Chamorro Language Reading Room

Ginnen Si Sinot Pedro Onedera, Profesot Fino' Chamoru giya i Unibetsedat Guahan:

Ma agågangi hao

Your presence is requested
Para un atendi i
to attend the

Siremoñan Initot Leston
para i
Kuåtton Rifirensian Fino’ CHamoru

CHamoru Language Reference Room
Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

gi Sabalu, diha 15 gi Ineru 2011
on Saturday, January 15, 2011

Gi alas 3 gi despues di talo’åni

3:00 p.m.
gi iya Unibetsedåt Guåhan
held at the University of Guam
Sentan Inilao Lugåt Maikrunisia
Micronesia Area Research Center
Prinisenta nu i:
Presented to you by:
Klas Inentalo’ 2010 CHamoru Ilimentåriu II
2010 Elementary CHamoru II Intercession Class

*****************


Students enrolled in the Fall Intercession class of CM102 Elementary Chamorro II class at the University of Guam have established a Chamorro Language Documents Reference Room at the Micronesian Area Research Center.

For decades, emphasis has been on the acquisition of Spanish language documents that have been housed at the center says assistant professor of Chamorro language, Peter R. Onedera

Little effort has been done to collect documents too that have been written in the Chamorro language and it is timely that the same consideration be given to archive many works that have gone unnoticed and uncollected through the years.

One chief aim for the project is to make available these written works to researchers who will devote time to the linguistic value of the indigenous language.

Additional areas that can benefit are orthography, semantics, word origins, antecedents, grammar, lexicons, and other language areas vital to the survival of Chamorro as a member of the Austronesian family of languages. Onedera says this has largely been lacking in the field of academia and the collection of written works in the Chamorro language will prove valuable as many researchers, particularly the Chamorro Linguistics International Network that was established with Dr. Robert A. Underwood, Rosa Salas Palomo and Onedera as original founding members.

The organization is based at the University of Bremen in Germany and includes members from many countries spanning Europe to the Caribbean, the United States and Asia.

Individuals, organizations, government agencies, private owners and collectors of Chamorro language memorabilia, as well as those now living in the mainland United States are invited and encouraged to provide copies that range from personal letters, journals, diaries, essays, compositions, books, poetry, lyrics, music, chants, proverbs, booklets, brochures, annual reports, manuscripts, political pamphlets, posters, project proposals, recipes, medicinal and herbal treatment, historical anecdotes, advertisements, legends, myths, stories, public events, organizational charts, ceremonies, religious activities, family tree information, novena books, bibles, guidebooks and other literary materials that are written in Chamorro and can be housed in the reference room at MARC.

This appeal is also extended to the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas and those living around the globe says Onedera.

Anyone wishing to contribute to the project may email Onedera at onedera@uguam.uog.edu or ponedera53@yahoo.com. His office phone number is 1-671-735-2808.

Solidarity Actions to Protest US Military Expansion in Takae, Okinawa

Thank you to Kyle Kajihiro of DMZ Hawai'i for posting in support of Norimatso Satoko's Peace Philosophy Centre blog:

January 3, 2011 by kyle

U.S. military helicopters buzzed the peace encampment near the Yambaru forest in Takae, at the northern end of Okinawa. Construction of the jungle warfare training area has begun. This is another site of community resistance to U.S. military base expansion in Okinawa, but it has gotten far less media attention than Futenma and Henoko. Groups in Japan are mobilizing to protest the U.S. expansion of training in the rainforest of Yambaru. They requested international groups to send messages of solidarity:

Email your message/request to: no.base.okinawa@gmail.com

Please include in your email the following information:

*** Name (for an individual) or name of your organization
*** Your message/request (length is up to you)

Both Japanese and English messages will be accepted.

Deadline: January 8 (Sat.), 2011
Remember that Japan is a day ahead of continental US

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Reposting from Satoko Norimatsu of Peace Philosophy Centre:

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Please Join Action for Takae at US Embassy!
高江ヘリパッド工事強行とテント損壊事件についてアメリカ大使館への抗議と申し入れへの呼びかけ




★ See a YouTube video of the Okinawan media reports on the December 23 incident of a US helicopter hovering above the Takae protest tent, which caused damage to the tent and some items in the tent.

Please Join Us in Our Action for Preserving the Pristine Yanbaru Forest and People of Takae, Okinawa!

We invite you to join us in our protest at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo over the restart of the U.S. helipads construction in Takae, Higashi Village of Okinawa, and the destruction of the sit-in tent by a U.S. helicopter, either by sending us your message/request to the US Embassy by email by January 8, or physically joining our action on January 10 in Tokyo (see instruction at the bottom).

The Yambaru Forest is a habitat for endangered species such as Yambaru Kuina (Okinawan Rail) and Noguchi Gera (Okinawan Woodpecker). It is known internationally as a region rich in biodiversity. Takae, situated in Yambaru, is a small village of about 160 residents, including many who moved here for its pristine nature.

However, the U.S. Marine Corps has been using the Yambaru Forest for combat training. In 1957, th US military started using the area as “Northern Training Area” (Jungle Warfare Training Center), and currently there are 15 U.S. helicopter takeoff and landing zones (helipads) in Higashi Village. Residents of Takae have constantly suffered from the noise and the risk of helicopter crashes. To make matters worse, the Japanese and US governments decided to build 6 new helipads, surrounding the residential neighborhood of Takae.

Construction of new helipads will not only further endanger the livelihood and lives themselves of Takae residents, but also further destroy the precious environment with its wealth of species, forest and rivers. New military facilities also pave the way to the possibility of a new war.

Residents of Takae have protested against the helipads construction for the above reasons. In 2006, we passed a resolution against the new helipads, and demanded of the relevant authorities that they review the construction plan. Takae residents and their supporters from across Japan and from around the world have continued to sit-in, monitoring the site and trying to persuade the government against the construction.

The Japanese and US governments, however, have not listened to the voices of opposition by the residents, and have not provided sincere explanation or proper opportunities for public hearing. The Japanese government even decided, all of a sudden, to prosecute some of the local protesters for obstructing traffic.

Just before dawn on December 22, 2010, at 6:30 AM, some 100 members of the Okinawa Defense Bureau, ignoring the ongoing court proceedings, barged into the site without warning to restart the helipad construction. On the next night, December 23rd, a US helicopter hovered only 15 meters above the sit-in tent, causing the tent to blow down. Such military exercise over a public road threatenｓ the safety of local residents. The Japanese and US governments are harming the people of Takae by forcing through the construction work without sufficient explanation or consent by local residents. Such an approach by the two governments is unacceptable.

Residents of the Henoko district in Nago City, where the Japanese and US governments plan to build a replacement base for MCAS Futenma, have also been sitting-in for over 2,400 days, in order to preserve their life and the beautiful ocean. We urge you also to say “NO” to the new base plan in Henoko.

Following our protest to the Ministry of Defense on December 22 and the December 26 demonstration in Shinjuku, “Save Takae/Okinawa – an urgent appeal and demonstration against construction of helipads,” we will go to the US Embassy in Tokyo and the Japanese Ministry of Defense on January 10 (Mon.), 2011, to protest. We would like to collect as many requests/demands as possible and deliver them to the US government. We accept both individual and organizational messages. Just one sentence message, such as “We do not need US helipads in the pristine forest” will suffice, or a longer message is welcome too. The Takae and Henoko issues are not just about war and military bases, but they are also about environmental preservation, biological diversity, and an alternative, “slow-life” lifestyle.

Please express your message in your own words.

Please follow the below instruction and send your message by January 8, 2011.

With our voices and with our actions, let us stop the helipad construction in Takae, and the base construction in Henoko. Let us bring a peaceful and fulfilling life to Takae and Henoko!

(The original document in Japanese is at: http://takae.ti-da.net/e3296164.html. Translated by Norimatsu Satoko and Gavan McCormack)

★ Email your message/request to: no.base.okinawa@gmail.com

Please include in your email the following information:

*** Name (for an individual) or name of your organization
*** Your message/request (length is up to you)

Both Japanese and English messages will be accepted.

Deadline: January 8 (Sat.), 2011

★ If you can physically join our action:

US Embassy -meet in front of Toranomon JT building
3:00 PM
January 10, 2011

(Take Exit 3 of Subway Ginza Line “Toranomon” station. Walk four minutes straight on Sotobori Street, towards Tameike Sanno)

We particularly appreciate participation of people from US!

Address: Toranomon JT Building, 2-1, 2 chome, Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo – see MAP here. Address in Japanese: 2011年1月10日（月・休）15時　虎ノ門ＪＴビル前集合（地下鉄銀座線「虎ノ門駅」3番出口より、外堀通りを溜池山王方面へ直進、徒歩4分）

Organizer: Okinawa o fuminijiruna (Do not trample on Okinawa!) Urgent Action Committee; Yuntaku Takae; Okinawa One-tsubo Anti-war Landowners Association Kanto Bloc (URLs below)

呼びかけ：沖縄を踏みにじるな！緊急アクション実行委員会（新宿ど真ん中デモ）

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/hansentoteikounofesta09/

ゆんたく高江　http://helipad-verybad.org/

沖縄・一坪反戦地主会　関東ブロック　http://www.jca.apc.org/HHK/

★ There will be another action on the same day:

Ministry of Defense - meet in front of the MoD
6:30 PM
January 10, 2011

The organizer of this action is “Committee for Not Allowing Base Construction in Henoko.”

See Map of MoD here: http://www.mod.go.jp/e/access/index.html
In Japaneese, 1月10日18時半　防衛省前集合
主催：辺野古への基地建設を許さない実行委員会ttp://www.jca.apc.org/HHK/NoNewBases/NNBJ.html

★ For the background information in English about the Takae issue, go to:

Voices of Takae (English version)
http://nohelipadtakae.org/files/VOT-english2010Oct14.pdf

Postcard…from Takae, by Jon Mitchell
http://www.fpif.org/articles/postcard_fromtakae

http://peacephilosophy.blogspot.com/

Tony Ramirez on the Sella Bay Protests of the 1970's

DOD Begins to Waver on Pagat

Department of Defense Begins to Waver on Plans for Pågat;
Community of Guam United to Preserve this Ancient Village
December 3, 2010
WE ARE GUAHAN

After a full year of the Guam community working to protect the Pågat area from becoming a firing range complex, the Department of Defense is wavering on its plans to use the area for Marine training. Ms. Jackalynn Pfannenstiel, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, has been on Guam this week attempting to sell a plan of “unimpeded access” to Pågat and a land-swap deal, while still intending to claim and control the land at Pågat.

In November of 2009, the Draft EIS was released and the community began to respond to the plans outlined to use the ancient village for a firing range complex. After 11,000 comments, the Final EIS showed little to no change—and, the Record of Decision only put off the decision on Pågat, with no significant change from the FEIS. Now, after the Guam Preservation Trust, We Are Guåhan and the National Trust for Historic Preservation have filed a lawsuit against the DoD, they are finally trying to engage the community.

“They have had two weeks to review the lawsuit, and they know that they have broken the law,” says We Are Guåhan member and attorney Leevin Camacho. “We have been very clear—access is not sufficient. We do not want the DoD to have control over access to any of the Pågat area. We know what happens when the DoD controls access. They make promises that are quickly compromised for whatever their needs are, regardless of what our community needs.”

After a meeting with the Senators and Mayors yesterday, Pfannenstiel was told that access of any sort was not a sufficient mitigation. “And now they want a land swap,” said Acting Speaker Tina Muña-Barnes. “Why don’t they put the firing range on that land, then? They want to trade back land they took from us in the first place. We’re not biting.”

We Are Guåhan would like to congratulate Mayors Lizama, Chargualaf, Blas, Lizama and Flores, as well as the Acting Speaker, Speaker Won Pat and the Senators on their continuing unity and commitment to protecting and preserving Pågat and our beautiful island of Guam.

From We Are Guahan

War Reparations Attached to Military Buildup

Guam Seeks Closure to Its Nearly 30 Year Quest for Wartime Reparations

By Travis J. Tritten
Stars and Stripes
Published: November 29, 2010

HAGATNA, Guam — Rita Santos Cruz is still haunted by the terrifying day when Japanese soldiers burst into her grade school and abruptly ordered all the students to line up outside.

Then the soldiers dragged Cruz’s pregnant mother into the school courtyard.

“They were beating her up,” recalled Cruz, who is now 73. “And here we were, watching her.”

Her mother, who had refused to bow to the Japanese forces occupying Guam during World War II, was beaten so badly she suffered a miscarriage, Cruz said, wiping away tears.

“We were not even Americans,” she said, “and we were punished.”

More than 60 years later, survivors of the Japanese occupation of Guam still harbor painful resentment — toward the United States. That’s because many feel the U.S. abandoned Guam at the outbreak of the war, letting it fall to the Japanese and thus condemning the population to mass executions, forced labor, torture, internment and rape at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Now, as the U.S. military pushes forward with its largest buildup here since World War II, the tiny U.S. island territory is pressing for closure of its wartime suffering and an end to its nearly 30-year quest for compensation from the federal government.

“If you want us to accept what is going on [with the buildup], let’s resolve this,” Guam Sen. Frank Blas said.

The Guam legislature declared in September that war reparations should be paid to survivors like Cruz as a condition of the planned $10 billion U.S. military expansion on the island, which will bring 8,600 Marines from Okinawa, visiting aircraft carriers and possibly a missile defense facility by 2014.

Meanwhile, Guam’s congressional delegate, Madeleine Bordallo, has said war reparations are her top priority in Congress and are “important for the military buildup to be successful.”

The total cost of reparations for the island could be as much as $126 million, according to a 2004 report by the Guam War Claims Review Commission.

The territory has been unable to strike an agreement with Congress on the payments — part of a legislative struggle dating back to 1983 — and the Guam legislature’s resolution in September is unlikely to exert any real leverage over the military buildup, which is set to begin within months.

The Joint Guam Program Office, which coordinates the buildup for the military, declined to comment on the war claims and referred all questions to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

But the island is still pushing ahead doggedly on the reparations.

“It is just about the recognition,” said Blas, who founded the website www.guamwarsurvivorstory.com, dedicated to survivors and reparations. “Many were beaten, many were tortured. A lot of it was because of their loyalty to the United States.”

Chris Reyes, 69, who retired after two decades in the U.S. Army, is one of fewer than 1,000 Guamanians who endured the Japanese occupation on Guam and are still alive to tell their stories.

Reyes, who was just 4 months old when Japan invaded, said he remembers living in a dark jungle cave “like a mushroom” during the nearly three-year occupation because his family feared he would be killed.

His father was a slave laborer for the Japanese and fed a starvation diet while he unloaded cargo ships. Reyes said he eventually escaped into the jungle during a mass execution.

The only U.S. compensation his family ever received was $810 paid to his grandmother for land taken by the military immediately after World War II.

“Why did we suffer so much?” asked Reyes, who is now an outreach counselor for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on Guam. “The American government did not provide protection [against a Japanese invasion], and Japan treated us like Americans.”

The United States determined before the war that Guam, then a U.S. possession and military outpost, would fall quickly to Japan, according to a history published by Andersen Air Base.

While Guamanians waited helplessly, all military dependents and U.S. citizens were evacuated from the island ahead of the expected Japanese invasion, which in December 1941 easily punched through a “meager, outdated” U.S. arsenal and about 600 inexperienced servicemembers, the air base history shows.

About 14,700 Guamanians were killed or endured hardship before the U.S. liberated the island from the Japanese in 1944, according to the National Park Service’s War in the Pacific memorial.

“Sisters looked at their brothers being killed with open eyes,” Reyes said. “Kids looked at their fathers being beheaded.”

Guam has always been patriotic — its 170,000 residents produce more military recruits per capita than almost anywhere else in the country — but there is also a strong underlying feeling that the territory was once snubbed by the U.S. government.

“People have very long memories,” said Ron McNinch, a political analyst and professor at the University of Guam. “War reparations are treated as a form of social transgression by these older people who felt they were wronged and their children, or now even their grandchildren, feel they were wronged or mistreated.”

Despite those feelings, the island’s claims of neglect are not so clear.

Guam received at least $8 million in compensation from the U.S. right after World War II, the Guam War Claims Review Commission showed in its 2004 report to Congress.

The claims commission was created by the Department of Interior to investigate the reparations issue and included the chairman of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, which handles U.S. war claims.

It found only about 716 Guamanians were compensated for death or injury from the war, though incomplete records don’t reflect a precise dollar amount for the claims compensation.

The lion’s share of Guam’s reparations went to 6,018 Guamanians who filed claims for lost or damaged property in the late 1940s.

Meanwhile, many Guamanians were not aware of the claims process and were not given enough time to file, according to the report.

Guam Sen. B.J. Cruz, a member of the claims commission and former chief justice of the Guam Supreme Court, said the U.S. has not settled its debt to Guam, despite the early reparations and arguments the U.S. lost 1,438 servicemembers in the liberation.

“There are some who will say the … Marines who died coming on shore are payment,” Cruz said.
“We keep saying, ‘You are the ones who put us in the middle of this fire and you’re going to tell us because the firemen died trying to save us that we owe you?’ ”

The war claims commission recommended Congress pay an additional $126 million in reparations — $25,000 for each death and $12,000 for instances of rape, malnutrition, slave labor, forced march, internment or hiding to avoid capture.

The recommendation was sent to lawmakers in 2004 but was killed on the Senate floor by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and a “small group of fiscal conservatives,” according to Guam Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo.

Now, the payments are again being sponsored by Bordallo in the U.S. defense budget for the coming year — the same budget that contains initial construction funding for the $10 billion military buildup on Guam.

But Bordallo says there is still opposition in the Senate, especially the Armed Services Committee, which holds sway over defense spending and is headed by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Levin and McCain oppose paying the heirs of Guam war survivors and are concerned the payments could lead to more war claims in future versions of the defense budget, Bordallo said in a prepared statement on her website. She refused an interview with Stars and Stripes.

The senators offered Bordallo a compromise in 2009 — they would support the measure “if I agreed to limit claims only to those killed during the war and to those living survivors of the occupation,” she said.

But the compromise failed and the Armed Services Committee cut the reparations from the defense bill.

McCain refused to comment for this story. Levin did not respond to a request for comment.

This year, the Senate did not include the provision in its original version of the bill. The House bill contains the reparations along with a number of other controversial measures, including a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, and may not pass at all this session.

Guam has been down this congressional path before.

Year after year, Guam congressional delegates, who have no vote, have made reparations a top issue and pressed lawmakers to approve payments.

Year after year, they have failed.

In 1988, Congress approved $12,000 payments to Aleutian islanders who were forced to relocate ahead of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Alaska, which was a U.S. territory at the time of the war.

Guam was nearly included in the reparations but the island legislature backed out of the deal in Congress, saying payments of $5,000 for personal injury and $3,000 for slave labor, forced march or internment were too small.

Few on the island are willing to compromise for less.

“With all this money they are giving away, the money we are asking for war reparations, hell, that is only a drop in the bucket,” said Vincente Taisipic, 74, a war survivor who retired from the U.S. Navy.

Chris Reyes is still waiting to finally get compensation and a formal apology from the U.S. government for the terrified times he and his family spent in a cave nearly seven decades ago.

“Money is not really the issue here,” Reyes said. “We are just confused as to why for so long we have been neglected.”

trittent@pstripes.osd.mil

http://www.stripes.com/guam-seeks-closure-to-its-nearly-30-year-quest-for-wartime-reparations-1.126894

Remembering War and Promoting Peace

Community Collaborates to Remember World War II and Promote Peace
War Survivor Exhibit to Open Nov. 29

November 23, 2010
For Immediate Release

Hagåtña, Guam – When Guam was invaded by Japan on December 8, 1941, hundreds of island residents were attending church services at the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral in honor of their patron saint Santa Marian Kamalen. They were praying as the war began. To remember that history, the Guam War Survivor Memorial Foundation and the Archdiocese of Agana, in collaboration with several community groups, are hosting a photo exhibit at the Cathedral-Basilica Museum entitled, “Take My Hand: Remembering How the War Began, Promoting Peace in Our Land.”

The exhibit will feature photo collections provided by the Notan Museo, National Museum of the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica; the Guam Humanities Council; the National Park Service; the Department of Parks & Recreation; the Micronesian Area Research Center (MARC) and the Office of Senator Frank F. Blas, Jr.

“We must remember that the strength and sprit of our manåmko’ helped them survive the war and shaped who we’ve become today,” said Sen. Frank F. Blas, Jr. “This exhibit displays the photos and stories of our war survivors, and reminds us that they are truly our island’s heroes.”

The exhibit will open with a press conference at the Cathedral-Basilica Museum at 10 a.m. on Monday, November 29, 2010. It will run until Wednesday, December 8, 2010.


Exhibit Hours of Operations (November 29 – December 8, 2010)

Monday-Friday: 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Saturday: 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Sunday: 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

December 8: 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.


For more information contact Senator Blas at 687-1483 or 472-2527. Please visit our website: www.guamwarsurvivorstory.com.

Global Militarism, Global Peace?