A Blessing in Disguise

By Father Eric Forbes

Many Chamorros on Guam got nervous when the order went out from the Japanese that the people were to march to designated camps in the southern half of the island in early July of 1944. It didn’t matter how young or old you were, nor how sick or infirm you were, the Japanese demanded everyone march to these camps. Word began to spread among the people that the Japanese were concentrating the Chamorro population into half a dozen camps to make it easier for the Japanese to put the people to death.

If the camps didn’t kill them, the march might. It was the rainy season, so walking by foot for as many as ten miles or more involved trudging through mud, with all the health hazards that entailed. Although American planes refrained from shooting clearly civilian marching groups, it was dangerous to walk in daylight because of strafing. Bombing from American ships offshore was a constant threat, day, or night.

An impatient Japanese soldier might hit you or worse if you slowed down or stopped on the march. It didn’t matter that you were carrying your grandmother on your back. If you seemed too weak to march, a Japanese might decide to end your life. Some people just lay down on the side and died naturally from sickness, hunger, or wounds. Civilians passed so many dead bodies, both Japanese and Chamorro, it became part of the natural landscape.

The camps hardly deserved the name. They were just open spaces. The Japanese provided nothing. The people put up whatever feeble huts they could make from vegetation and scrap material. They ate what could be collected from the jungle; even roots that were ordinarily inedible. You were more fortunate if your camp had a river running through it, although the water was polluted. The water couldn’t be boiled, nor any cooking done, as the smoke during the day and the light of the fire during the night would attract American planes. As one lady said, “We just pushed aside the filth floating on top of the water and drank.” Dysentery and other waterborne diseases were rampant.

Historic photos courtesy National Archives; Walk to Manenggon for the 60th Liberation courtesy David Castro/Guahan Magazine The camps were so crowded, perhaps 5000 alone in the biggest one, occupying a small river valley where only a fraction of that number could have lived comfortably, that people slept leaning on each other. They didn’t even keep track of who was sleeping in the same shack or tent; people fell asleep wherever they found themselves. Some family members weren’t accounted for and relatives just hoped they would eventually appear.

Even in the camps, the Japanese were a constant threat. Many able-bodied men were still required to build Japanese defenses, all the while being shot at and bombed by the Americans. Not all these men came back to camp; some were butchered by the Japanese when the work was done. Back at camp, the Japanese enjoyed playing psychological games with the women, subjecting some to sexual abuse as well.

And yet, these camps rumored to be part of a Japanese design to eliminate the Chamorro population, were probably the very thing that saved them from death. The Japanese certainly wanted to prevent Chamorros from meeting American troops, providing them with critical information about Japanese numbers and positions. Removing the Chamorros to hidden valleys also meant the civilians couldn’t interfere with Japanese military movements.

But sitting safe in these sheltered valleys also meant the Chamorros were far from the bullets and mortars exchanged between Americans and Japanese soldiers on the battlefields of the north. Thus, one morning the Chamorros woke up to find that their Japanese guards had quietly slipped away in the night, leaving a largely intact civilian population to be found by American soldiers stumbling upon camps of elated Chamorro refugees.