Guampedia Newsletter, July 2021
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Page 2
Josefa Cruz Baza
Photo Courtesy of the Guam War Survivors Memorial Foundation
This second story comes from Josefa Cruz Baza. Baza was born in 1930 on Guam and was raised in the village of Malesso’. She was 11 years old when the war began.
The Japanese had found a home to use as their quarters at the southern end of the village, which was close to the Malesso pier. When they came to our house, which was closer to the middle of the village, they liked it because it was one of the more well-constructed homes. We were told to find our own home anywhere. Fortunately, our family had some land near the beach near Achang Bay and that’s where we moved. We hurriedly packed our things and moved there, and my Dad built a “sagidani,” a little ranch with the thatched roof of coconut leaves and bamboo. We stayed there until the end of the war. While we were living there, the Japanese forced us to work even though we were still children. We were expected to pull weeds, clean and to plant vegetables in the designated area near where
our house was. The Japanese would take all the vegetables, including the breadfruit and eggs, and would leave nothing for us. We would hide our provisions and when we killed the pig, we would try as much as possible to avoid having the Japanese smell the meat, because if the Japanese found out that we had food, we would get slapped. We would take the taro leaves and the bananas and prepare them, sometimes in coconut milk, and hide them. When we slaughtered a pig, we would do so at night and then my mother would season it with salt and we would dry it near the ocean so the Japanese won’t smell or see it. The same went for the breadfruit. We would pick it at night and cook it and then wrap and hide it. We would eat it with coconut milk, and that’s how we would have our meal.
Recording and Remembering the Stories of Our Elders Culture of Connecting For those of us whose elders have passed on, we are reminded that there are still many resources that help us keep them and their memories present in our lives. Last year, we hosted an open forum in our Culture of Connecting series centered around the war experience. This forum brought together the young, the old, and the in-between to speak and discuss with attendees about the lessons learned from the island’s most challenging time in the modern age. Themes like survival off the land and the importance of remembering were discussed, not only in their applications in the war, but their persistence today. If you weren’t able to attend last year, don’t worry, these discussions were recorded and uploaded to be viewed on our Vimeo page. Click here to explore this series!
