The island of Guam lies in the Pacific Ocean, directly north of New Guinea, 3800 miles west of Hawaii, and 1200 miles east of the Philippines. It is the largest and the most southerly island in Micronesia, which includes more than 2,000 small islands and islets in the western Pacific.
The
island of Guam is 30 miles long and a dozen miles wide, and nearby is the
Marianas Trench, which at 6¾
miles deep, is the deepest part of any ocean upon planet Earth. Guam enjoys a tropical climate the
temperatures of which are modified due to the waters of the surrounding
ocean. This island can be subject to
storms and cyclones, and also to earthquakes though there are no volcanoes on
the island itself.
The total population on Guam is
about 160,000 made up of American forces personnel and local Chamorro people
who speak their own language. The
capital city is Agana), which is also the headquarters for the American navy in
the region.
One of the main industries on Guam
is tourism, and more than one million people visit the island each year, mainly
from Japan. Very popular for the
Japanese people is to celebrate a wedding on tropical Guam.
The known history of the island of
Guam extends back some four thousand years, to the time when the original
settlers moved into the area from Southeast Asia. The first European to sight the island, on
March 6, 1521, was the Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan who circumnavigated
the world on behalf of the royal family of Portugal.
The island was claimed by Spain
forty four years later, and the first Spanish colony was established as part of
the Spanish East Indies a hundred years later again. Over a period of time, Guam became a calling
place for Spanish galleons plying the Pacific on their many trade missions.
Guam was surrendered to the United
States in 1898, and along with Hawaii and the Philippines, it became one of
Americas’s three major possessions in the
Pacific. The island is 6,000 miles from
California in the continental United States, and it has been built up as a
major base for American personnel.
Just five years after taking over
the island, an undersea cable was laid between Guam and Hawaii in 1903, thus
enabling direct communication between the island and the American
mainland. During the era between the two
World Wars, many important wireless and radio facilities were installed on the
island of Guam, and the first radio broadcasting station was inaugurated back
in the early 1930s.
However, in spite of these many
major developments, Guam was caught virtually unawares when Japan began its
invasion into the islands of the Pacific.
Just a few hours after the disastrous attack on Pearl Harbor, another
Japanese attack was made, this time against Guam, and some 5,600 Japanese navy
and army personnel invaded the island.
Captain George J. McMillin, the
American governor of Guam, surrendered the island to Commander Hayashi Hiromu
of the Japanese navy at 7:00 am on Wednesday December 10, 1941 (Guam date
& time), just two days after the
attack on Pearl Harbor.
On the morning of the initial
invasion, a total of six enlisted navy men managed to escape inland into the
jungle, though five were subsequently captured and executed. The fortunate successful escapee was
Lieutenant George Tweed, who had worked in the naval communication office at
wireless station NPN where he served as Chief Radioman in repairing radio
equipment.
When the Japanese forces were
approaching the town of Agana, George Tweed jumped into his car, a beat-up 1926
Reo, and with two passengers aboard, he
drove into the hinterland. This vehicle,
made in Lansing Michigan, was a 6 cylinder Roadster which the Reo company first
introduced during the previous year.
A quick 10 mile jaunt brought them
to a dirt track that disappeared into high thorn bushes half a mile later. They abandoned the vehicle and hid, and over
a period of time, George Tweed found himself alone, though he was often assisted
by local Chamorro people.
After moving to another more
concealed location which was described as some sort of a cave, a large rock
leaning against another, Tweed was given a power generator and a beat-up
American Silverstone radio receiver. In
March 1942, three months after his rapid departure from society, George Tweed
was able to coax the radio receiver into a working condition and he tuned in to
the San Francisco shortwave station KGEI, which propagated an excellent signal
across 6,000 miles of open salt water ocean from California to Guam.
Using an old typewriter, Tweed began
to produce a “newspaper”, just
five copies of each issue with carbon paper between each page, and he called
his news reports the Guam Eagle, in honor of the then defunct English language
newspaper on Guam. Other news reports
were obtained from the “Voice of Freedom” WVDM, a temporary shortwave station
established in Malinka Tunnel on Corregidor Island by General Douglas
MacArthur. Tweed’s typewritten and
carbon-copied issues of the Guam Eagle were published and circulated
irregularly in this way for a period of four months.
At one stage in order to avoid
detection, George Tweed buried his restored radio receiver and fled to another
safer location. However, when he
returned to recover the hidden radio receiver, he discovered that it was damaged
beyond repair. Soon afterwards, he
obtained another beat up American made radio receiver, made by Zenith
Electronics in Chicago, which again provided him with shortwave news and
information.
In total, Tweed was able to avoid
detection and capture for a total period of two years and seven months. Then, on July 10, 1944, from his isolated and
rugged hill top cave, he noted the return of American navy vessels into the
nearby waterways.
With the aid of a mirror and his own
home made signal flags, he was able to signal two American destroyers in the
waters below. The USS McCall sent out a
whaleboat to rescue Tweed from the nearby ragged coastline, and from that time
onwards he was honored as a World War 2 hero.
In the meantime, there was another
wartime fugitive on the island of Guam.
He was a Japanese soldier who became isolated during the intense
fighting on the island between the Japanese and the Americans in July 1944.
As a 26 year old tailor’s apprentice, Shoichi Yokoi was
drafted into the Japanese army in 1941 and he first served in Manchuria. Then, a little less than two years later, he
was transferred for service in the occupation army on the island of Guam.
At the end of the Pacific War in
August 1945, it is estimated that there were some 150 holdouts on Guam,
including Sergeant Shoichi
Yokoi and his ten companions who fled into a jungle area in the mountains. Over a period of time, the number in his
group was whittled down to just himself, and he became a lone war time
fugitive, living as best he could with what he could find for food, clothing
and utensils.
Sergeant Yokoi dug a cave hideout
some seven feet underground, nine feet long and three feet high, with a drop
down access by his home made ladder. He
finally learned in 1952 that the war had ended some seven years earlier. though
he continued to live in isolated exile.
Over
a period of time, rumors occasionally surfaced in Guam that there was still one
Japanese survivor on the island. Then
around 6:00 pm on the evening of Monday January 24, 1972, two Chamorro fishermen,
Manuel Garcia and Jesus Duenas, inadvertently accosted Yokoi. After a brief scuffle, Yokoi was taken into
custody, and next day he was presented to the authorities in Agana,
Ultimately,
Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi was repatriated
to Japan where he was interviewed by numerous radio and television stations, as
well as by the newspapers; and from that time onwards he too was honored as a
World War 2 hero.
More
on the Guam radio story next time.
(AWR-Wavescan/NWS 358)