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Guam (/ˈɡwɑːm/ GWAHM; Chamorro: Guåhan [ˈɡʷɑhɑn]) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean.[5][6] Guam's capital is Hagåtña, and the most populous village is Dededo. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States, reckoned from the geographic center of the U.S. In Oceania, Guam is the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands and the largest island in Micronesia. As of 2022, Guam's population was 168,801. Chamorros are the largest ethnic group, but a minority on the multi-ethnic island. The territory spans 210 square miles (540 km2; 130,000 acres) and has a population density of 775 per square mile (299/km2).
Indigenous Guamanians are the Chamorro, who are related to the Austronesian peoples of the Malay Archipelago, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Polynesia. But unlike most of its neighbors, the Chamorro language is not classified as a Micronesian or Polynesian language. Rather, like Palauan, it possibly constitutes an independent branch of the Malayo-Polynesian language family.[7][8] The Chamorro people settled Guam and the Mariana islands approximately 3,500 years ago. Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, while in the service of Spain, was the first European to visit and claim the island on March 6, 1521. Guam was fully colonized by Spain in 1668. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Guam was an important stopover for Spanish Manila galleons. During the Spanish–American War, the United States captured Guam on June 21, 1898. Under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded Guam to the U.S. effective April 11, 1899.
Before World War II, Guam was one of five American jurisdictions in the Pacific Ocean, along with Wake Island in Micronesia, American Samoa and Hawaii in Polynesia, and the Philippines. On December 8, 1941, hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Guam was captured by the Japanese, who occupied the island for two and a half years. During the occupation, Guamanians were subjected to forced labor, incarceration, torture and execution.[9][10][11] American forces recaptured the island on July 21, 1944, which is commemorated as Liberation Day.[12] Since the 1960s, Guam's economy has been supported primarily by tourism and the U.S. military, for which Guam is a major strategic asset.[13] Its future political status has been a matter of significant discussion, with public opinion polls indicating a strong preference for American statehood.[14][15]
Guam's de facto motto is "Where America's Day Begins", which refers to the island's proximity to the International Date Line.[16][17] Guam is among the 17 non-self-governing territories listed by the United Nations, and has been a member of the Pacific Community since 1983.[18]
History
Pre-Contact era
Guam, along with the Mariana Islands, were the first islands settled by humans in Remote Oceania. It was also the first and the longest of the ocean-crossing voyages of the Austronesian peoples, and is separate from the later Polynesian settlement of the rest of Remote Oceania. They were first settled around 1500 to 1400 BC, by migrants departing from the Philippines which was followed by a second migration from the Caroline Islands in the first millennium AD. A third migration wave took place from Island Southeast Asia, likely the Philippines or eastern Indonesia, by 900 AD.[19][20]
These original settlers of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands evolved into the Chamorro people, historically known as Chamorros after first contact with the Spaniards.[21]: 16 The ancient Chamorro society had four classes: chamorri (chiefs), matua (upper class), achaot (middle class), and mana'chang (lower class).[21]: 20–21 The matua were located in the coastal villages, which meant they had the best access to fishing grounds. The mana'chang were located in the island's interior. Matua and mana'chang rarely communicated with each other. The matua often used achaot as intermediaries.[21]: 21
There were also "makåhna" or "kakahna", shamans with magical powers and "'suruhånu" or "suruhåna", healers who used different kinds of plants and natural materials to make medicine. Belief in spirits of ancient Chamorros called "Taotao mo'na" still persists as a remnant of pre-European culture. It is believed that "suruhånu" or "suruhåna" are the only ones who can safely harvest plants and other natural materials from their homes or "hålomtåno" without incurring the wrath of the "Taotao mo'na." Their society was organized along matrilineal clans.[21]: 21
The Chamorro people raised colonnades of megalithic capped pillars called latte stones upon which they built their homes. Latte stones are stone pillars that are found only in the Mariana Islands. They are a recent development in Pre-Contact Chamorro society. The latte-stone was used as a foundation on which thatched huts were built.[21]: 26 Latte stones consist of a base shaped from limestone called the haligi and with a capstone, or tåsa, made either from a large brain coral or limestone, placed on top.[21]: 27–28 A possible source for these stones, the Rota Latte Stone Quarry, was discovered in 1925 on Rota.[21]: 28
Spanish era
The first European to travel to Guam was Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for the King of Spain, when he sighted the island on March 6, 1521, during his fleet's circumnavigation of the globe.[21]: 41–42 Despite Magellan's visit, Guam was not officially claimed by Spain until January 26, 1565, by Miguel López de Legazpi.[21]: 46 From 1565 to 1815, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, the only Spanish outposts in the Pacific Ocean east of the Philippines, were reprovisioning stops for the Manila galleons, a fleet that covered the Pacific trade route between Acapulco and Manila.[21]: 51
Spanish colonization commenced on June 15, 1668, with the arrival of a mission led by Diego Luis de San Vitores, who established the first Catholic church.[21]: 64 The islands were part of the Spanish East Indies, and part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, based in Mexico City.[21]: 68 The Spanish-Chamorro Wars on Guam began in 1670 over growing tensions with the Jesuit mission, with the last large-scale uprising in 1683.[21]: 86
Intermittent warfare, plus the typhoons of 1671 and 1693, and in particular the smallpox epidemic of 1688, reduced the Chamorro population from 50,000 to 10,000, and finally to less than 5,000.[21]: 86 Up until the late 19th century, Guam was encountered by adventurers and pirates, including Thomas Cavendish, Olivier van Noort, John Eaton, William Dampier, Woodes Rogers, John Clipperton, George Shelvocke and William "Bully" Hayes.
The island became a rest stop for whalers starting in 1823.[21]: 145 A devastating typhoon struck the island on August 10, 1848, followed by a severe earthquake on January 25, 1849, which resulted in many refugees from the Caroline Islands, victims of a resultant tsunami.[21]: 151 This earthquake was much more powerful than the 8.2 one that occurred on August 8, 1993.[22] After a smallpox epidemic killed 3,644 Guamanians in 1856, Carolinians and Japanese were permitted to settle in the Marianas.[21]: 157
American era
 | This section needs expansion with: info re the period between the December 10, 1898, cession to the U.S. and WW-I. See e.g., https://www.google.com/books/edition/Destiny_s_Landfall/eh_HDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA102 and elsewhere for info.. You can help by adding to it. (May 2023) |
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After almost four centuries as part of the Kingdom of Spain, the United States occupied the island following Spain's defeat in the 1898 Spanish–American War, as part of the Treaty of Paris of 1898. Guam was transferred to the United States Navy control on December 23, 1898, by Executive Order 108-A from 25th President William McKinley.
Guam was a station for American merchants and warships traveling to and from the Philippines, which was another American acquisition from Spain, while the Northern Mariana Islands were sold by Spain to Germany for part of its rapidly expanding German Empire. A U.S. Navy yard was established at Piti in 1899. A United States Marine Corps barracks was established at Sumay in 1901.[23]: 13
A marine seaplane unit was stationed in Sumay from 1921 to 1930, the first in the Pacific.[23]: 13 The Commercial Pacific Cable Company built a telegraph/telephone station in 1903 for the first trans-Pacific communications cable, followed by Pan American World Airways establishing a seaplane base at Sumay for its trans-Pacific China Clipper route.[23]: 15
World War I
On December 10, 1914, the SMS Cormoran (or SMS Cormoran II), a German armed merchant raider, was forced to seek port at Apra Harbor on the U.S. territory of Guam after running short on coal. The United States, which was neutral at the time refused to supply provisions sufficient for the Cormoran to make a German port so the ship and her crew were interned until 1917.
On the morning of April 7, 1917, word reached Guam by telegraph cable that the U.S. Congress had declared war on Germany. The Naval Governor of Guam, Roy Campbell Smith, sent two officers to inform the Cormoran that a state of war existed between the two countries, that the crew were now prisoners of war, and that the ship must be surrendered. Meanwhile, the USS Supply blocked the entrance to Apra Harbor to prevent any attempt to flee. In a separate boat, the two officers were accompanied by a barge commanded by Lt. W.A. Hall, who was designated prize master, and had brought 18 sailors and 15 Marines from the barracks at Sumay.[24][25]
Seeing a launch from Cormoran hauling a barge of supplies back shore, Hall ordered shots fired across the bow of the launch until it hove to. Meanwhile, the two officers reached Cormoran and informed Captain Adalbert Zuckschwerdt of the situation. Zuckschwerdt agreed to surrender his crew but refused to turn over the ship. The U.S. officers informed Zuckschwerdt that the Cormoran would be treated as an enemy combatant and left to inform Governor Smith of the situation. Unbeknownst to the Americans, the Germans had secreted an explosive device in the ship's coal bunker. Minutes after the Americans left, an explosion aboard Cormoran hurled debris across the harbor and her crew began abandoning ship. The two American boats and USS Supply immediately began to recover German sailors from the water, saving all but seven of the roughly 370 Cormoran crew. This incident, including the warning shots against the launch, accounted for the first violent action of the United States in World War I, first shots fired by the U.S. against Germany in World War I, the first German prisoners of war captured by the U.S., and the first Germans killed in action by the U.S. in World War I.[26][27]
World War II
During World War II, the Empire of Japan attacked and invaded in the 1941 Battle of Guam on December 8, at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese renamed Guam Ōmiya-jima (Great Shrine Island). The Japanese occupation of Guam lasted about 31 months. During this period, the indigenous people of Guam were subjected to forced labor, family separation, incarceration, execution, concentration camps, and forced prostitution.[28]
Approximately 1,000 people died during the occupation, according to later US Congressional committee testimony in 2004. Some historians estimate that war violence killed 10% of Guam's then 20,000 population.[28] The United States returned and fought the 1944 Battle of Guam from July 21 to August 10, to recapture the island. July 21 is now a territorial holiday, Liberation Day.
Post-war
After World War II, the Guam Organic Act of 1950 established Guam as an unincorporated organized territory of the United States, provided for the structure of the island's civilian government, and granted the people U.S. citizenship. The Governor of Guam was federally appointed until 1968 when the Guam Elective Governor Act provided for the office's popular election.[29]: 242 Since Guam is not a U.S. state, U.S. citizens residing on Guam are not allowed to vote for president and their congressional representative is a non-voting member.[13]
They do, however, vote for party delegates in presidential primaries.[30] In 1969, a referendum on unification with the Northern Mariana Islands was held and rejected.[31] During the 1970s, Maryly Van Leer Peck started an engineering program, expanded University of Guam, and founded Guam Community College.[23]: 17 In the same period, Alby Mangels, Australian adventurer and filmmaker of World Safari visited Guam during his six-year escapade on the leg of his voyage through the Pacific aboard the Klaraborg.
The removal of Guam's security clearance by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 allowed for the development of a tourism industry. When the United States closed U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay and Clark Air Base bases in the Philippines after the expiration of their leases in the early 1990s, many of the forces stationed there were relocated to Guam.[citation needed]
The 1997 Asian financial crisis, which hit Japan particularly hard, severely affected Guam's tourism industry. Military cutbacks in the 1990s also disrupted the island's economy. Economic recovery was further hampered by devastation from super typhoons Paka in 1997 and Pongsona in 2002, as well as the effects of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the crash of Korean Air Flight 801 on tourism.[32]
Geography and environment
Guam is 30.17 miles (48.55 kilometers) long and 4 to 12 miles (6 to 19 kilometers) wide. It has an area of 212 square miles (549 square kilometers). It is the 32nd largest island of the United States. It is the southernmost and largest island in the Mariana Islands, as well as the largest in Micronesia.[33] Guam's Point Udall is the westernmost point of the U.S., as measured from the geographic center of the United States.[34][35]
The Mariana chain of which Guam is a part, was created by collision of the Pacific and Philippine Sea tectonic plates. Guam is located on the micro Mariana Plate between the two. Guam is the closest land mass to the Mariana Trench, the deep subduction zone that runs east of the Marianas. Volcanic eruptions established the base of the island in the Eocene, roughly 56 to 33.9 million years ago. The north of Guam is a result of this base being covered with layers of coral reef, turning into limestone, and then being thrust upward by tectonic activity to create a plateau.[36]
The rugged south of the island is a result of more recent volcanic activity. Cocos Island off the southern tip of Guam is the largest of the many small islets along the coastline. Guam's highest point is Mount Lamlam at 1,334 feet (407 meters) above sea level.[36] If its base is considered to be the nearby Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point in the Oceans, Mount Lamlam is the world's tallest mountain at 37,820 feet (11,530 m).[37][38]
Politically, Guam is divided into 19 villages. The majority of the population lives on the coralline limestone plateaus of the north, with political and economic activity centered in the central and northern regions. The rugged geography of the south largely limits settlement to rural coastal areas. The western coast is leeward of the trade winds and is the location of Apra Harbor, the capital Hagåtña, and the tourist center of Tumon. The U.S. Defense Department owns about 29% of the island,[39] under the management of Joint Region Marianas.
Climate
Guam has a tropical rainforest climate on the Köppen scale (Köppen Af). Its driest month of March almost qualifies as a tropical monsoon climate (Köppen Am). The weather is generally hot and humid throughout the year with little seasonal temperature variation. Guam is known to have equable temperatures year-round. Trade winds are fairly constant throughout the year. There is often a weak westerly monsoon influence in summer.
Guam has two distinct seasons: Wet and dry season. The dry season runs from January through May. June is the transitional period. The wet season runs from July through November. Guam's average annual rainfall was 98 inches or 2,490 millimeters between 1981 and 2010.
The wettest month on record at Guam Airport has been August 1997 with 38.49 inches (977.6 mm). The driest was February 2015 with 0.15 inches (3.8 mm). The wettest calendar year was 1976 with 131.70 inches (3,345.2 mm). The driest year was in 1998 with 57.88 inches (1,470.2 mm). The most rainfall in a single day occurred on October 15, 1953, when 15.48 inches or 393.2 millimeters fell.
The mean high temperature is 86 °F or 30 °C. The mean low is 76 °F (24.4 °C). Temperatures rarely exceed 90 °F (32.2 °C) or fall below 70 °F (21.1 °C). The relative humidity commonly exceeds 84 percent at night throughout the year, but the average monthly humidity hovers near 66 percent.[40]
The highest temperature ever recorded in Guam was 96 °F (35.6 °C) on April 18, 1971, and April 1, 1990.[40] A record low of 69 °F (21 °C) was set on February 1, 2021.[41] The lowest recorded temperature was 65 °F (18.3 °C), set on February 8, 1973.
Guam lies in the path of typhoons[42] and it is common for the island to be threatened by tropical storms and possible typhoons during the wet season. The highest risk of typhoons is from August through November, where typhoons and tropical storms are most probable in the western Pacific. They can, however, occur year-round. Typhoons that have caused major damage on Guam in the American period include the Typhoon of 1900, Karen (1962), Pamela (1976), Paka (1997), Pongsona (2002), and Mawar (2023).
Since Typhoon Pamela in 1976, wooden structures have been largely replaced by concrete structures.[43][44] During the 1980s, wooden utility poles began to be replaced by typhoon-resistant concrete and steel poles. After the local Government enforced stricter construction codes, many home and business owners have built their structures out of reinforced concrete with installed typhoon shutters.
| Climate data for Guam International Airport (1991–2020 normals, extremes 1945–present) | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °F (°C) | 94 (34) |
93 (34) |
93 (34) |
96 (36) |
94 (34) |
95 (35) |
95 (35) |
94 (34) |
94 (34) |
93 (34) |
92 (33) |
91 (33) |
96 (36) |
| Mean maximum °F (°C) | 88.4 (31.3) |
88.5 (31.4) |
89.2 (31.8) |
90.2 (32.3) |
90.8 (32.7) |
91.1 (32.8) |
90.8 (32.7) |
90.6 (32.6) |
90.4 (32.4) |
90.4 (32.4) |
89.9 (32.2) |
88.8 (31.6) |
92.0 (33.3) |
| Mean daily maximum °F (°C) | 85.7 (29.8) |
85.7 (29.8) |
86.7 (30.4) |
87.9 (31.1) |
88.5 (31.4) |
88.5 (31.4) |
87.7 (30.9) |
87.0 (30.6) |
87.0 (30.6) |
87.2 (30.7) |
87.4 (30.8) |
86.6 (30.3) |
87.2 (30.7) |
| Daily mean °F (°C) | 80.3 (26.8) |
80.1 (26.7) |
81.0 (27.2) |
82.3 (27.9) |
83.0 (28.3) |
83.1 (28.4) |
82.2 (27.9) |
81.5 (27.5) |
81.5 (27.5) |
81.7 (27.6) |
82.2 (27.9) |
81.6 (27.6) |
81.7 (27.6) |
| Mean daily minimum °F (°C) | 75.0 (23.9) |
74.6 (23.7) |
75.4 (24.1) |
76.7 (24.8) |
77.5 (25.3) |
77.7 (25.4) |
76.8 (24.9) |
76.1 (24.5) |
76.0 (24.4) |
76.3 (24.6) |
77.0 (25.0) |
76.5 (24.7) |
76.3 (24.6) |
| Mean minimum °F (°C) | 71.6 (22.0) |
71.4 (21.9) |
71.9 (22.2) |
73.3 (22.9) |
74.1 (23.4) |
74.6 (23.7) |
73.8 (23.2) |
73.4 (23.0) |
73.3 (22.9) |
73.4 (23.0) |
73.9 (23.3) |
73.3 (22.9) |
70.2 (21.2) |
| Record low °F (°C) | 66 (19) |
65 (18) |
66 (19) |
68 (20) |
70 (21) |
70 (21) |
70 (21) |
70 (21) |
70 (21) |
67 (19) |
68 (20) |
68 (20) |
65 (18) |
| Average precipitation inches (mm) | 5.34 (136) |
4.15 (105) |
2.77 (70) |
3.50 (89) |
4.45 (113) |
6.51 (165) |
12.25 (311) |
17.66 (449) |
15.17 (385) |
12.73 (323) |
8.29 (211) |
5.30 (135) |
98.12 (2,492) |
| Average precipitation days (≥ 0.01 in) | 20.1 | 18.0 | 18.3 | 18.9 | 19.7 | 23.2 | 26.0 | 25.9 | 25.1 | 25.4 | 23.9 | 22.7 | 267.2 |
| Average relative humidity (%) | 83.7 | 81.9 | 83.1 | 82.0 | 82.7 | 82.7 | 87.3 | 88.7 | 88.8 | 88.3 | 86.6 | 83.0 | 84.9 |
| Mean monthly sunshine hours | 176.0 | 173.7 | 216.4 | 214.0 | 219.9 | 193.8 | 156.1 | 142.2 | 132.7 | 132.6 | 135.0 | 143.4 | 2,035.8 |
| Percent possible sunshine | 50 | 53 | 58 | 57 | 56 | 50 | 39 | Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Languages_of_Guam||||||