the American occupation was the commanding officer of the base. And that was kind of hard because, like, they didn't really care to understand the Chamorros, you know? It was just, like, Americans are ruling now, and this is how it's going to be.
KWONG: The ban on speaking Chamorro wasn't lifted until 1970. Now, Joseph is by no means saying that life under the U.S. military was comparable to life under Imperial Japan. But he wants to be honest about the ways that Chamorros were exploited, in particular, the amount of land that was confiscated to build bases around the island. Nearly 11,000 Chamorros, half the population at that time, lost their property to the U.S. military in the aftermath of the war. This led to a class action lawsuit in the 1980s for a settlement of $40 million, which many still believe is not enough compensation.
SANTOS: They confiscated a lot of my grandparents' land. Like, the military cemetery on the island where the flagpole was used to be my great grandma's house. They actually hired a trailer, and they moved the whole house.
KWONG: Now that you're, you know, 73...
SANTOS: Yeah.
KWONG: ...What do you think of the U.S. military now and what it's done in Guam?
SANTOS: I think they took advantage of the Chamorros. They really did, you know, like, because we didn't have too much to say about what was going on. So they took advantage of us. Like, to this very day, we're not allowed to vote for the president.
KWONG: Did you ever have a moment where - like, you observed all this, right? And you knew that you didn't have a choice. This is the way it was. But did you ever have a moment where you started to feel, like, angry?
SANTOS: Maybe sometimes - disgusted I think would be more than angry because being angry does nothing, you know? People in politics allow this to carry on and not do anything. But then, if you really think about it, it's like, how much voice do they have to begin with?
KWONG: Joseph is talking about the political situation on Guam today, how little say the people have and how about half of the residents were born elsewhere. Only one-third identify as Chamorro.
SANTOS: It's kind of sad, really. Chamorros are literally a minority on Guam now.
KWONG: But Joseph and Leialani don't live on Guam anymore. And she wants guidance on how to navigate that diasporic identity. Her papa, her closest family connection to the land, won't always be here to show her how.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: So I'm the last of the kids in our family to be raised on the family land. So what do you think my generation needs to do in order to pass on, like, Chamorro culture and heritage?
SANTOS: Practice it, you know? Like, actually live in that way. Like, you going against, like, the school policy to change things because you didn't feel it was right, those are things that I think would help you retain, like, whatever Chamorro way of life you're exposed to.
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KWONG: Soon after graduating college, Leialani started a master's degree program in library and information sciences. She wants to work in a museum someday or be a part of repatriation efforts to recover Pacific Islander objects and remains. She's not totally sure what she wants to do just yet. Leialani just knows that there's not that many Pacific Islanders in the field.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: There's so much that our community needs and that, like, isn't going to be achieved without us specifically spearheading it 'cause as of right now, the library information science field and archival studies in general, as well, are very white.
KWONG: She's looking for role models, scholars and writers and archivists who can show her how to do this work in an indigenous way.
WIHONGI-SANTOS: Ideally, hopefully, like, in the nearish (ph) future, I want to visit Aotearoa, New Zealand, and work with the Maori information professionals there. They're spearheading a lot of these movements in the field for indigenous peoples and very specifically for Pacific Islanders as well. It's having indigenous ways of knowledge be recognized as knowledge.
KWONG: Leialani is listening, just like she did when she was a little kid announcing herself to the Taotaomo'na, standing at the edge of the jungle waiting for a sign.
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KWONG: "Inheriting" is an AANHPI family history show, where the past is personal. For more episodes, look for "Inheriting" wherever you get your podcasts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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