Guam

Guam, a United States territory that elects its own governor and legislature, lies at the southern end of the Mariana Islands, in the north-western Pacific. Limestone cliffs such as Two Lovers Point edge its northern plateau; the south is volcanic, with red hills and waterfalls. Offshore runs the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans. The brown tree snake, which arrived in military cargo after the Second World War, wiped out most of the native forest birds.

The CHamoru people’s ancestors sailed from Island Southeast Asia some three and a half thousand years ago, and their descendants raised houses on latte, stone pillars crowned with capstones. Magellan’s ships stopped here in March 1521. After Spain claimed Guam in 1565, war and disease devastated the CHamoru. The United States took the island in 1898; Japan held it from December 1941 until American forces returned in July 1944, marked each year as Liberation Day. The Organic Act of 1950 made its people US citizens.

Catholic village fiestas for patron saints gather whole families, and chenchule’, the custom of giving to one another at weddings and funerals, binds them. A CHamoru table holds red rice coloured with achote seeds and kelaguen, chicken or fish cured in lemon juice with grated coconut and hot pepper. Visitors from Japan and South Korea fill the hotels on Tumon Bay, and the naval base at Apra Harbor and Andersen Air Force Base make the military the other mainstay.